Jura - a Secret Paradise
I’ll let you in on a little secret as long as you promise to keep it just between us. What if I told you there’s a magical place that exists with dozens of crystal clear lakes just waiting for you to jump in, stretches of wilderness as far as the eye can see with countless well marked trails to explore, cascading waterfalls, lovely medieval villages with the friendliest people in all of France. Oh and it just happens to be known for some of the most delicious cheese in the world AND it’s a wine region too. If you’re French, you probably know about this place already and you’ve been keeping it to yourselves which, I have to say, is jolly unsportsmanlike. But to everyone outside of France, this place is a revelation. It’s called Jura, it's in eastern France, and it’s a slice of heaven on earth.
To be fair Jura is sort of famous already. It is, after all, where the word Jurassic comes from, the Jura mountains being the first place rocks from that age were first studied. Without Jura there would be no “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” instead we’d be stuck with “Creataceous Carnage” or “Triassic Terror” and then where would we be? I’ll say it again, thank goodness for Jura. While the dinosaurs may be long gone, the Jura mountains are going strong, teeming with other wildlife including the European lynx, wild boar, deer, cute little Chevreuil, and a great deal of bird life. If you love nature, this is the place for you.
Our home for the week was one of the most impressive places we’ve stayed on this trip. Le Chateau de Marigna is a majestic sight when you come up the gravel driveway and get your first glimpse of it. Built in the 11th or 12th Century it’s what most people have might have in their mind when they picture a fairytale castle, complete with a slightly scary but utterly captivating dungeon tower. The owner, the wonderfully friendly Pierre, lives in the nearby village and is on hand for a lovely warm welcome. Although the property has four individual places to stay, he tells us we were the only ones this week, so we had a medieval castle and 13 hectares of gorgeous grounds all to ourselves. Bliss. Our accommodation was the Colombier, or dovecot in English, which has been renovated into a cosy three level guest house complete with full kitchen where we cooked dinner each night, toggling between French and Indian cuisine, just to spice things up a little.
We also nibbled our body weight in cheese which you have to do in Jura. There are three famous local cheeses, two of which are outstanding and I’m sure the third is too, we just didn’t get around to trying it. Comté is probably the most famous, it’s creamy, it’s nutty and you have a hard time stopping once you’ve started (just ask my waistline). The second is Morbier, which has a distinctive layer of ash through the middle. Fun fact, the cheese makers used to take the left over curd from making Comté and put it into a mould and cover it with a little ash to protect it overnight. The next day they would take some of that afternoon’s curd to top it off and voila! (as they in these parts) a new cheese was created. Do yourself a favour and toast a big old slab of this stuff on bread until it bubbles and turns golden. I’d suggest sitting down and bracing yourself before you take a bite, you may even shed a tear and that’s ok. It’s really that good. The third cheese is called Bleu de Gex which, as the name would suggest, is a blue cheese that is stronger than most other French blues but I’ll have to take the internets word for that because I was all cheesed out. If you try some, let me know what you think.
After all that cheese, we had to get some exercise or risk turning into Jabba the Hut’s chubby cousins. If there’s one thing that Jura does better than most anywhere else, it’s a damn good hike. We packed a picnic (with cheese of course) and set off on the 14 kms four lakes hike. It’s classed as an ‘easy’ hike of course, because the French and the Swiss are rather hardcore about such things. When you’re scrambling up the side of a muddy hill grappling with mountaineering straps to help pull yourself up, I’d give that more of a moderate rating myself, but who am I to judge. I can tell you it was one of the best hikes we’ve done - alpine forests, beautiful blue lakes, and incredible views in every direction. This may have been the WonderDog’s most perfect day in what is arguably already a pretty perfect life. She swam in all four lakes of course, no body of water left behind is her motto. She charged about for hours, sniffed everything there was to sniff, and she had a picnic lunch of world class cheese. Folks, it does not get any better than this for our four legged friend (or the two legged variety for that matter).
Now this is Tails of Wine after all, so I had better get around to telling you about the wines from this region. I’ll give you the layman’s view of course, Mr T has a more professional perspective so hit us up in the comments section if you want to know more. Jura wines are very (very) different to most other wines you’ve tried. They are what I’d call punch-you-right-in-the-face wines and chances are, at first pass, you may not like them very much. Especially if you try the vin jaune, or yellow wine, which is deliberately oxidized, left for six years under a thin film of yeast in partially full barrels, and tastes to me much like dry sherry. If you don’t like sherry, chances are you’re not going to like vin jaune, my friends. But you should try it for sure, I’m here to expand your horizons after all.
To understand the wines from Jura, you need to go somewhere that serves great local food, which is usually quite heavy and involves a lot of cheese. Might I suggest La Finette in Arbois, a lovely little taverna with a distinctly Alpine feel. They do mountain food that will put hair on your chest. Even our attempt at a healthy salad came laden with thick wedges of cheese on toast and I’m so glad it did, because the wine that I had been struggling to drink suddenly came to life. It took every ounce of restraint to not slam my hands down on the table and shout “EUREKA!”
Until that moment we’d had some rather uncomfortable evenings at home with Mr T picking wine after wine and me screwing my nose up after one sip.
Me: “Nope, nope, nope no.”
Mr T: <slightly exasperated> “What is it you don’t like in particular.”
Me: “It tastes like cow bum.”
Mr T: <deep sigh> "Ok, better or worse than the last one though?”
Me: “Is there a better or worse type of cow bum to be tasting? It’s all bovine arse I’m tasting, dude. There’s no better or worse about it, I don’t think.”
But try some of that wine with a thick slab of warm, gooey Comté on a crisp piece of toast, and WHAMMO! it all makes sense. Heaven by the gobful. Which is what I tried to tell Mr T through a mouthful of cheese and some wild gesticulations. I think he got the gist.
With my eyes well and truly opened, we then called upon the subject experts and that’s when Jura wine really shone through. Our first wine tasting was at Vins Stephane Tissot in Arbois, where a lovely young lady took us through a number of very tasty and not at all cow bum-esque wines which I really enjoyed. I’m still not a vin jaune fan and likely never will be, and that’s ok, because Jura has plenty of other excellent wines for you to enjoy.
Next was the most incredible experience when we were in the expert hands of Madame Christine Villet, the owner of Domaine Villet in Arbois. The winery is on a very quiet street off the main town of Arbois and Christine, her husband Gerard, their children, and grandchildren live in and around the winery. Some day her son will take over the day to day running of the winery, but for now Christine runs the show after her husband suffered some health issues. She works in the vineyard, picks the grapes, makes the wine, runs the business side of things, manages the household, looks after the grandkids, and somehow finds the time to meet people like us. She’s also one of the most genuinely lovely people you could hope to meet.
Domaine Villet has been a family run winery since 1900 and has been organic for the last 30 years, one of the very first in the region. Christine took us through a good number of her wines and showed us how to “work” certain wines depending on their characteristics. For example, one of the white wines is best decanted and then vigorously aerated in the decanter with a bit of elbow grease (i.e giving it a strong armed swirl for a few minutes) to bring it to life. When we tasted the before and after, it was completely different. Who knew? Christine did, of course. They also make some great sparkling which is absolutely delicious, I could drink that all day long (and just might because we ordered quite a few bottles, thanks Christine!)
Things were going so well in Jura that we were due for a set back, such is the way of the world. Disaster struck as Mr T was making his way up some stairs (entirely sober before you ask), somehow managed to wallop his little toe which then blew up like an angry little balloon and refused to get better. So our hiking, walking and general movement was scuppered. Poor lad managed to hobble to a few more lakes for the sake of the WonderDog, who’s capacity for lake swimming knows no bounds, but hiking or walking more than a few hundred metres was out of the question.
So for our final day, we decided to hobble over to the lovely pool in the grounds of our castle (never going to get bored of saying that sentence!) to cool his foot off in the water. It was so relaxing, with the birds singing and the gentle wind in the trees, that I just about to doze off when something started flitting around the pool.
Me: “Oh look, a little swallow has come for a drink.”
A split second later, I’m up out of my seat looking for the right way to run shouting…
Me: “BBAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!! Itsabatitsabatitsabaaaaaaaaaaat.”
Mr T: “Oh wow, is it? At this time of day? That’s weird.”
Me: <the bat is flying around like a drunken sailor> “ARGGHHHHHHH it’s coming for me.”
I may or may not have been charging back and forth pool side at high speed with the bewildered Mr T looking on.
Mr T: “I’d say he’s more frightened of you that you are of him, especially with all your flapping and shouting.”
I’ve always had a rather irrational fear of bats getting stuck in my hair. Is that a thing? And if it is, where would I have heard such a thing. I blame my mother, no doubt she’s terrified of bats. I’ll make a note to ask her.
Finally, poor Monseiur Bat wheels around and slams on to the side of the pool house wall where he seems rather intent on staying until it goes dark and he can get the hell out of dodge. No doubt with a hilarious story to regale his little bat friends with about crazy giant creatures who whirl their arms and shout a lot. Either way, I hope you made it home safe little fella.
And with that, our magical time being Kings and Queens of our Jura castle came to an end. We bid farewell to our wonderful host Pierre, who we felt genuinely sad to leave, and thanked him for making all our royal dreams come true (well insomuch as my secondary school French would allow. I think he got the message). And so onwards, to the very wine heavy grand finale for this trip where we hit up Burgundy, Sancerre, Chablis and Champagne all in the space of a few weeks. Starting with a 9am tasting in Burgundy after a two hour drive from Jura. Wish us luck!
