Red Lace & Anarchy: Why Overnoy’s 2018 Pupillin is the Quiet Riot Your Cellar Needs

This bottle purrs, bares a grin, and dares you to call its bluff. Domaine Overnoy’s Arbois Pupillin 2018 is not “another Jura curiosity.” It’s a red-threaded telegram from a hillside that believes in pleasure first and paperwork never. I opened it, and the room changed temperature—like a door to some ivy-draped back room swung open and the real party started.

Lantern In The Glass

Lift it. Translucent garnet, the color of crushed rose petals pressed into silk. It shimmers—alive, not lacquered—throwing a halo at the rim like a lit match in a cathedral. The scent rises before your nose gets there: wild strawberry and tart pomegranate, cranberry skins, pink peppercorn, redcurrant leaf, rosehip tea cooling in a porcelain cup. Then the Jura tells on itself—wet stone after rain, a whisper of sweet spice, a woodland hum that reads like moss and memory. If aromas had texture, this is gossamer with a hidden wire.

Mouthfeel Of A Trouble Maker

Sip and it’s all movement—quick, feline, precise. The 2018 warmth gifts flesh to the fruit, but the wine dodges heaviness the way a satyr dodges blame. Acidity is tensile and vertical; it lifts everything like a stage rig. Tannins? Think red lace, not chainmail—fine, powdery, insinuating. Flavors swing from just-picked alpine strawberry to blood orange pith, from sour cherry to a saline flicker that licks your lips and dares you to skip dessert. Mid-palate, a savory line appears—dried thyme, rose stem, a ghost of smoked tea—before the finish glides on and on, clean as a blade, faintly saline, slightly bitter in the best Italian-apertivo way. Your next bite of anything will taste better because of it. That’s power.

Why This Hill Matters

Pupillin calls itself the world capital of Ploussard (yes, that pale, mercurial, heartbreak-beautiful red the locals sometimes spell Poulsard). Overnoy is the name that turned this grape from a village handshake into a pilgrimage. Farming here isn’t a cosplay of “natural”—it’s the real, stubborn kind: old vines, low intervention, patient élevage, and a near-religious devotion to letting the place speak. 2018 was generous in Jura—sun with a pulse—so the wine shows more gliding fruit than in austere years, but the house’s signature restraint keeps it precise. This is what happens when a tiny place refuses to perform for outsiders and doubles down on its own dialect. The result is a bottle that tastes like a postcard from the slope, written in red ink.

Eat Like You Mean It

Serve at 54–58°F (12–14°C) in big-bowled Burgundy stems. Give it a gentle, 15–20 minute air—no hard decant; you’re coaxing, not cross-examining. Pairings? Roast chicken with morels and crème fraîche. Duck breast with cherry and five-spice. Charcuterie you’d text your lawyer about. A mushroom risotto slicked with brown butter and thyme. And yes, Comté (18–24 months) because this is Jura and we’re civilized. If you insist on seafood, make it tuna crudo with olive oil and pink pepper—lean, mineral, and the wine will flirt back.

The Cult Math You Already Know

Let’s talk reality: Overnoy is scarce. Allocations are the stuff of whispered favors and outstanding karma. Critics? When they catch a bottle, praise reads like a confession. But scores aren’t the point—the market has already decided this is capital-A Allocation Wine. 2018 is in a gorgeous early window now; structure suggests a drinking arc of 7–12 years if stored cool and dark, with a sweet spot where the fruit folds into tea, spice, and that haunting forest-floor after-image. Buy two: one for now when the fruit is still dancing on the table, one for later when it hums bass.

Final Pronouncement

I’m Dionysus, not your financial advisor, but I’ll wager this: you’ll regret the bottles you didn’t buy more than the ones you did. Overnoy’s 2018 Arbois Pupillin is a quiet riot, a love letter written in red lace from a hill that doesn’t care what’s fashionable. Blink and the last case is gone to someone less polite. Your move.