Jean Bouteille

Jean-Baptiste Courdesses is a French winemaker who established Jean Bouteille in Basket Range in 2019, after years spent learning from some of the finest producers and cellars across France, Austria, Italy, Japan and Australia.

His formation spans the classical and the unconventional in equal measure. A viticulture degree from Bordeaux grounded him in the precision and rigour that underpins the French winemaking tradition. What followed was a decade of working across some of the world's most defining wine regions and beyond: harvests in Austria's Kamptal, Burgundy, Savoie and Barbaresco; a season inside an organic sake brewery in Japan where the rice was grown on site and fermentation was surrendered entirely to wild cultures; and vintages alongside some of the most considered winemakers in Tasmania and the Adelaide Hills. Few winemakers working in Australia have drawn from a formation this wide, or chosen their place with more deliberation. Fewer still have brought that education to bear with the clarity of a single guiding principle: that the finest expression of a place comes not from what is added, but from what is withheld.

He approaches the cellar with equal parts restraint and precision, using the right modern equipment to control what can be controlled, and leaving the rest to the fruit, the ferment and time. He came to Basket Range in 2017 and knew immediately where he was meant to be. The wines he makes here carry the depth of every experience and every person who has shaped him along the way.