He pursued a professional career in jazz. He paid the bills with highway maintenance. Neither one resolved into a life.

In 2016, Mottet returned to Arbois and began apprenticing with some of the Jura's finest producers: Crédoz, Pelican, Touraize, Renardière. He absorbed four domaines' worth of technique in two years, then founded his own in 2017. He named it Notes Bleues — blue notes, the bent pitches in jazz that exist between the standard tones, neither major nor minor, conveying feeling through imprecision.

His first parcel was 1.6 hectares of old-vine Chardonnay called "Les Nouvelles," purchased from Stéphane Tissot, one of the Jura's most respected names. Mottet now farms 6.5 hectares and has no plans to grow beyond that. The vines are mostly seventy to eighty years old, rooted in gray marls, limestone-rich gravels, and iridescent marls — soils that shift color depending on the light and the moisture, unstable and alive.

His cellar approach splits cleanly by color. Reds are bottled young, eight to ten months in stainless steel, preserving the snap and immediacy of Jura Pinot Noir and Trousseau. Whites age for two years or more in used Burgundy barrels, developing the nutty, oxidative edge that defines the region.

He takes from Tissot the belief in single-parcel expression. From Jean-Michel Petit, biodynamic principles. From jazz, the willingness to improvise — to try hybrid grape varieties for climate adaptation, to release a cuvée that doesn't follow the pattern.

The marls catch the light differently every hour. The blue notes bend, and hold.