Domaine Chevallier Bernard 2025 Savoie Jongieux

In southeast France tucked next to the Alps and bordering Italy and Switzerland is the wild, picturesque region known as the Savoie.  The skiing town of Chamonix is in the Savoie and so is the gorgeous Lake Annecy.

Famous for its Raclette and other alpine cheeses, Savoie is also a producer of vibrant, minerally white wines and lighter-bodied reds grown largely in the foothills of the Alps.  Grapes like Jacquére, Altesse and Mondeuse, unfamiliar to most of us in California, are the foundational wines of the region and they are bright, fresh-tasting and very welcome.

Those of you who discovered the 2024 vintage of the irresistible, fresh-tasting dry Alpine white wine—and there were a lot of you because it was February’s Wine of the Month—will be thrilled once again with the latest vintage which has the same snowy mountain minerality in its aroma and flavor.  Yes, there is the familiar and pleasant minerally fruit and bracing acidity you expect from Jacquere grown in the shadow of the Alps, but what makes Chavallier Bernard’s Savoie blanc so good is its fresh-tasting likability.  The lower alcohol is a bonus.