Jonathan grew up in Oceanside, California (North County San Diego), where his dad had a wine cellar and poured splashes for Jon starting at a young age.
As college approached, Jon knew that he wanted to do something in wine, but the movement on his 88-mile-an-hour fastball caught the attention of college scouts, and Northwestern offered him a scholarship to play baseball there.
As soon as he graduated, he found a harvest job in Napa at Beaulieu Vineyards, but a superior fired him on the crush pad when he caught him throwing a bunch of grapes at a fellow intern (more of a litmus test of B.V. than anything!).
He ended up at White Rock Vineyards, where brothers Chris and Michael allowed him to eat and throw as many grapes as he wanted (within reason) without docking his pay. Their father, Henri, a native Frenchman, encouraged Jon to look to France for his next winemaking chapter, and Jon enrolled in the CFPPA in Beaune, Burgundy’s trade wine school, in 2012, where he studied with the likes of Camille Lapierre, Alex Foillard and Yann Bertrand.
Stints at Domaine des Croix, Philippe Pacalet, Domaine de Montille, and Domaine Matrot followed; and in 2016 he had the chance to purchase a little fruit from the Beaujolais and Pommard, which would become Amour Vache and Reve Americain, his two original cuvees.
Chris Santini of Santini Collective (a half-French ex-pat from Philly who has been an integral part of Kermit Lynch’s Beaune office for years) invited him into mis micro-collective cellar in Auxey-Duresses, where he also shared space with Domaine Dandelion for their first harvest.
Jon named his label Vin Noé - vin is wine in French, plus his maternal grandmother’s family name, Noé, which disappeared with her generation, because she was one of three sisters.
He worked with a local artist, Elise Pavelot (the daughter of Savigny-les-Beaune producer Huges Pavelot) to create his block print labels that actually originate as a wooden stamps that Elise carves out.
In 2021, Jon met winemaker Jean-Jacques Morel (J.J.) at a dinner party. By the end of dinner, J.J. felt such an organically intimate connection with Jon that he invited him to take over his vines and cellar space. J.J. had been wanting to retire, and he had suddenly found his torchbearer. Jon of course agreed.
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He has three parcels of Chardonnay that total .8 hectares high up on the ridge of Puligny that borders Saint-Aubin. The historic cellar is built into the hillside where the steepest parcel, “Chateniere,” grows. The wines literally age under the vines.
J.J. was an original proponent of natural wines before they were even described that way. He was known for not ploughing his vineyards (a rarity in Burgundy), and his vines produce super low yields.
Now, Jon does plough by horse (although he envisions stopping ploughing earlier to encourage the soils to retain rain water as harvest approaches), and he sprays by hand. He has also planted a new parcel of Pinot Noir (60%), Trousseau (20%), Pinot Gris (10%), and a mix of Aligoté, Gamay, and Chardonnay (that totals 10%) that will come online in 2025. He named it Isaac, after his son, and this vineyard will be dedicated to his cuvée Isaac.
He still sources from a variety of growers that can vary yearly. In 2023, his “Amour Vache” is made up of two-thirds Gamay from Aurelie et Fabien Romany in Bully, and one-third Aligoté from Romain Chapuis in Bouzeron. While his “Rêve Américain” still comes from his same source in Pommard (where Joachim Skyaasen also sources from).
He makes “Totem” from an illegal Chenin Blanc parcel in Meursault (shhhh!) hidden by a border of Aligoté, and he also recently purchased a 30-ares parcel of Aligoté nearby.
His ‘23 “Alibi” is a blend of Aligoté and Pinot Blanc from a vineyard behind Nuits-Saint-Georges. He also made an Alsace Riesling in 2023 from a vineyard that his friend, Yannick Meckert, also works with in Dombach.
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His “Pattaya” is Chardonnay from the Mâcon that ages in neutral barrels. It’s wonderfully reductive on the nose with oxidative weight on the palate (a testament to the individual lives of each barrel).
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His three single-parcel Pulignys from the parcels he now farms (taken over from J.J. Morel) are “Superposition” (from his “Trezin” parcel on top of the Puligny ridge); “Shadows” (from his north-facing “La Combe” parcel in the flatter land across the road from his cellar); and “Chateniere” - named after the parcel that runs steeply up the hill to the top of the ridge above his winery.
He calls his ferment style the Ardeche style, and cites Daniel Sage as his biggest influence - semi whole cluster, semi direct-press ferments like a steeping tea, where the whole clusters are immersed in the pressed juice.
He never destems his whites, and also uses skin contact with his whites where he fancies, and he likes long, slow press cycles (like 24 hours) with his Fichet basket press.
He’s a patient, pensive, introspective dude who is thoughtfully adaptive (maybe it’s the California in him, or the path of an ex-pat living in France for so long). He plays around with what the vintage gives him every year - like adding Aligoté to really ripe Gamay (Amour Vache), extending the ageing of his Chateniere to two years (we’ve still never seen a bottle in California!), and playing with criss-crossing lees to perpetuate healthy ferments with healthy lees (like racking his ‘23 Chenin with Riesling lees!). His humid, under-vineyard cellar is ideal for ageing, and he seldom tops up (he also doesn’t like to open bungs).
