Grape variety
Petite Arvine
Petite Arvine: the great white grape of Valais, with Fully at its heart. Grapefruit, rhubarb and a salty finish, dry or as Flétri. Origin and pairings.
- Colour
- White
- Origin
- Indigenous Valais variety, recorded since 1602; parents unknown
- Grown in Switzerland
- About 280 hectares, nearly all in Valais; Fully is its stronghold
- Typical aromas
- Grapefruit, rhubarb, wisteria, salty finish
- Classic pairing
- Perch fillets, asparagus; Flétri with blue cheese
- Styles
- Dry, mi-flétri or Flétri (sweet wine from shrivelled grapes)
If Chasselas is Valais’s everyday white, Petite Arvine is its grand one. The variety has been recorded in the canton since 1602 and, as far as DNA can tell, has no known parents and no proven close relatives; even the rare Grosse Arvine is, despite the name, a distinct variety whose exact relationship to it is unresolved. It grows almost nowhere else: about 280 hectares in Switzerland, all but a few in Valais, with a little across the border in the Aosta Valley. The area has grown steadily over the past twenty years, which says something about how good the wine has become.
It is a difficult vine. Petite Arvine ripens late, so it needs the sunniest, warmest slopes; its stalks are brittle and the bunches drop in strong wind; and it wants enough water in a canton where irrigation channels, the bisses, have been needed for centuries. The capital of the grape is Fully, between Martigny and Sion, whose steep granitic terraces face full south and warm up quickly. Sion, Sierre, Chamoson and Vétroz also make fine examples.
Three things define the wine. The first is aroma: pink grapefruit, rhubarb, wisteria and sometimes passion fruit. The second is structure: a full, almost oily body held up by firm acidity. The third is the finish, a distinct salty, almost iodine note that no other Swiss white shows so clearly. Most Petite Arvine is made dry, often in steel to keep it taut. Some producers leave a little sugar for a mi-flétri, and the grape is one of the great candidates for Flétri, where bunches are left to shrivel on the vine or on straw in late autumn and give a dense, apricot-scented sweet wine that lasts for decades.
Dry Petite Arvine is the wine for lake fish and seafood, perch fillets in butter, asparagus, a goat’s cheese or a dish with a hint of spice. The sweet versions belong with blue cheese, foie gras or an apricot tart made with the canton’s own fruit. Serve the dry wines at 9 to 11 degrees and give the best ones five years in the cellar.