Since we recently had great luck with the 2018, we leapt at the chance to try an older one from a restaurant list. Deep yellow, orange tinged. Aromas of herb, melon, hay, honey, and just a whiff of grilled nuts. Full bodied, lovely glycerine texture. Dry, savory, and rich with cleansing acidity and a lightly oxidative note. Not about the fruit, which you feel more than taste. This really evoked Savennières for me. Not an everyday wine but full of interest and very food friendly-from asparagus to eel to pork loin.
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This has evolved really nicely. It has a lot of time left though, on this showing. It is a very subtly beautiful wine, like a watered down Jura chardonnay from one of the masters like Ganevat or Labet. But it is watered down with the most beautiful mountain spring water, so fresh and enticing. Lemon, tangerine, red apple, a hint of powdered sugar and loads of minerality (again, like a mountain spring). I liken this to the wine equivalent of sitting with your back against a wall enjoying the first sunrays of spring warming your face, in somewhere cold like Sweden where I am, where you really miss the sun during the winter months.
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I opened this and gave it a lot of air time. This aroma is one that is just a cornucopia of mountain herbs and minerals. I like the comment about honeyed ginger. Maybe a little mango too. Very long finish. I feel this needs a decant and should not be served too cold. Very expressive as it warms up. Boy is this good.
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I am a huge fan of Belluard and Gringet. I get an herbal savory note on the nose. Grapefruit, zippy acidity, mountain herbs. Mineral, wet stone, saline. Elderflower? Love this!! stunning and so delicious!
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Not as good as my first bottle noted below in July 2017 but still a good wine, and better on the second day. On the first day I noted some bitterness to the ending. Otherwise pretty consistent with my first bottle but less fantastic and a little less fresh. Third and last bottle I will postpone a couple of years, I think.
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Better than the last bottle, but far from the quality of any other vintage I've tried of Les Alpes. An odd vintage with a geranium herbal and yeasty leesy finish, for me anyhow. Still possible these bottles were poorly stored.
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Hmm this is far more autolytic than any other Belluard bottle I’ve tried. I despise wines that finish on unracked lees aromas. The initial aromas offer a bit of what I expect from Gringet—honeyed herbal ginger—but the palate feels like a disjointed watery mess that finishes on the lees. Really hoping this is an off bottle because I have one more I pray doesn’t show this way.
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Yellow-gold in the glass, with a nose that has some savory broth accents to it.
I know I tend to overuse savory as a descriptive when I talk about both Belluard's wines from Savoie as well as Tissot's wines from the Jura. Not sure I can explain why except that it is inevitably the first word that pops into my head when I taste one of these wines.
At the end of the day, suffice it to say that I do love the fact that there is a vigneron out there like Belluard working with grapes like Gringet and Altesse - and I also appreciate the fact that we have someone local who is devoted to importing wines like this into the states.
If like me you're willing to try white grapes outside of Chardonnay and Riesling, put this on your list, if only to try a bottle.
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First time with Gringet for me. Quite unlike anything else. Tangerine, lime zest and flowers on the nose. On the palate pears, ripe red apples, flower stem, lime, dried pineapple. Lots of tangerine, lingering in the aftertaste. Most unique about this wine is how fresh and mineral it is - it really feels like drinking water from a stream in the alps, or how I imagine that at least.
By the end of the night, flavours have developed enough that the freshness is not the foremost character - it is then that I for the first time find a grape variety to liken this to: savagnin, made in a topped up way, but lighter and fresher. That's as close a comparison I can find for this unique grape. I want more!
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4/18/2024 - drwine2001 wrote:
Since we recently had great luck with the 2018, we leapt at the chance to try an older one from a restaurant list. Deep yellow, orange tinged. Aromas of herb, melon, hay, honey, and just a whiff of grilled nuts. Full bodied, lovely glycerine texture. Dry, savory, and rich with cleansing acidity and a lightly oxidative note. Not about the fruit, which you feel more than taste. This really evoked Savennières for me. Not an everyday wine but full of interest and very food friendly-from asparagus to eel to pork loin.
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1/7/2022 - winemaker Likes this wine: 93 Points
Another terrific bottle. Green Apple on the nose. Grapefruit. Minerally. Mountain herbs. Complex. My last 2015.
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5/14/2021 - jrick Likes this wine: 93 Points
This has evolved really nicely. It has a lot of time left though, on this showing. It is a very subtly beautiful wine, like a watered down Jura chardonnay from one of the masters like Ganevat or Labet. But it is watered down with the most beautiful mountain spring water, so fresh and enticing. Lemon, tangerine, red apple, a hint of powdered sugar and loads of minerality (again, like a mountain spring). I liken this to the wine equivalent of sitting with your back against a wall enjoying the first sunrays of spring warming your face, in somewhere cold like Sweden where I am, where you really miss the sun during the winter months.
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4/22/2021 - winemaker Likes this wine: 93 Points
This has evolved nicely. Apples, with a hint of lemon and grapefruit with accompanying mountain herbs. Beautiful wine.
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12/29/2018 - winemaker Likes this wine: 93 Points
I opened this and gave it a lot of air time. This aroma is one that is just a cornucopia of mountain herbs and minerals. I like the comment about honeyed ginger. Maybe a little mango too. Very long finish. I feel this needs a decant and should not be served too cold. Very expressive as it warms up. Boy is this good.
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9/29/2018 - winemaker Likes this wine: 93 Points
Delicious. Same as last bottle. See previous note.
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6/19/2018 - winemaker Likes this wine: 94 Points
I am a huge fan of Belluard and Gringet. I get an herbal savory note on the nose. Grapefruit, zippy acidity, mountain herbs. Mineral, wet stone, saline. Elderflower? Love this!! stunning and so delicious!
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4/14/2018 - jrick Likes this wine: 90 Points
Not as good as my first bottle noted below in July 2017 but still a good wine, and better on the second day. On the first day I noted some bitterness to the ending. Otherwise pretty consistent with my first bottle but less fantastic and a little less fresh. Third and last bottle I will postpone a couple of years, I think.
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3/31/2018 - Gargantua wrote:
Better than the last bottle, but far from the quality of any other vintage I've tried of Les Alpes. An odd vintage with a geranium herbal and yeasty leesy finish, for me anyhow. Still possible these bottles were poorly stored.
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10/12/2017 - Gargantua Does not like this wine:
Hmm this is far more autolytic than any other Belluard bottle I’ve tried. I despise wines that finish on unracked lees aromas. The initial aromas offer a bit of what I expect from Gringet—honeyed herbal ginger—but the palate feels like a disjointed watery mess that finishes on the lees. Really hoping this is an off bottle because I have one more I pray doesn’t show this way.
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9/23/2017 - Bob H Likes this wine:
Yellow-gold in the glass, with a nose that has some savory broth accents to it.
I know I tend to overuse savory as a descriptive when I talk about both Belluard's wines from Savoie as well as Tissot's wines from the Jura. Not sure I can explain why except that it is inevitably the first word that pops into my head when I taste one of these wines.
At the end of the day, suffice it to say that I do love the fact that there is a vigneron out there like Belluard working with grapes like Gringet and Altesse - and I also appreciate the fact that we have someone local who is devoted to importing wines like this into the states.
If like me you're willing to try white grapes outside of Chardonnay and Riesling, put this on your list, if only to try a bottle.
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7/14/2017 - jrick Likes this wine: 92 Points
First time with Gringet for me. Quite unlike anything else. Tangerine, lime zest and flowers on the nose. On the palate pears, ripe red apples, flower stem, lime, dried pineapple. Lots of tangerine, lingering in the aftertaste. Most unique about this wine is how fresh and mineral it is - it really feels like drinking water from a stream in the alps, or how I imagine that at least.
By the end of the night, flavours have developed enough that the freshness is not the foremost character - it is then that I for the first time find a grape variety to liken this to: savagnin, made in a topped up way, but lighter and fresher. That's as close a comparison I can find for this unique grape. I want more!
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