The wondrous wines of Jura

V SANJAY KUMAR enjoys exploring the wonders of Jura wines with his friends, introduced to him by his wine guru

- V SANJAY KUMAR

My wine guru (we all need one) is a crotchety ancient whose eyebrows are knitted together. People think that he is frowning, in reality that is how you look when you are sniffing a glass of wine. It does not help that my guru serves expressions that challenge the whole purpose of drinking wine. Wine is meant to appease, excite, pleasure, and uplift. Old Man’s cellar has no such intentions.

His wines come from vineyards in Europe where labour is love, tending plants is personal, the terrain has steep slopes, and mechanization is not an option. Some big-clod well-shod horses with rowdy manes can be seen ploughing the marl and crumbling the schist. Old Man has wines from such locales. The last time I was to meet him he asked me, “Have you heard of Jura?”

I did some research. Jura is a small region that produces less than 1% of the wine in France but it makes up through character. It literally owns a white grape called Savagnin and red grapes called Trousseau and Poulsard. It makes wine its own way; you either love them or hate them and if you are in the latter category, frankly, it cares a damn.

“The big wine houses do not make wines in Jura,” said Old Man, “only small croppers do.” In his books that meant something. 

“Robert Parker spends more time in Burgundy and Bordeaux, not so much in Jura.” This was his answer when I asked him if Jura had produced a 100 pointer.

“Take a grape like Poulsard,” said Old Man holding up a pale pink liquid that he had poured, “it is thin-skinned and temperamental. It demands care and attention. If it is denied it raises a stink; literally.”