2022 Domaine Les Hauts Lieux Hauts Alpes Blanc - Grand Pic

The Hautes-Alpes is a department and tiny appellation (130 hectares of vines) in the French Alps, nestled among Savoie, Provence, and Italy’s Piemonte. Think mountain wines. Loire Valley native Mickaël Olivon traveled to the area in his youth to go rock climbing and eventually landed here permanently and created Les Hauts Lieux (“The High Places”) in 2019. He farms two hectares planted in glacial moraine and scree (dolomite, silt, gravel) at extreme altitude (900-1000 meters), with organic certification.

'Grand Pic' - like all of the wines, named after a local peak that Mickaël has climbed - is marsanne, jacquère, altesse, müller thurgau, and chasan. Fermentation began in stainless steel tank and completed in barrel, with natural malolactic fermentation occurring in the spring. The wine then aged for one year in neutral barrels (4-10 years old) of various sizes. This is a wine of contrasts and wide vistas: It is textured yet high-acid, powerful but with alpine tension, not lacking in fruit but also stony and smoky and suggesting delicate wildflowers. You might think of it as Savoie meets white Burgundy and white Rhône, or, as importer Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants asserts, the equivalent of an Alpine premier cru. Drink it in an ample wine glass with hearty, cheesy Alpine dishes (raclette, for example) or crustacea. Aging? We don’t know yet! But the prominent acidity suggests that it will evolve in interesting ways for 5-10 years.