Savoie

A vineyard in dotted lines, not a ribbon

Unlike Burgundy or the Loire Valley, whose vineyards unfold in a continuous belt, wine-growing Savoie presents itself as a mosaic of disjointed pockets, clinging to the first foothills of the alpine massif. The vineyard stretches, per INAO's own product page, "in an arc along the foothills of the alpine massif, from Thonon-les-Bains in the north to west of Albertville in the south", across fifty-three communes of Savoie and Haute-Savoie, plus two communes of the Ain and one of the Isère. Between these pockets, vines give way to other crops, to lakes — Léman, Bourget, Annecy — and above all to the mountain itself, which closes in the landscape at every bend in the road. This discontinuity is no geographical accident: it is the direct consequence of a glacial history that shaped, plot by plot, the only sites where vines find soil that suits them.

Scree and moraine, not a uniform terroir

The Savoie vineyard's real subject is therefore not primarily a grape, but a type of soil: the limestone scree and moraine left behind as alpine glaciers retreated, some twenty thousand years ago. The most spectacular example is also the most recent on a geological timescale: the collapse of part of Mont Granier in 1248 spread mud and limestone rock over some thirty square kilometres at its foot, above the Chambéry valley — and it is precisely on that debris that the vines of Abymes and Apremont grow today, two of the best-known geographic denominations of the Vin de Savoie appellation. Elsewhere, at Marestel, on the heights of Jongieux, or at Frangy, similar clay-limestone soils, on well-exposed slopes, carry the altesse variety. The logic holds constant from one site to the next: poor, free-draining ground, inherited from the glaciers, on a slope that best captures an alpine sunshine otherwise limited by altitude and the surrounding relief.

An encépagement found almost nowhere else

This constrained geography produced, over the centuries, a rare singularity of variety: jacquère, the region's most widely planted white, probably descended from gouais blanc per published genetic analysis; altesse, locally called "roussette", which eventually lent its name to the Roussette de Savoie appellation where it reigns alone; mondeuse noire, whose parentage with mondeuse blanche and tressot VIVC confirms, and which turns out, through its mother mondeuse blanche, to be the genealogical half-sister of Rhône syrah. To these genuinely Savoyard varieties are added, more discreetly, chardonnay and pinot noir — Burgundian borrowings that remind us Savoie, without being Burgundian in relief or in style, shares with its neighbour two varieties grown here on different soils under a different climate.

Three appellations, one same logic of fragmentation

Three appellations d'origine contrôlée share most of Savoie's output, each reflecting in its own way this logic of dispersal. Vin de Savoie, the broadest regional appellation, an appellation d'origine contrôlée since the decree of 4 September 1973, can have its name followed by no fewer than sixteen different geographic denominations — Abymes, Apremont, Arbin, Ayze, Chautagne, Chignin, Chignin-Bergeron, Crépy, Cruet, Jongieux, Marignan, Marin, Montmélian, Ripaille, Saint-Jean-de-la-Porte, Saint-Jeoire-Prieuré — each with its own encépagement and its own rules: jacquère at Apremont and Abymes, mondeuse noire exclusive at Arbin and Saint-Jean-de-la-Porte, gringet exclusive at Ayze, roussanne at Chignin-Bergeron, chasselas at Crépy, Marignan, Marin and Ripaille. Roussette de Savoie, for its part, knows only one variety, altesse, expressed across four named sites that have existed for centuries — Frangy, Marestel, Monterminod, Monthoux. Seyssel, finally, the oldest of the three appellations, recognised as early as 1942 on vines attested since 1145, nestles on both sides of the Rhône, between the Ain and Haute-Savoie, on twin communes the river separates but eight centuries of shared winegrowing bring back together.