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