i Vicini Favorita White 2019

i Vicini Favorita Blanc 2019,

Jean-Yves Peron

Near Lake Annecy, in Chevaline, Jean-Yves Péron combines committed viticulture and merchant winemaking (particularly in Northern Italy), both with a focus on nature. His Mondeuse reds are magnificent, as are his whites made from old local grape varieties—Jacquère, Altesse, Bergeron, and Persan. He lives in Chevaline, but his current vineyard, three hectares of which have been biodynamic since the beginning, is divided between Conflans, near Albertville, and Fréterive, a little further downstream in the Isère Valley. Savoyard wine has long suffered from a somewhat flimsy image, not taken seriously enough. Yet, what treasures are produced by its varied soils and numerous old grape varieties! Jean-Yves Péron embodies the rebirth of this beautiful vineyard.
Initially destined for a career in biochemistry, Jean-Yves quickly fell in love with the vine and trained as an oenologist in Bordeaux. He learned his trade as a winemaker with Thierry Allemand in Cornas, then with Bruno Schueller in Alsace, before spending some time in New Zealand and the United States. His trading business, which he began in 2011, allows him to buy the harvest from organic winemakers near his home and in Italy: for him, it gives a new dimension to his work as a winemaker, allowing him to multiply the terroirs and deepen his experiences in winemaking and aging.
Jean-Yves Péron's winemaking follows the principles of minimal intervention. On narrow and steep surfaces, his mountain vines receive no synthetic products, Jean-Yves preferring horsetail and nettle manure. The surrounding vegetation is extremely rich: it protects the vines and helps strengthen them. The soils are grassed, mown, and reworked with a pickaxe and winch. The harvest is entirely manual. Once vatted in whole bunches, the grapes, both red and white, undergo a semi-carbonic maceration that allows the extraction of fresh fruit aromas. This maceration time varies between five days and nine weeks depending on the vintage. The day before or two days before pressing, Jean-Yves performs foot-treading directly in the vat. After this fermentation, the musts are sent to barrels for aging on lees for twelve months in five hundred liter barrels of two or three wines (to limit the oaky sensation), followed by blending and resting in the vat. No sulfites are added, or as little as possible, and the wines are not fined or filtered.
In 2017, Jean-Yves Péron decided to expand his range by collecting organic grapes in the heart of Piedmont, Italy. The result was several vintages, including this 100% Favorita white, a local variety so close to Vermentino (Rolle in France) that the two grape varieties are considered identical. We therefore have a sort of non-maritime Vermentino, with the signature of a more continental terroir and climate. The wine is the result of a two-week skin maceration. It offers the characteristics of the grape variety: a beautiful acidic base, tension, due to the plot and the terroir. It is tasty, semi-aromatic in the manner of certain Alsatian grape varieties: perfumed without being exotic, with a minerality of young vines grown on a semi-slope, at the top of a small ridge which allows for a nice maturity.