This is one of my favorite white wines that nobody has ever heard of.  Just thinking about the charmingly old-fashioned label spawns waves of good thoughts.   

Savoie, located on the French side of the Swiss border, and nestled in the Alps, is nearly as large as Bordeaux, yet produces only one-fiftieth as much wine.  The majority of wine here is made from the Jacquère grape, and is crisp and refreshing: like an alpine stream.  This is not one of those!   Roussette (sometimes called Altesse) is a less-common, but more prized variety, producing wines that are richer and more complex, yet still refreshing and reflective of their alpine environment.   

When Pierre Boniface took over Les Rocailles from his father they made one wine (Apremont, from Jacquére grapes) from just under 20 acres of vineyards.   Pierre now makes nine different wines, has  greatly improved the facilities by adding stainless steel fermentation tanks to capture the purity of fruit, and has increased his vineyard holding ten times over.     He makes about 6,000 cases of Roussette de Savoie from just over 22 acres of vines.   Eighty percent of his wines are sold within Savoie, and a further ten percent throughout the rest of France.  This leaves a measly 600 cases of his Roussette for the entire rest of the world! 

This wine has a perfect combination of richness, fruit, and acidity, and a wonderful texture to boot.  It’s a really, really, pretty wine.   It’s also very flexible with food: the locals drink it with veal and pork (wild boar, actually) and it does wonderfully with Reblochon and Tomme de Savoie (the two most famous local cheeses).  I also love this wine with just about any roast root vegetable.  This is the most age worthy of the whites this month, and will last well into 2012, but I have a lot of trouble saving wines that taste this good now.

This is  a selection from my Extraordinary Wine Club, where members recieve wine and information and have a unique forum to discuss what they’re drinking online.  To learn more, or check out other selections click here

This is nothing short of thrilling Champagne, as is everything produced by this stunning, and totally off-the-radar producer in the exceptional Côte de Blancs cru of Vertus. Veuve Fourny & Fils was founded in the 1930’s as Champagne Albert Fourny, based around 8.5 hectares of vineyards, all in Vertus, that had been owned and managed by the family since 1865. In the 1950’s, when Albert passed away, the house was renamed Veuve Fourny. Since 1993, Albert’s grandsons Charles Henry and Emmanuel have been in charge.

The house owns 8.5 hectares of vineyards, and purchases fruit from another 4 hectares, which are for all intents and purposes controlled by them. This makes them a grower-producer in all but name, and their approach is much more that of a grower than of a negociant. All of the grapes in their wines come from Vertus, and they believe that that is one of the purposes of the house to produce wines that reflect the terroir of Vertus (this is a very unusual attitude in Champagne). Only the Cuvées (the light, first pressing of the grapes) are used for their base wines, which are fermented and aged in a combination of temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks and oak barrels. After blending, bottling and secondary fermentation, the wines stay in the cellars for a minimum of 3 years before disgorgement (the minimum time for NV Champagne is 18 months).

Grande Reserve Brut is a blend of three vintages, and is made from roughly 20% Pinot Noir and 80% Chardonnay with about 40% of the blend coming from reserve wines. 10% of the base wine was aged in barrel. This wine has a gorgeous, tiny, even bead, with fresh, intriguing nose, and a rich, elegant mouth feel. It’s really exactly what I want in a glass of Champagne. This Champagne is a wonderful candidate for ageing, and will continue to get more complex through 2012, but again, it’s awfully good now, so I will have a hard time waiting.

The food to eat with this wine, is, well, just about anything. But as there is a bit of delicacy to this style, I wouldn’t have this with a steak. This is my favorite new (to me) Champagne that I have tried this year.

This is one of the wines from the December shipment of my Extraordinary Wine Club.  To see what that’s all about, click here.