Emmanuel Houillon Overnoy (Maison Pierre Overnoy)

The wines from this cellar in Pupillin, a village of a few hundred people above Arbois in the Jura, are made by Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy. He has headed the domaine since 2001. The house name on the label is Maison Pierre Overnoy, and Pierre is still very much present, in the vines and at the tastings in the cellar, but he has not made the wine for over twenty years.

Almost everyone searches for "Pierre Overnoy". The bottles are traded as "Overnoy". Both are understandable, and neither is quite right, so it is worth saying plainly who does what. Pierre took the estate on in 1968. Manu, as everyone calls him, arrived for the 1989 harvest at the age of fourteen, and has been there ever since.

How Emmanuel Houillon came to Pierre Overnoy

It began with an uncle. "Pierre became a friend of my parents," Manu says, "but really it was thanks to my uncle Jean-Luc." Jean-Luc already loved natural wine in the 1970s, when very few people did, knew Pierre, and introduced the families. Manu started coming in the school holidays at the end of the 1980s to lend a hand.

What hooked him was not the wine itself. "I used to put my ear against the barrels while they were fermenting," he says. "For me it was magic. There was something magic about it when you are fifteen."

From 1990 to 1997 he studied in alternance, splitting his time between school in Beaune and Pierre's cellar: a year as an apprentice, two years for the CAP, two for the BEPA, two for the bac professionnel. Then he was taken on as an employee. Pierre's verdict, in his own words, was that Manu "tenait la route", that he was up to it.

Why Pierre Overnoy adopted Emmanuel Houillon

At the end of 2000 Pierre reached retirement age, and as Manu puts it, "administratively some things were changing too". Pierre told him it would be good if he wanted to take over. Manu formally took the estate on in 2001. Some sources date the handover to late 2000, which is when the conversation and the paperwork began, and both men describe it as a process rather than a single day.

To make it possible, Pierre adopted him. This is the part that gets told as a romantic flourish and is really a piece of practical succession planning. In Pierre's words, they "did an adoption system, so he became my adoptive son, so that he could take on the estate without economic constraint". A farm handed to an unrelated employee would have been taxed and priced as a sale. Adoption meant Manu could inherit the domaine instead of having to buy it, which is the only reason the wines still cost what they cost leaving the cellar.

The family part is not a fiction either. "Pierre is my adoptive father," Manu says. "He adopted me, and all my children are called Houillon-Overnoy as well, so he is grandad to the children. It is a very family bond, very particular compared to what usually exists. Since the age of fifteen I have lived with him, in inverted commas." He describes the two of them as having always been "un peu en osmose", slightly in osmosis. "He brought me a lot and I brought him a lot."

The vigne des filleuls: Overnoy vines planted in 1949

One parcel carries its own history. Pierre's grandmother at Le Vernois was godmother to one of his brothers and gave the family the land; it was planted in 1949 by his brothers, and later passed to Pierre by his godfather Maurice, because Pierre was his godson. Pierre calls it the vigne des filleuls, the godsons' vine. The ground was badly uneven, so when they broke it up for planting they pushed the earth about to flatten it.

The domaine runs to roughly six and a half hectares in and around Pupillin: two hectares each of Ploussard, Savagnin and Chardonnay, plus 30 ares of Trousseau planted in 2013. There is no Pinot Noir here.

Four grapes, three marls, and a cellar that holds its whites far longer than almost anyone else in the region. The detail below comes from Pierre and Manu themselves rather than from a merchant sheet.

Pupillin marl: which Overnoy grape grows on which soil

Pupillin is marl country, and the growers sort it by colour. Chardonnay goes on grey marl with limestone scree lying over it. Ploussard takes grey marl and blue marl. Savagnin is very happy on blue marl, and can also go into the red.

Pierre enjoys the fact that the geologists disagree with him about this. "We growers say blue marl," he says, "but in geology they say it is not blue, it is another grey." The vineyards have been worked on that vocabulary for generations regardless.

He can tell the three apart by leaf alone, and so can Manu: Chardonnay's leaf is deeply cut and toothed, Savagnin's is noticeably round, and Ploussard has, in Manu's phrase, "des sinus très très prononcés", very pronounced sinuses between the lobes.

Red, yellow, white: how to read an Overnoy bottle

The label never names the grape, so the domaine says it with the wax. Red wax is Ploussard, yellow wax is Savagnin, white wax is Chardonnay. The vintage sits on the small shield at the neck. A green wax exists for a Chardonnay and Savagnin blend, though it has not been released in a very long time.

How many bottles of Houillon-Overnoy exist

This is the number that explains everything about the secondary market. In a normal year the domaine makes 20,000 to 25,000 bottles in total. Manu breaks it down as roughly 8,000 to 10,000 bottles of red and 12,000 to 15,000 of white.

That is the whole world supply, in a good year, split across every importer, every restaurant and every private customer on earth.

And good years are not guaranteed. 2017, 2019 and 2021 were frost years. In 2021 the domaine harvested six hectolitres per hectare, against a Jura norm nearer forty to fifty. Manu's summary is blunt: "rien du tout", nothing at all. Across two of those years production fell to something like 15,000 to 17,000 bottles. He describes 2022 as "pas mal", not bad, and was cautiously hopeful about the year he was filmed in.

How long Houillon-Overnoy wines are aged

Longer than almost anyone in the Jura, and Manu is specific about it. "In white we do long élevage, on the Savagnin very, very long, aged a very long time in bottle too." Then he adds the consequence that nobody advertising a cellar ever mentions: "so we inevitably have loss, keeping the wine that long we get evaporation."

So the scarcity is not only a matter of six hectares and frost. Part of every vintage simply leaves through the wood before it is ever sold.

Harvest normally falls around the tenth of September, with the realistic window running from roughly the fifth to the twentieth.

The three Houillon-Overnoy wines we have

We have three of these bottles, and we are not selling any of them. Each has its own page so you can read about the wine properly.

Arbois Pupillin Ploussard 2023, the red, under red wax, from grey and blue marl. Arbois Pupillin Savagnin 2014, under yellow wax, from the longest élevage this cellar does. Arbois Pupillin Chardonnay 2020, under white wax, from grey marl with limestone scree over it, out of the warm vintage Manu singles out for its high degrees and its freshness.

The raffle runs over the next fourteen months, and the entry page always shows which bottle is up next.

In 1986 this cellar bottled a vintage with no sulphur at all. It was not the first wine ever made that way, but it became the one that thousands of growers measured themselves against, and the reason a small Jura village ended up shaping natural wine across the world.

Why Pierre Overnoy stopped using sulphur in 1986

Pierre is precise about the dates. "Completely natural, that is 86," he says. "In 85 we did one part natural and one part still with a little sulphur. But 86 was completely." Then the line that tells you what it felt like at the time: he did it "sans être sûr", without being sure.

The usual telling credits Jacques Néauport and, behind him, Jules Chauvet. Pierre's own account starts somewhere much closer to home. His family had always worked without sulphur, and he shared a cellar with his parents and his brother. He had done a stint in Beaune, and so he was the one adding a little to his wines.

What changed his mind was devatting day. "When we opened up, their pressed must smelled wonderful, full of aromas, and I was not happy with what I was doing. And then when you taste their wines against mine, I was not happy with what I had made. So that intrigued me a lot. And afterwards we were able to go completely without."

He was not converted by a theory. He was beaten by his own family, in the next room, doing it the old way.

How Overnoy changed natural wine in the Jura

Pierre has watched the consequences arrive. "There has been a fine development, particularly the young ones," he says. "A lot of young people have set up here farming without chemicals, and that is a pleasure."

He also has the clearest explanation we have heard of why the Jura tasted the way it used to. The region is tiny, and there was no other wine around it, so the wine was sold up into the mountains, to people who wanted it strong and sturdy. Even the reds were left oxidised. It sold perfectly well, which is exactly why nobody needed to build a reputation, and why Burgundians and Alsatians spent decades saying Jura wine was no good. "For a very long time it was an exaggerated oxidation," he says. Then growers began topping up the whites, quality climbed, and the reputation followed.

Climate change in the Jura, measured from 2 July

Ask Pierre about warming and he answers with a church calendar. Every reference point used to be a religious feast, and flowering was measured against 2 July, the Visitation. Harvest came about 100 days after flowering. If flowering had finished by 2 July and the grape was starting to swell, you were ahead and you were pleased.

He had just shown the camera grapes already well formed on 2 July. The shift, he says, is "des proportions complètement folles", of completely mad proportions. And then the observation that stays with you: yeast is an autumn fungus, and it is now being asked to work in summer. "Now we have no idea at all how it is going to go in the years that are coming." He calls the disruption of the climate the thing that worries him.

He is equally precise about what a great year actually needs. The ideal is drought sitting on top of water reserves. 1989 had it. 1990 was a second drought with less in reserve. 1991 froze, so there was no fruit, and he points out that a third dry year without reserves would not have made good wine even if there had been a crop.

Manu takes the same question grape by grape. The varieties that suffer most with warming are Ploussard, and then Chardonnay, because dry years give difficult fermentations. Savagnin copes. He points to 2020, where the degrees ran genuinely high and the wine still kept its freshness and its drinkability. "That is brilliant. If we managed that in 2020, maybe we can do it in the future." Then, more soberly: "Nobody can say, but there will be big changes in the century that is coming."

Overnoy prices, the secondary market and fake bottles

These wines leave the cellar at an ordinary price. What happens next has nothing to do with the people who made them, and both men find it difficult to talk about.

Manu has seen a vin de liqueur from the domaine on a restaurant list at around 1450 euros, close to 1500, for a wine that leaves here at about sixteen. "Those prices are exorbitant compared to what we do." Pierre calls the whole thing "un peu dramatique".

Then there is the part almost nobody writes about. There are bottles dated 1964 in circulation carrying Pierre's name. Pierre did not take over the estate until 1968, so they cannot be his. One turned up in Germany. A man in Paris rang him to say he had found Pierre's Chardonnay at 200 euros a bottle and thought it cheap, and Pierre asked him about the capsule. It was tin. The domaine has never used a tin capsule.

We have had one of these fakes in our hands. The 1964 bottle photographed on this page is a counterfeit, and we are holding it up next to Pierre himself. He was, as you might expect, entirely unbothered, and more interested in pointing out the tell.

His conclusion is the sentence that should be printed on every auction catalogue: in restaurants it is still our wine, but at auction it is not always our wine in the bottle.

Manu's objection goes wider than his own labels. "Money rots a lot of people," he says. "It is a race to make money off the backs of others, buy and resell. People speculate on wheat, on food, on poor countries. It is a disgrace." And on his own wines: "It is still only wine. We put a lot of emotion and love into it, but it does not really have a value. It has a sentimental value. When you open an old bottle you try to live again a moment from the past. There is no value, in reality. Money cannot do everything. You cannot buy everything."

What he would rather those buyers did is disarming. "I would almost tell them to come to the house and taste the wines here. It is better, it will cost them less, and we will have a good time."

How to win a bottle of Houillon-Overnoy

We have three bottles. We could price them at what the market would pay, and we are not going to, because doing that is the exact behaviour both men have spent this page objecting to.

So we are giving them away instead. Three bottles, drawn individually over the next fourteen months, on one page. Entry is free with any order. Full terms, the current bottle and the draw dates are all here:

Enter the Houillon-Overnoy raffle

Manu is right that the Jura is small. "Two thousand hectares, five grape varieties," he says. "It stays tiny. It is a little world treasure. It is very small."

Is it Pierre Overnoy or Houillon-Overnoy?

Both names are real. The house is Maison Pierre Overnoy, and Pierre took the estate on in 1968. The wine has been made by Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy, his adoptive son, since 2001. Most people search for Overnoy or Pierre Overnoy, which is why this page carries both, but the winemaker today is Manu.

Worth knowing: Maison Pierre Overnoy, run by Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy in Pupillin, is not the same estate as Domaine Overnoy, run by Pierre's nephew Guillaume Overnoy in the south of the Jura. Two different domaines, one family name.

Where is Pierre Overnoy's domaine?

Pupillin, a small village above Arbois in the Jura, eastern France. The domaine covers roughly six and a half hectares.

Pupillin is tiny, 248 inhabitants at the last count, and an unusually high share of them work in wine. The village has long called itself the world capital of Ploussard, and it is an authorised village mention on the Arbois appellation.

Other growers working the same slopes include Tony Bornard and Domaine de la Borde, along with Bruyere-Houillon, a domaine connected to Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy which was formerly part of Maison Pierre Overnoy before the two parted ways. We do not currently stock Bruyere-Houillon.

Do Houillon-Overnoy wines contain sulphur?

No sulphur goes in, and neither does anything else. Pierre split the 1985 vintage, part with a little sulphur and part without, and from 1986 the wines have been made with none at all.

Pierre is clear-eyed about what comes next, though. He has said that making a fully natural wine with no added SO2 is going to become extremely difficult, because of climate change. It is the subject that worries him most for winemakers in the Jura, and we have filmed him on it more than once: heat damage to Ploussard, and a ripening season that arrives earlier and earlier, something he has tracked year on year.

What grapes does Maison Pierre Overnoy grow?

Four. Two hectares each of Ploussard, Savagnin and Chardonnay, plus 30 ares of Trousseau planted in 2013. They do not grow Pinot Noir.

Chardonnay sits on grey marl with limestone scree over it, Ploussard on grey and blue marl, Savagnin on blue and sometimes red.

How do you tell the Overnoy bottles apart?

By the colour of the wax, because the label does not name the grape. Red wax is Ploussard, yellow wax is Savagnin, white wax is Chardonnay. The vintage is on the small shield at the neck. A green wax exists for a Chardonnay and Savagnin blend, but it has not been released in a very long time.

How many bottles of Houillon-Overnoy are made each year?

In a normal year, 20,000 to 25,000 bottles in total: roughly 8,000 to 10,000 red and 12,000 to 15,000 white. In the frost years of 2017, 2019 and 2021 it was far less, and 2021 gave six hectolitres per hectare, which is close to nothing.

That may sound like a reasonable quantity, but you will not easily find these bottles in a shop, if at all, without asking kindly to someone connected. The domaine is very highly allocated. Most of what leaves Pupillin goes to restaurants, or to collectors willing to pay a premium, even though the prices at the domaine itself are entirely fair. The gap between the cellar price and the resale price is the whole problem.

How long are Houillon-Overnoy wines aged?

Longer than almost anyone. The whites get a long élevage and the Savagnin a very long one, followed by a long period in bottle. A 2012 Chardonnay spent four years in foudre before bottling. A Savagnin Ouille 2006 spent eight years in barrel. There are no fixed rules, and Manu decides by tasting.

He is also honest about the cost of working that way: holding wine that long means losing some of it to evaporation.

Why is Pierre Overnoy wine so expensive, and are there fakes?

They are not expensive leaving the cellar. The prices people see come from scarcity and resale. Fakes are a real problem: bottles dated 1964 circulate under Pierre's name although he only took over in 1968, and he identified one by its tin capsule, which the domaine has never used. As he puts it, at auction it is not always their wine in the bottle.

Can I buy Houillon-Overnoy wine from you?

No. We do not sell them, and that is out of principle. Whilst we have filmed Pierre and Manu, we have never asked them for wine. When we do get a handful of bottles from a supplier, often having to buy a great deal of other wine to get just a few, we choose not to add fuel to the speculation, and give them away instead. Free to enter for anyone with any order, even an order for one very affordable bottle.

We do this because the wine world can feel a bit cliquey with rare bottles, and much of it is who you know. We want the every day wine drinker to have the opportunity to drink wines as rare as Maison Pierre Overnoy. You have that chance too. Enter the raffle here.