Apremont and Abymes

What a story! What a sight! Please come, do come, to the Combe de Savoie and take a look for yourself at the splendor of the vines growing under the stern face of Mont Granier. Late September is the best time, when the fog drifts across the mountain, the gold of the turned vine leaves reflects the sunlight, and the first snows powder the distant summits of the high Alps.

Before 1248 this area was a peaceful plain producing wheat. The area and the mountain now called Granier took their name from the Latin Granarium; it is said that Caesar fed his legions on the grain grown there. But on the night of November 24, 1248, the face of the mountain slid down into a gigantic cataclysm and created the landscape now existing. Here and there you can still see huge boulders dotting the countryside. Seen from the road of the Granier Pass, which climbs into the Chartreuse, the countryside is made up of small hillocks billowing one after another and dotted here and there with tiny lakes. Below this lie a number of villages sleeping forever in their shroud of stone and mud. People coming from the Bauges mountains across the Isère valley gradually established the vineyards of Apremont and Abymes on these apocalyptic slopes.