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David Dupasquier’s family has been farming the steep slopes of Jongieux for five generations. He works alongside his sister Véronique, and father Noel is still very much involved in the vineyard and the cellar.

The domain is located in the village of Aimavigne in a southwestern lobe of the Savoie, close to the Rhône Valley. The vines are rooted in limestone-rich clay, with the rows blanketing the steep, sun-drenched slopes of the commune.

Domaine Dupasquier is often described as traditional, as today’s methods and practices are unchanged from generations past. This continuity has largely been lost in so many parts of the world, so it’s remarkable to taste these wines built on decades of experience and savoir-faire.

Due to the elevation, David works the vineyards primarily by hand, with grapes hand-harvested and the best clusters selected. Plowing is done once per year for every other row, as David believes that the biodiversity this produces in the vineyard is critical for the quality of wines.

In the Savoie, wine is typically fermented with added yeasts and vinified quickly in stainless steel.

But the Dupasquiers have always fermented with native yeasts, and have never had to inoculate, even in the coldest years. The wines also mature for a long period in old barrels on fine lees until just before the next harvest, when they are bottled and aged for another 18 months before release.

This amount of care in an obscure mountain region of France speaks volumes about how the Dupasquiers make wine.

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Jean-Yves Peron is a young winemaker patiently reviving 100-year-old high-altitude vines in the French Alps region of Savoie.

Peron was born and raised in Savoie. After studying oenology in Bordeaux in the late 1990s, he trained with natural winemakers Thierry Allemand and Jean-Louis Grippat in the Rhône Valley and Bruno Schueller in Alsace—both of whom he considers mentors.

In 2004, he returned to his homeland to begin his own domain in the commune of Chevaline, where he acquired an estate of forgotten 115–130 year old pre-phylloxera Jacquere and Mondeuse vines that rise to between 350-500 metres in elevation.

The total 3.5 hectares of vines is a patchwork of several micro-parcels of Mondeuse and Jacquere, as well as Altesse and Roussanne varietals, rooted in rocky schist soil. The vines have been densely planted at 10,000/ha and are very low yielding.

In reverence to this ancient terroir, Peron farms following organic and biodynamic practices, but doesn’t see the need for certification. He approaches winemaking with a non-interventionist mindset, with no filtering and fining, using little to no sulphur, and only indigenous yeasts.