Savoie is a wine region of eastern France, its vineyards scattered across valley floors, lakesides and limestone hillsides between the Mont Blanc massif and the Jura, mostly between 250 and 600 metres. Glacial and fluvioglacial soils give the wines their mineral, chiselled quality, most famously around Apremont, where a thirteenth century rockfall from Mont Granier still shapes the vineyard today. Around two thirds of plantings are indigenous varieties, led by Jacquère – crisp and precise, and Altesse – structured and age-worthy. Mondeuse Noire supplies dark, peppery reds, while Gringet, confined to granite slopes above Ayze, survives on barely 23 hectares. Savoie's wine culture predates the French state itself, carried for two millennia along the Alpine trade routes that cross it.