Grape Variety: Petite Arvine

Colour: White

Petite Arvine is capable of making wonderful crisp white wines that reflect its sense of place. Native to both Valle d’Aosta and in Switzerland where it is sometimes known as Valais.  The grape ripens slowly on the vine it excels in the mountains where the grapes are harvested late and the long growing season allows for a beautiful balance of fruit, alcohol and acidity. Resultant wines tend to exhibit crisp, flinty qualities with tangy grapefruit and sweet mandarin orange flavours.  Some producers also make a sweet late harvest version. 

One of the best examples of this grape is the Petite Arvine Vigne Champorette from the winery of Les Crètes. The wine displays a brilliant straw yellow colour; the nose reveals intense, clean, pleasing, elegant and refined aromas beginning with elder and pineapple followed by banana, hawthorn, apple, broom, pear and peach. The acidity is very fine and mineral notes add depth. This would be great with Fontina, Toma di Grassoney (made in the meadows) and Fromadzo, a mixture of cow’s and a little goat’s cheese, semi-sweet and very fragrant when young, saltier and richer with age.

PS (Found on the net)

3-Mercaptohexanol: An Aroma Impact Compound of Petite Arvine Wine (could this be the most boring and unromantic piece of trivial research ever?)

“The characteristic aroma of Petite Arvine, a local white wine specialty prepared from the autochthone grape variety Petite Arvine in Valais, Switzerland, is described as intense in grapefruit and rhubarb flavours. In sensory evaluation by a triangle-test, the impact of thiol compounds on the wine aroma was demonstrated. In gas chromatography-olfactometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses, 3-mercaptohexanol was identified as one of the key aroma compounds for the wine aroma. The concentration of 3-mercaptohexanol in 11 Petite Arvine wines was in the range between 210 and 6100 ng/L; all values being above the odour threshold value in aqueous ethanol solutions for this compound. “