Maturing wines in an Alpine lake

ascal Perceval had arranged to meet up with under-ice divers and a pilot at Lake Tignes on March 1st at 10 am to airlift two 500-litre casks submerged in the lake for two years. After marking out a perimeter so as not to weaken the ice or block access to the lake at the height of the school holidays, technicians from the ski slope management cut two holes through the 1.4-metre thick ice. The first hole was designed to allow the casks of Mondeuse and Chignin-Bergeron wines to be removed, and the second was an emergency exit for the scuba divers.

“The idea for Tignes came when I was visiting a cheese-maker client at the ski resort”, recalls the Savoy winegrower. “I had already matured wine in Lake Geneva, Lake Annecy and Lake Bourget and I was impressed by the development of the wine which was magnified by the perfect hygrometry level and the natural, regular ebb and flow of the water. I wanted to see how the wine would perform in water at -5°C beneath a thick layer of ice, 2,000 metres above sea level”.

He was not disappointed. “The coldness made the wines even more aromatic than those submerged in other lakes. Their quality and finesse were mind-blowing, both for the white and the red”. Before heading back to his winery in Porte-de-Savoie, Perceval asked the helicopter pilot to leave a case of 800 bottles of PGI Roussanne in the lake, along with a barrel of AOP Chignin-Bergeron, where they will stay for a year or two.

The cost of the helicopter, divers and help of the ski resort technicians was nearly €10,000, or €10 per litre of wine. Perceval’s wines were filtered then bottled in March 7 and will be released for sale shortly.