Céline Jacquet is a young woman winemaker, who established her domaine in 2011 in the village of Arbin, in Savoie. Today, She farms about 5 hectares (12 acres), without any desire to grow much bigger. She cultivates the traditional grape varietals of the Combe de Savoie: Mondeuse, Roussette, Altesse and Bergeron (also known as Roussane in the Rhone valley).

She has vineyards in different places in the Combe de Savoie: Arbin, St-Jean de la Porte, Cruet, and Chignin. Céline studied winemaking in Beaujolais. Many of her parcels, such as the one going into Mes Aieux or Les Echalats, are at the top of the vineyard, planted on very steep slopes who benefit from perfect south, south-east exposure looking at the Alps. The work in the vineyard is authentic and natural. She manual farms, as the slopes won’t allow for any machinery. She refrains from using chemicals or industrial techniques, and promotes biodiversity.  Of course, as everything else, harvest is done by hand only.

The same mentality extends to her winemaking. Whole cluster fermentation and maceration are done without inoculation and she adds minimal doses of sulfur. Some of the wines, such as Les Echalats, are actually bottled without any sulfur added. Still, you can tell that Celine’s vision and wines are into classicism and authenticity, favoring balance, cleanliness, and precision. Her wines show that Savoie can deliver complex wines, that can be much more than the simple glouglou wines with Raclette! Her Mondeuse wines, especially Mes Aieux, show that good winemaking and fruit can lead to wines that combine very strong character yet being very soft and not heavy or high in alcohol.