Sylvain Messager is a micro-vigneron based in village of Buffard, near Mouchard in the Jura-adjacent sector of the Doubs department. He began producing extremely small quantities of wine in 2021, while working for Cramans maestro Etienne Thiebaud, for whom he worked six years, from 2018 until the end of 2024. Messager began selling his wines only in 2025.
Today Messager farms 2ha of vineyards spread throughout Byan-sur-Doubs, Champagne-sur-Doubes, Villette-lès-Arbois, and Buffard. Most are old, co-planted parcels, often including portions of old hybrids. He vinifies at his home cellar in Buffard, an old farmhouse in mid-renovation. In what you might call a sign of the times, his winemaking today is influenced by certain setbacks he experienced in his early vintages: 2023’s complicated fermentations, followed by frost and hail in 2024. His direct-press chardonnay and two reds (a pinot-gamay and a majority trousseau red blend) of 2025 were sulfited at 2g/HL, while he refrained from sulfiting a direct-press savagnin and a lightly-macerated chardonnay-seyve villard blend called “A Belot.”
I first tasted Messager’s wines at a salon held at Domaine des Cavarodes in March, having briefly met the vigneron before during a visit to the same estate a few years earlier. Impressed by the soon-to-be-bottled “A Belot,” I returned in April to purchase a few cases for La Cave du Centre.
The following interview was conducted on April 15th, 2026. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Where do you come from?
I’m from Nancy. But I moved a lot. My parents moved a lot. I was in the area, in the doubs, at pontarlier. Then I was living in Besançon. Then I started working in vineyards in Corsica, where we lived in a truck.
Where in Corsica?
Domaine Capicorsine. It’s above Porto Vecchio. It wasn’t at all natural wine or anything. It was somebody who worked for the cave coop.
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