Domaine Bourdy: Producer profile and nine wines tasted

‘Historic’ can be an overused word, but Caves Jean Bourdy – or Domaine Bourdy, as it is now known following its generational change of ownership in 2022 – is indeed a historic domaine. Founded in the bucolic Jura village of Arlay in 1579, it is one of the oldest domaines in France. With cellars housing two centuries’ worth of consecutive back vintages, it has long made traditional wines that follow time-honoured methods passed down through 15 generations of the Bourdy family.

Yet change is afoot.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for nine fabulous Domaine Bourdy wines to try

In the summer of 2022 Laura Bourdy, representing the 16th generation of winemakers in her family, became the first woman to take charge in the estate’s history.

Until 2018, Laura had been working contentedly as a project manager at a neuroscience company. But while pregnant with her first child, Chloé, she began to think seriously about her family’s future.

Before she took the reins, Laura insisted on first becoming an employee of the business for one year to be sure that it was the right thing to do. She started in June 2018, working closely with her father Jean-François and her uncle Jean-Philippe.

Jean-François, an MBA graduate who had travelled widely selling the family’s wines and brand around the world, spent time teaching her about the history of the domaine, its values and its customers. But even with this solid grounding, Laura knew there was a gap in her winemaking knowledge. So, despite the demands of being a new mother, she went back to school, studying oenology at the University Institute of Vine and Wine Jules Guyot in Dijon.

‘I have no regrets,’ she says. ‘When you do something you love, you learn very fast. So everything was going really easily in my mind. As time went on, it started to feel like it was my destiny.’

Thirty years earlier, Jean-François had given up his own nascent career as a horse trainer to take over running the family domaine with Jean-Philippe. To his credit, Jean-François never once insisted that Laura should follow suit: ‘He just said he would give me all the instruction I could want – but only if I wanted it,’ she says.

Traditional & non-traditional winemaking styles in Jura

Traditional: Oxidative winemaking in old barrels that are not topped up, therefore allowing a certain amount of ullage (a gap between the wine and the top of the barrel). This can also allow for a flor to develop (known as sous voile), and is more common for white wines. Long maturation. Wines tend to be more mineral and savoury.

Non-traditional: Reductive winemaking where barrels are topped up (ouillé), or inert vessels such as stainless steel tanks are used. Shorter maturation. Wines tend to be more fruity and floral.

The above characteristics only apply to dry, unfortified wines.

A change in direction

When it came for Laura to officially take charge, one of her main objectives was to make Domaine Bourdy more approachable and fun. While the domaine was hardly frozen in time, by Laura’s own admission, it was a slightly austere place.

‘When I came back, I saw a really nice place with lovely people and a huge story,’ she says, ‘but everything was old – the buildings, the cellar, the way of working, without computers. So I thought, okay, this is gold; now I will show the world that this is gold and we will do something beautiful with it. This is my vision.’

She has already made her mark by introducing a new range of distinctly non-traditional, natural wines to the Bourdy portfolio.

Laura is not the first Bourdy to break with convention: her father and uncle went against the grain of prevailing Jura thought by converting the entire estate to biodynamic farming in 2006. But while her father and uncle have stuck to a long-established formula in the cellar (co-fermentation for the reds, direct press for the whites, then long ageing in used barrels for both – up to two years for reds and three years for whites), Laura’s new range of wines is designed to break with tradition. All named after important women in the Bourdy family, these more fruit-driven wines are aged for a short time, mostly in steel tanks, and typically with no added sulphur dioxide (SO2). Crucially, they give Laura the freedom to experiment.

Laura has already overseen a renovation of the company’s offices (complete with shiny new computers), but it’s in the cellar that the most significant changes are happening.

Domaine Bourdy: Factfile

Date founded: 1475 (wines made from 1579)

Most recent ownership change: 2022

Owned by: Laura Bourdy

Annual production: 30hl/ha over 10ha (roughly 40,000 bottles per year)

Key vineyards: most important is 0.5 ha of Château-Chalon (old-vine Savagnin, farmed by hand)

Grape varieties: Savagnin, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, Poulsard

Key wines: Château-Chalon, Vin Jaune, Côtes du Jura (white and red), Galant des Abesses (fortified and aromatised)

Making her mark

‘People need to see that I am also an oenologist, not just the daughter of Jean-François Bourdy,’ she says. ‘They need to see that I can think for myself and not just walk in my family’s footsteps. I don’t want to change our fundamental identity, I am just saying it’s time to show something else; is it possible to show something fun and fashionable too?’

While Laura will continue to produce the family’s traditional wines, her intention has been to ‘add some colour’ to the wine range. She has taken inspiration from the two most radiant colours in her life: her daughters, Chloé, six, and Lola, three.

‘Cuvée Chloé’, first produced in 2021, is a varietal Trousseau made without added SO2, aged for a relatively short time in steel tank and bottled with a playful, colourful label that is the antithesis of the sepia-toned designs of the traditional wines.

‘Cuvée Lola’ is a sappy, refreshing blend of 50% Trousseau, 25% Poulsard and 25% Chardonnay, all co-fermented as whole bunches. Laura gave birth to Lola right in the middle of the 2021 harvest – still under pressure to manage the vinifications, she ended up working in the cellar with three-day-old Lola strapped to her in a papoose.

Then there’s ‘Douce Jeanne’, named after Laura’s first niece, which is a Chardonnay that’s been macerated on its skins for 15 days and, uniquely among the new wines, aged in barrel. Finally there is ‘Cuvée Suzanne’, named after Laura’s youngest niece; this is a crystalline, saignée-method rosé made from Pinot Noir.

All of these experimental cuvées seem to convey the essence of the Arlay terroir, which is also common to the traditional wines of the domaine: exceptional balance, subtle, savoury minerality and taut, mouthwatering acidity – Jean-François has been known to say: ‘There is no fruit in our wines!’ Yet Laura’s new wines clearly mark a departure from what has gone before.

Then again, there are elements of Laura’s approach, such as working without added sulphur where possible, which can be seen as a logical extension of the farming principles she has inherited from her father and uncle.

‘My dad and my uncle learned with the systemic methods, so they used to use SO2,’ she says. ‘They were really careful and they did not want to take risks. But then again, they had already converted the domaine to biodynamics, so they had come a long way!’

‘For me it’s really logical to reduce SO2 when you use biodynamic agriculture. I don’t know if the style of wine will change because of that. It seems that it won’t’.

Stylistically, Douce Jeanne perhaps most accurately hints at the direction Laura would like to take. It brings together Bourdy tradition (oxidative ageing in old barrels) and innovation (the first orange wine the domaine has made), effectively signposting where she has come from and where she is going.

Laura may well have saved her family’s four-centuries-old domaine from oblivion, as neither her sister nor her cousins had any desire to take over. Had she not stepped up, Jean-François and Jean-Philippe would have had to recruit someone from outside the family. ‘I’m not sure my dad would have been able to survive that decision,’ she says.

It’s a huge step but not one that Laura has shirked from. On the contrary, if her new wines are anything to go by, she is already relishing the challenge of writing a new chapter in the Bourdy family’s long winemaking history.

See notes and scores for nine Domaine Bourdy wines

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