A BRIEF HISTORY OF OUR WINE GROWING REGION

" Savoy is not what one has come to believe from the reports of ill-informed or mistaken writers: a sterile country whose only inhabitants are bears and marmots… The hills give good wines such as those from Montmélian, Frangy or Seyssel. There are vineyards at the base of the glaciers." Count de la Résie (1847).

In Savoy, the origins of wine growing seem to go back to earliest antiquity. In History of Agriculture in Savoy (Histoire de l'agriculture en Savoie), Pierre Tochon writes that Latin authors such as Pliny and Columelle had already mentioned the vineyards of the Allobrogie country in the most laudatory terms, in the first century AD.
"Wine growing in the Allobrogie country had reached the highest quality ever since the Greeks methods were already used. They were the first to flavour the wine by introducing extra substances during the winemaking process".

Then, in the Middle Ages, the names of the most famous vineyards began to be mentioned in the charters. Those reference documents are deeds, kept in monasteries' or priories' archives, for the Church properties, already substantial, were expanding owing to many settlements. However, the monks were not only accumulating goods but also were also carrying out various experiments concerning the management of the vineyards, the grape growing and the winemaking methods. And so the Savoyard wines' quality improved.

In a general way, the French revolution (1789) favourably affected the development of the vineyards of Savoy: the farmers became owners through buying back the state-owned vineyards, thereby diminishing share cropping. Farming by the owner became widespread. This evolution resulted in an ever-increasing care toward the vineyards. At the beginning of the XIXth century, the quality of the Savoyard wines was quite inconsistent. This stemmed from the great variations in altitude levels, from the type of vine grown, and from the wine-growing methods chosen. It was still very common practice to grow vines in altitude (what is called "cep hautain" in French), planted along trees so that they grow leaning on them, and planted in combination with other crops.

The annexation of Savoy by France in 1860 had less disastrous consequences than expected. Wines from Savoy began to compete with those from the South of France shortly before the phylloxera crisis, the crisis that threw every pre-existing basic knowledge into question. Phylloxera appeared in Savoy in 1877. By 1883, associations from approximately ten communes were created and took to fighting its spread using carbon sulphide. But in 1885, 55 out of the 65 wine-growing communes suffered from phylloxera. During the same period, in 1878, mildew appeared and then powdery mildew in 1880. Despite these events, the wine-growing growing regions did not diminish in size. Actually, with the grafting method on American stocks having been discovered in the late 1880s, a huge replanting project was undertaken, aided by the high prices resulting from the shrinkage of the Mediterranean vineyards area. That enabled to make up for the damages caused by phylloxera. The restoration of the vineyards brought deep changes. First, the vineyards' appearances changed: the "hautain" vines (planted in altitude) almost completely disappeared in favour of single climbing vines along fields, of multirow high vines with a wide gap in between, that is sometimes filled with crops or low vines. The structure of landed property was also changed, since the phylloxera crisis contributed to eliminating the wine aristocracy almost completely.
"The large scale landowners, who received no wine-producing income during nearly 10 years, who were discouraged by the enormous costs for restoration, thought it better to sell, in order to buy less precarious investments elsewhere." (C. Dalban)
Finally, the vine's maintenance methods changed when Mr. Fleury-Lacoste, then president of the Central Society of Agriculture, published in 1865 the wine grower guide book in which he explained the new pruning process. The XIXth century thus ended with a total revival of the wine-growing activity in Savoy, mainly thanks to research seeking to improve the promotion and development of wine growing - especially in low lying areas. The increasing production of the entirely replanted vineyards in the South of France created a crisis, which lasted until 1905. The First World War had some serious repercussions on viticulture: the lack of labour or its high prices contributed to let certain lands lie fallow or to pull the vines up the plots and convert them into meadows. However, the replanting went on, more easily than before because of very good harvests and a significant price increase. The slump of the harvest of 1922, the crisis of 1930, the fall in the birth rate and the incipient town planning generated further reductions in the wine-growing region. The sloping plots mainly suffered those reductions, since their cultivation would be given up again.
"But while reducing thus its cultivated area, the vineyard has seen its yield rising; the wine-growing techniques are improving and we even notice some progress in the vinification procedures." (R. Blanchard).

The Second World War still intensified this movement of concentration, though less than it was feared. The vineyards thus largely took part in the development of the Savoyard landscape. Today, they keep the privileged place they always occupied, but their current features are only the reflection of what they formerly were. The vineyard covers a very limited geographical area, which underwent certain reductions:
- A reduction in altitude: the vineyard had reached its limits in many places.
- A space reduction: it is concentrated in the most favourable areas for its growing, which guarantee a more constant quality.
If it remains one of the most favourite cultivation of Savoy, viticulture is however not safe from risks, mainly concerning climatic hazards. Some recent campaigns definitely attest it.