Historical

Antoine Jobard’s father François is as quiet as they come. He made top-rate Meursault for 50 years in a very understated way, starting work in 1957. However, tastings at the domaine have become a little more voluble since 2002 when son Antoine joined François, the label mentioning both names. In 2007 the design changed and the name has evolved to Domaine Antoine Jobard, Antoine having taken sole responsibility for vinifying from 2005.

Viticulture & Vinification

Though François Jobard never used herbicides, the vineyards were not certified as organic until 2019. In the cellar there have been a few changes without Antoine wishing to move too far from his father’s style. François Jobard wines were made with no settling out of the solids, a full two years in barrel, and then bottled with a reasonably heavy dose of sulphur to ensure their longevity at the expense of youthful charm. They could often have a slightly mentholated character which may have been due to a particular fining agent.

Antoine now racks before the next harvest and only some wines go back to barrel, the rest remaining in tank for the second winter. He bottles his wines a few months earlier than his father did, to avoid a second summer in barrel and reduce the need for high sulphur levels, while from 2014 they have been given a light filtration before bottling to enhance precision and freshness while reducing any lactic element.

Vineyards

The Jobard Meursault-Blagny and Poruzots are fine wines but are usually eclipsed by the very fine Genevrières, with its wealth of lemon-scented fruit along with the typical Jobard earthiness while the wine is young. It blossoms with age – if you guess a 15-year-old vintage when tasting a bottle in their cellars, it may well in fact be 25 or 30 years old. My favourite of all though is usually the Charmes which alas is very limited in production: a typical Burgundian inheritance story. Antoine’s great-grandfather had 16 ouvrées (two-thirds of a hectare) but it was divided in two between his grand-father and what became Domaine Jobard-Morey, then in two again between François and Charles Jobard, leaving just 4 ouvrées today.

Their small plot of Blagny Rouge – which always made a rather austere wine – has been pulled out and replanted with Chardonnay, so the domaine became entirely white until the purchase in 2019 of Pommard’s Domaine Mussy. This was once a rather marvellous domaine in the days of André Mussy himself but had fallen on hard times and the vineyards were in bad shape.  Antoine is setting out to make a lighter style of Pommard, perfumed and approachable, which seems a surprising approach for Pommard, though the first vintage (2019) was certainly attractive.