Jean-Yves Peron
VISIT IMPORTER'S WEBSITE
Country of Origin: France
Location: Chignin, Savoie
People: Jean-Yves Peron, Owner & Winemaker
Viticulture: Practicing Organic
Items
Jean-Yves Péron is a young artisan patiently reviving ancient, almost forgotten vineyards in the French Alps. From his first vintage in 2004, his delicious, radically natural wines have redefined the Savoie’s potential.
His cellar, containing about 18 barrels, is in the basement of his family farmhouse, near Lake Annecy, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Thirty minutes south, behind the medieval city of Conflans (Albertville), his vines perch above a glacial valley at nearly 1400 feet.
He works with multiple steeply terraced micro-parcels (2 hectares total) of 115-30 year old Jacqueres and Mondeuse vines, planted to friable mica-schist soils; his oldest parcels were planted in 1893 and have not seen phylloxera. Starting in 2005, he has worked with new plantings of Persan (a vanishing red varietal once considered the finest of the region in the 19th century) and white Altesse (or Roussette, often identified as the Hungarian Furmint). The vines are high-density (10,000/hectare), single-staked gobelet, very low to the ground and very low-yielding; their uniform southern exposure gives them the sun’s full benefit.