The patriarch of Europe's whites. Savagnin — Traminer in the German world, Heida high in the Valais — is an ancient grape of the Alpine arc whose direct descendants and mutations include Chenin Blanc, Grüner Veltliner and the pink, perfumed Gewurztraminer. DNA has traced half the continent's white varieties back, one way or another, to this small, thick-skinned mountaineer.
Its own masterpiece is made in the Jura. There Savagnin becomes vin jaune: six years and three months in barrels never topped up, the wine protected only by a living veil of yeast, then bottled in the squat 62-centilitre clavelin. Walnut, curry, green apple and a piercing acidity — a wine, quite literally, with no cousins.