and its wines
Michelin-starred restaurant in Savoie
A tribute to the cultural heritage of Savoie
Three different atmospheres, with Savoie running through them all: the terrace overlooking the Cochet mountain and Encombres pass, the mountain-style main dining room, and the Baroque dining room that serves as a tribute to the valley's artistic heritage.
The Relais & Château and Michelin-starred gourmet restaurant La Bouitte Hotel in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville provides a unique showcase for Savoyard art and cultural heritage from the 17th century to the present day.
The collections of local ceramics and tableware painstakingly acquired by René Meilleur over the course of almost 50 years are unique in the Alps, and probably in the world.
Fabrics from Filature Arpin, knives from artisan blacksmith, Stéphane Thomat, ancestral agricultural artefacts and an impressive carved bread chest all reflect the vibrant soul of the mountain landscapes.
Your eye is drawn from one detail to the next: a cherub and virgin bearing witness to the Baroque style, a magnificent old cart used as a bread trolley, a beautiful wooden dresser and the decorative cowbells.
Over the years, La Bouitte has become an invaluable treasure trove of Savoyard folk and decorative art.
The stories of wines
At La Bouitte, to enjoy a culinary and oenological experience is to savour a moment of sheer poetry.
At La Bouitte Gourmet Restaurant, wine is a passion, an intense desire to share all that is good and to tell the story of the men and women who make it.
Since 1976, the Meilleur family has been carrying out exhaustive explorations: discovering singular terroirs of unbridled expression, falling in love with racy vintages of rare potential, and bottling wines as finely crafted as lace, interpretations so accomplished as to be unique.
With 1001 different wines, and more than three times that number if you include the bottles laid down for ageing, La Bouitte boasts one of the finest wine cellars in the Alps.
By favouring subtle, delicate wines in the same vein as its cuisine, alongside some superlative vintages in a variety of styles, it offers a unique and ever-changing viticultural panorama.
Due to the scarcity of oxygen, wines aged at altitude are more intense, long-lasting and purer on the palate. Their bouquet is more refined, and their fruity flavours more pronounced.
Their ageing in the mountains adds to their complexity and finesse, attaining an unprecedented balance that wines from the plains will never achieve.
The best food and wine pairings in the mountains are an experience within an experience.
At La Bouitte in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, stories of encounters and of wines merge to create a rainbow of emotions, from white through to ruby red.