Region & History

In November 1248, the southern flank of Mont Granier broke away in a single night. Over twenty-three square kilometers vanished beneath rock and rubble, around a thousand people died, and the parish of Saint-André was wiped off the map. What remained was a field of debris made of pale limestone at the foot of the mountain. It was on this very ground that winegrowers from Chambéry planted their vines in the eighteenth century. Apremont and Abymes, two of Savoie's best-known wines, still carry the disaster in their names to this day. Abymes comes from abîmes, meaning the abysses.

Even before that, monks had kept winegrowing alive. Cistercians from the Abbey of Hautecombe on Lac du Bourget began cultivating vines from the eleventh century onward, selling the wine to fund the church and poor relief. From the thirteenth century, the counts and later dukes of Savoy took an active interest themselves. They identified the best sites along the shore of Lake Geneva, in Seyssel, in Chautagne, and in the Cluse de Chambéry, and helped build their reputation. Wine was prestige before it was pleasure.

By 1768, vines covered nine thousand hectares of Savoyard soil. Then came the railway. It brought cheap, more robust wine from southern France into the Alpine valleys. The thin, acid-driven wines from lesser sites could barely compete, and many of them were abandoned even before any vine disease struck. In 1860, Savoyards voted in a referendum with over ninety-nine percent in favor of joining France; until then, the duchy had belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. Almost two decades later, phylloxera dealt the final blow to the already weakened wine country: it reached Savoie in 1877, and by 1885, fifty-five of sixty-five wine-growing communes were already affected.

Rebuilding meant grubbing up, grafting onto American rootstock, starting over. In 1954, the wine was granted VDQS status, a stepping stone to the highest classification. On September 4, 1973, "Vin de Savoie" was elevated to a full Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée. Since then, controls have been strict: sixteen geographic designations such as Chignin, Arbin, or Ayze may only carry their village name if soil, grape variety, and yield all align. Today, around five hundred estates cultivate a good two thousand hectares between Lake Geneva and the Bauges. That's a fraction of what existed in 1768, but with a reputation it never had back then.