While many winemakers create wine with a sense of place, there is no one else making wine to the degree of Benedicte and Stephane Tissot. That is the absolute beauty of their wines. Not only are they difficult to come by, they have generated themselves into an elite category that the wine world has dubbed “unicorn” wines. 

Stéphane Tissot, who grew up on the estate, has been the driving force behind the dramatic resurgence of Jura wines over the last 20 years. André and Mireille, Stéphane’s parents, started the domaine in 1962 – Stéphane remembers cleaning barrels as a kid (small enough to get in them!). His first vintage was 1989 at the age of 19 and his precise work in the cellar was immediately recognized by his peers, as Jura wines were then quite “rustic,” nothing like what is made today.

Stephane soon stopped adding yeasts for his fermentations and, after meeting Nady Foucault at Clos Rougeard, he began conversion to organic agriculture, one of the first in the Jura. The domaine was certified organic in 1999 and biodynamic in 2004 and new plantings were all done with massale selection rather than the clones then used throughout the region.