Not quite a forgotten area, Jura receives just a tiny part of the 89 million annual visitors to France. Therefore, in a world where practically no place seems pristine anymore, this little corner of eastern France genuinely does. It's a mosaic of vineyards, rolling hills, and farms, nestled between Burgundy and Switzerland. The soil climbs gradually into craggy outcrops and waterfalls along its eastern boundary, creating a scene that is at once pastoral and spectacular.

I visited Jura on the invitation of Neal Rosenthal, a wine importer and distributor headquartered in New York City, who took me there on a trip organized by his firm, Mad Rose Journeys. Rosenthal was among the first wine importers in the late 1970s to curate a collection of wines that spoke to a common aesthetic. He searched for vineyards in France and Italy that were owned by families and grown using organic or biodynamic methods. Rosenthal was on the hunt for wines that reflected the "terroir" (a French term for the characteristics of a certain region). While the idea is now commonplace, it was revolutionary at the time, at least in the United States. As time went on, he established Mad Rose Specialty Foods to import things like sun-dried tomatoes, flower-specific honeys, ancient-grain flour, and other artisanal items that reflected this philosophy. Through Mad Rose Journeys, he's closing the loop by facilitating visits to the producers and craftspeople he's sought out over the years, many of whom don't normally welcome tourists.
Never having visited Jura previously was a huge oversight on my part since the region produces some of France's finest wines. They are manifestations of a custom that has persisted over the course of centuries, undiluted by mass manufacturing or global trends. But for many years, hardly anyone outside the area purchased these wines, which is odd given that Beaune, the center of Burgundy, is barely an hour away by vehicle. World-class wines made from Burgundian grapes like chardonnay and pinot noir may be found in Jura for far lower prices than comparable Burgundy bottles.
As an added bonus, wines produced from Jura's native grapes (the ones commemorated with political graffiti and street names) may be very exceptional. That's in part because of how white wines are typically made, whereby the winemaker lets yeast grow on the wine's surface while it's aging in the barrel. Under a veil (or "sous voile") winemaking produces wines with a characteristic savory, salty, oxidized flavor.
Even though the typical response from the sommeliers he tried to sell to was something along the lines of "Sorry, buddy, these are just too dang odd," Rosenthal persisted as one of the first American importers to truly advocate Jura's wines in the mid-1990s. (It takes time to adjust to sous voile wines.)
When I visited Michel Gahier, a Jura vigneron whose wines Rosenthal imports, in the sleepy little town of Montigny-lès-Arsures, he reminisced about those simpler times. Gahier's long-term perspective made sense, given that he claimed his family had been in the area since 1525. Behind a plain wooden door on the main street (I use that term loosely; the town's population is 275), you'll find his little vineyard. A little room with stone walls and an ancient table and chairs awaited me to the left as soon as I stepped inside. A row of empty bottles littered the top of a low cabinet. A vintage advertisement for Absinthe Parisienne hung on one wall, depicting a roué with a pointed hat and ruffled collar reaching for the derriere of a lovely redhead in a plunging dress as she drinks absinthe. Bois donc, tu verras après" (roughly, "Drink it and you'll see") was the caption.