Les Valseuses began not in a tasting room or a winery office, but in a borrowed cellar in Arbois. Antoine Le Court-Chedevergne, from Angers, and Julia Naar, from Rio de Janeiro, had found each other in São Paulo and eventually made their way back to France with a shared conviction: that wine should be honest, alive, and rooted in friendship rather than formula.
Backstory
Antoine spent years traveling and working — making wine in Australia, brewing beer in South America, apprenticing at cellars across France. His first vintage of Les Valseuses came in 2018, made at the domaine of Alice Bouvot in Arbois. In February 2019 the couple purchased an 18th-century winegrower's house in Les Planches-près-Arbois, a village of fewer than 100 people, with a grand vaulted cellar beneath it dating to around 1765. Their guesthouse, Casa Antolià, opened in August 2019. In autumn 2021 they began planting their own vines on the hillsides nearby.
The Region
Les Planches-près-Arbois sits at the heart of the Jura, a region of steep slopes, unusual soils, and a winemaking tradition dating back centuries. The Jura produces some of France's most distinctive whites and reds from varieties found nowhere else in the world: Savagnin, Poulsard, and Trousseau alongside Chardonnay.
Vineyards & Farming
Les Valseuses operates as a micro-négociant, sourcing grapes exclusively from certified organic, biodynamic, or in-conversion vineyards across France. Antoine and Julia travel to harvest with their partner growers personally, working with Poulsard, Chardonnay, Savagnin, and Trousseau from Jura, Riesling from Alsace, Molette from Bugey, and southern French varieties. No synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or chemical inputs enter the supply chain.
Winemaking
Fermentations rely entirely on native yeasts in the ancient stone cellar. Macerations are long and gentle, without pigeage or pumping over — just a single racking. Wines are bottled by hand with no additives, no fining, no filtration, and no added sulfites at any stage.
The Wines
Every cuvée at Les Valseuses is named after a piece of music that has meant something to Antoine and Julia — Serge Gainsbourg, Joy Division, Geraldo Azevedo, Francis Bebey, and others all appear across the label artwork created in collaboration with photographer Clément Deuve and Brazilian artist Clarisse Romeiro. The range spans skin-contact whites, light Poulsard-based reds, Carignan from the south, and blends that cross regional and varietal lines with equal ease.
