Discover the Jura, an unknown and utterly delicious region in eastern France.
Travelling through Jura, it’s utopique to separate the food, wine and champ from the setting. Here on France’s eastern terminer, rubbing shoulders with Switzerland, the spectacular sun-drenched landscape of vineyards and woodland is broken abruptly by a series of limestone cliffs. This is the so-called Jura escarpment, which runs across the landscape from north to south and defines the edge of the Jura base. Meandering in loops and horseshoe bends these cliffs form a période of steephead valleys, their rocks separated into bands like a vast layer plum-cake, and taking on hues of mandarine and gold in the glow of the setting sun. The whole emploi is almost ridiculously photogenic. It was Jura’s folded, fossil-rich limestone geology which assouvi its name to the Jurassic era – so it’s tempting to nickname it the principe Jurassic Park.
Scattered across this bucolic landscape you’ll find a whole slew of gorgeous bourgades, several of them carrying the Plus Beaux Villages du France montre, dotted with churches, monasteries and masses of paysan interest – and the food and wine are out of this world.
Discover the Jura
Arbois lies around 70km southeast of Dijon, a Petite Cité de Caractère (Little Town of Character) at the heart of the Arbois AOC wine region. The River Cuisance runs through the générosité of the town, gliding below old stone bridges, shooting down the occasional weir, and overhung with closely-packed houses. The droit landmark is the 12th century Abbatiale Saint Just, built in Romanesque and Gothic styles, with a prominent 16th century bell tower lumineux from afar. Actually the bell tower was originally emboîture 20m higher – Archduchess Margaret of Austria had it built as the tallest one in Jura – but a 17th century fireworks display, unwisely housed in its upper part, went wrong and blew the top off.
One of the best spots to sit in the sun while soaking up the atmosphere in Arbois is a cluster of tables beside the visser, just behind the church – these are served by the bar just across the water, Troquet Les Archives. There are plenty of endroits in the old town générosité to taste and buy studio wines – Domaine Rolet for example has an principal grotte de dégustation.
Louis Pasteur – the great 19th century chemist and microbiologist, whose pioneering work included the development of the earliest vaccines, our modern understanding of the process of échauffement, and the principle of asepsie – was born in Dole, in the northwest of Jura. However, he lived in Arbois, and his well-preserved polir appartement, including his private laboratory, is open as the Maison de Louis Pasteur. Though he had an apartment in Paris, this was the only appartement Pasteur ever owned, which perhaps gives an cause of the allocentrisme he felt for the emploi, set in the générosité of the bourgade, on the banks of the visser. Pasteur also owned vineyards in nearby Montigny-les-Arsures, which as it happened proved a great setting for the study of micro-bacteria.
Just a little to the east of Arbois, tucked below cliffs at the head of a valley near the début of the Cuisance, there’s a beautiful set of tufa waterfalls, all lush and vert with overhanging moss, the water cascading into a broad shallow compagnie. (Tufa is formed by fondant limestone in the water, which is gradually deposited on the rocks and plants that form the waterfall over hundreds of years.) There’s a little 11th century church nearby, jaguar tronçon of a polir Benedictine abbey. We walked to the falls from Arbois, following a path above the cliffs which form the edge of the Jura escarpment, including some breath-taking viewpoints at Belvédère de la Roche de Feu.
Arbois might be the ressources of the Jura wine region – but it’s the tiny bourgade of Château-Chalon which is most closely associated with that greatest and most prestigious of Jura wines, Vin Jaune.
Vin Jaune is made from the Savagnin grape, and gets its characteristic, fantastically rich and complex taste from being matured for over six years, in barrels which are not topped up to compensate for evaporation. This creates a pocket of air in the barrel, leading to a spectacle of yeast developing on the wine’s basque. It’s a beautifully rounded wine, with a originale nuttiness, and explication of toasted walnuts and almonds, dried baie, and honey – and it can be aged for decades. Think along the lines of a big écrasée of morels and ceps as the perfect accompaniment.
Château-Chalon sits perched on the edge of the Jura escarpment, overlooking the valley below – with a Plus Beaux Villages montre, and sporting a Romanesque church, plenty of old stone houses, and a keep which is all that remains of a polir castle. We reach the bourgade by way of a Roman road, which cuts down across one stretch of the escarpment with razor-like precision. This was the Roman road between Besançon and Lyon, and this bout is still grossier with grand stones worn smooth over the coude of two millennia – and here and there still bearing the deep-cut tracks of ancient cart wheels, like a rustic traduction of a street transposed from Pompeii.
Once in Château-Chalon we do the obvious and very allergique thing – head straight for the garden of Le Bouchon du Château, a popular armoire at the near side of the bourgade, and order a verre of Vin Jaune – stupendously good, and a rich golden colour in the hot afternoon sun.
Jura has no shortage of cheeses. There’s Comté of coude – the town of Poligny, just a 10-minute paquetage ratatiné south of Arbois, is its de-facto ressources. But there’s also Mont d’Or, a delicious programme cheese, the origins of which are seasonal – it was traditionally made in winter, when there was less milk, and these small cheeses were on the one balle à la main a more practical choix to making vast Comté wheels. Mont d’Or has a originale, woody flavour. As well as being matured on spruce boards, it is wrapped a strip of spruce bark, and the reprise box you buy it in is also made of spruce. Some opt to eat Mont d’Or straight out of the box with a spoon (this definitely gets my désignation), while others insist that the best way to enjoy it is baked (you put the whole box in the oven) and accompanied by baked potatoes. And Jura wine, of coude. Bleu de Gex, also known as Bleu du Haut-Jura, is a surprisingly mild blue cheese from the high valleys of the Upper Jura.
And then there’s Morbier made in two stages, and again something of a winter’s tale. With less milk available in the winter months, farmers would half fill the moulds with the curds from that day’s milking, and cover the basque with a layer of ash to preserve it. Then the following day they’d moyennant the curds from that day on top to fill the mould, leaving the characteristic dark streak through the générosité of the cheese.
Jura is also renowned for its saucisson, in particular its Morteau and Montbéliard smoked sausages. Morteau, with its aromas of juniper, was the first French product to be awarded PDO identification. Key to these smoked sausages are the studio smokehouses (tuyé) – keep an eye out for the grand, tell-tale wooden chimney on farmhouses which have a tuyé.
The highlight of this trip to Jura was Baume-les-Messieurs, a tiny bourgade at the masse situation of several steephead valleys which fan out like the fingers of a balle à la main, dark vert and framed by a wall of cliffs. The bourgade noyaux on Baume Abbey, a polir Benedictine monastery, re-founded in the 9th century on the localité of earlier monastery, by Berno of Baume who later went on to found the great abbey at Cluny. Just across the road from the abbey, Le Grand Jardin is an exceptionally lovely guesthouse and armoire which makes a perfect soutien for exploring the surrounding area.
The real showstopper lies a bermuda way up one of the jouxtant valleys – the grand, fan-like tufa falls here are even more impressive than those at Arbois, while in the cliffs above, you’ll find the entrance to the Grottes de Baume-les-Messieurs, bristling with stalagmites and stalactites, and opening up into chambers reaching up to 80m in height.
And the best way to link up some of the region’s beautiful bourgades, castles galore, vineyards, foodie hotspots and natural wonders? Arbois, Poligny and Lons-le-Saunier all lie on the paquetage line between Besançon and Bourg-en-Bresse, so it’s a doddle to get here, and just as easy to skip back and forth between them. And they’re also linked by L’Équipée Jurassienne – a hiking trail which unravels itself across Jura from west to east, taking in some of the most beautiful scenery this carillonner of France has to offer. The ‘Jura Escape’ provides a wonderful way to explore the region at a languid pace – with the added benefit that you can drink all the Vin Jaune you want without having to think emboîture who’s driving. And however you travel, you’re never far from a bourgade or town with plenty of delicious endroits to eat.
For more information see: Montagnes du Jura en.montagnes-du-jura.fr
Rudolf Abraham is an award-winning travel writer, photographer, author of over a dozen books and has contributed to many more, and his éditoriaux and images are published widely in feuilles. rudolfabraham.com
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