Le Vins de Belema, "Imago" 2021

Savoie, France. 100% Gringet, direct pressed and fermented in a mix of sandstone amphora and terracotta eggs. Aged for one year. Unfined, unfiltered with a touch of SO2. 

Up in the French Alps, halfway between the Geneva airport and the famed skiing slopes of Chamonix, you can find the peaceable village of Ayse. In the distance on a clear day you can see the snowcapped peak of Mont Blanc; more locally, the hamlet’s houses find themselves at the base of another peak, Mont Môle, whose foothills here are draped in the vines of this village’s specialty: Gringet. This is where Dominique Belluard saved the obscure grape variety from oblivion and put it on the world’s wine map; Gringet communicates the Ayse as well as any grape does its home ‘terroir’ in the world. He gave us the grape’s greatest ever expression from his old-vine fruit painstakingly biodynamically cultivated on the vertiginous hillsides of the Ayse’s place in the upper Arve River Valley, what is more broadly called the Haut-Savoie (Upper Savoie). His mentee who is now making his own expressions of baby Gringet (5 year-old vines) is none other than Yann Pernuit who was known in this area and in some small natural wine circles for his good work in the vineyard with another local domaine, Château de Mérande located in Arbin about an hour’s drive south into Savoie proper.

Yann had in the past 15 years become known as one of the best teachers/purveyors/practitioners of biodynamic viticulture in the difficultly worked terrain of the Savoie & was sought out by the Genoux brothers of Château de Mérande to help convert their vines to this cultivation method. Around 2018, he switched gigs and moved north to start work with the legend Dominique Belluard who would become his friend and mentor in this corner of the Alps. Not long after, with Dominique’s encouragement, Yann started Domaine Belema as a négoce, purchasing organically cultivated fruit from the area while also planting a tiny, 1.5 hectare parcel in the Ayse to true Alpine varieties: Mondeuse, Jacquere, Etraire de la Dhuy, and of course, Gringet. It’s been difficult for a panoply of reasons, but the small, hard-won Domaine is finally fully up and running, this latest drop marking the second real commercial vintage produced from his vines, and the first wine-worthy one for his baby Gringet. To add some more heft to our praise of the wines, take it from perhaps the world’s foremost Alpine Wine expert, the wine writer Wink Lorch who – prior to any wines even being released – noted in her 2019 book Wines of The French Alps that Domaine Belema run by Yann was one of the names to look for to make a big splash in years to come. Well, a few years have come and passed, and the wines are indeed world-beating.