More about Chateau d'Arlay

The story of the Jura is far from over...and it started a lot longer ago than you might realize.

The story of one particular Jura producer, Château d’Arlay, goes back almost 1500 years, for it was in the year 630 that it was named the “First Royal Vineyard of France”. That’s the medieval equivalent of getting 100 points!

About 400 years later — around when the Normans were conquering Britain — the Laguiche family took over the winery. This may be a familiar name if you are a fan of Montrachet, a good slice of which the family still owns to this day.

Astonishingly, a thousand years and multiple wars, famines, pandemics and depressions later, the Laguiche family continues to own the Château d’Arlay. The current winemaker is even named Alain de Laguiche. The winery claims to be continuously owned by the same family for longer than any other winery in France, and with a history like that, who’s going to argue?

Now, this is interesting not just for the impressive dates, but because it tells us something that is key to understanding the Jura. Locked away in the remote foothills of the Alps, the Jura has a way of resisting history. And we love the Jura today precisely because it resisted history: the post-War history of agro-industrial domination that stained the wine industry almost everywhere else in France.

Château d’Arlay brings us an astonishing example of history-resistance. In the 19th century, like in many other wine regions, the Jura simply dumped all their grapes into a single vat, regardless of the variety or even whether they were red or white. The grapes fermented (naturally) and were then left to age, and that was your wine. Well, the Château d’Arlay did that back then, and they never stopped doing it.