I love the Jura.

This tucked away, off the grid wine region on the eastern border of France just touches me at my very core.

Truly delicious and unique wines that are at once both foreign and familiar. Indigenous grapes like Trousseau, Poulsard and Savagnin that call only the Jura home. Wines like Vin Jaune that make you shake your head with disbelief, and, in the hands of a few masters, nod and sigh with satisfaction.

You either love the Jura or you don’t. There are the curious who try but don’t get it. There are those that fall hard at first taste. I’m certainly one of the seriously smitten.

I don’t love Jura wine because its unusual, but because it’s wonderful. But unique and interesting it most certainly is.

The Jura is a great connector—to the culture of this place, to the traditional approaches to winemaking that have rolled on through the centuries, to unique grapes and to a taste of terroir like none other.

But more importantly to people, in a unique way that few of my other favorite wine regions do. And it has driven me to blog more about this area and a few rock star producers than any other wine region I’ve written about.

I credit my friend and Jura maven, Sophie Barrett from Chambers Street Wines who, for over three years, has been nudging me and has given me bottle after bottle, story after story to take home and try. She started me on this path. Thanks Sophie!

Friendships have blossomed over a love of this wine. With other wine shop owners, like Christy Frank at Frankly Wines, Dan Weber at Flatiron Wines, importers and distributors like Zev Rovine, Camille Riviere and Guilhaume Gerard, great wine lovers like June Winters and the ceaseless crusader for natural wine and author, Alice Feiring.

Not to mention the thousands who have read my Jura posts, friends who for three years now have celebrated the ‘Summer of Jura Reds’ on my rooftop. And to my son Asa, with whom, every year in Tulum, I crack a bottle of Tissot Trousseau, with our feet in the sand of the Mexican Caribbean.

Now enter Wink Lorch to this Jura ecosystem!

Wink, a veteran wine writer, penultimate wine educator and a great friend.

We have traveled and fallen hard together for the wines of Carso, Fulvio Bressan in Friuli and many producers in Etna. But we connect the most over the Jura. Wink is truly an expert of this area. She is the Yoda of Jura communications.

After some prodding and much cajoling, and with the support of a worldwide community of Jura wine lovers, Wink is writing ‘the’ book on the Jura—wine, food and the place itself.

As a friend this week said: “The Jura needs a book and Wink is the person to write it!”

I couldn’t agree more!

She has the support of my wine community here in New York, my blog readers. I am positive that the Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds will not only be successful, but will coalesce the worldwide community of Jura lovers around this project. The power of the web, crowdsourced funding and common passions combined!

Check out the Kickstarter project HERE!

There are a number of cool incentives to support this book on the Kickstarter page.

But honestly, support it because the world needs a book in English on this really special place, replete with unusual tastes that define the terroir like few other regions I’ve experienced.

And support it because I believe that Wink is the perfect person to write it with a rare blend of deep knowledge and honest humility.

And support it because it will bind the community together and gather in one place a treasure trove of information wrapped in an experienced storyteller’s words.

I’m sipping my second glass of Stephane Tissot’s La Mailloche 2010 from the Jura as I write this post. Chardonnay never had a more unique expression of place.

I’m convinced that those who learn about this region through this project will not only help to aggregate knowledge of the wine region and join the community of enthusiasts, but also just learn to love Jura wine.

It’s truly a gift.