The Great White Day 2019

The Great White Day 2019,

Jean-Yves Peron

Near Lake Annecy, in Chevaline, Jean-Yves Péron skillfully combines committed viticulture and merchant winemaking, both with a focus on nature. Savoyard wine has long suffered from a somewhat flimsy image, not taken seriously enough. Yet, what treasures its varied soils and numerous ancient grape varieties produce! Jean-Yves embodies the renaissance of this beautiful vineyard. His Mondeuse reds are magnificent, as are his whites made from ancient local grape varieties—Jacquère, Altesse, Bergeron, and Persan—no less so.
Initially destined for a career in biochemistry, he quickly became drawn to the vine and trained as an oenologist in Bordeaux. His current vineyard, three hectares of which have been biodynamic since the beginning, is divided between Conflans, near Albertville, and Fréterive, a little further down in the Isère Valley. 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, but also in Northern Italy: for him, it is a new dimension to his work as a winemaker, allowing him to multiply the terroirs and deepen his experiences in winemaking and aging.
On narrow and steep surfaces, his mountain vines receive no synthetic products, Jean-Yves preferring horsetail and nettle manure. The surrounding vegetation is very rich: it protects the vines and helps to strengthen them. The soils are grassed, mown, and reworked with a pickaxe and winch. The harvest is entirely manual. Jean-Yves Péron's winemaking adheres to the principles of minimal intervention. On narrow, steep surfaces, his mountain vines are not treated with any synthetic products; Jean-Yves prefers horsetail and nettle manure. The surrounding vegetation is very 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 process that extracts 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 transferred 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. This cuvée is produced entirely from Jean-Yves's Altesse plot, with three to four months of skin maceration. The wine is aged for one year in three hundred liter barrels. It is a magnificent macerated white, "polyphonic," a distinguished orange with a layered structure. It will be wonderful for any occasion.