Découverte de la Savoie sauvage : Entre lacs d’émeraude & neiges éternelles | Trésors du Patrimoine

Découverte de la Savoie sauvage : Entre lacs d’émeraude & neiges éternelles | Trésors du Patrimoine

“To our left, we can see the lake of Mont Cenis”
“ This landscape is grandiose, it is wild,
mystical. We are at a high altitude, at more than 2000 meters, we are dominated
by peaks at more than 3000, and it is true that we are in fabulous landscapes ”
“And above all we appreciate the colors all the more and my eyes are full of light” “It is the end of September, Florence
Fombonne-Rouvier flies over these high peaks just before the arrival of winter” ”
She wants to observe one of the most remote villages in Savoie”
“We are 2 minutes from Bonneval sur Arc” ”
All year round, this urban planner helps mountain villages to keep their authenticity”
“We arrive at the bottom of the Haute Maurienne valley we are above Bonneval/Arc which
is the last village in this valley. It is one of the rare villages preserved at the end
of the war since in 44, the Germans, when leaving, burned many of them.
“As a result, this village has kept these characteristics: the stone buildings, the
slate roofs. We are in a village which is quite squat, which has hunched over itself
to protect itself from avalanches” “Beyond the village of Bonneval, we can also see
the hamlet of Ecot which is also preserved today and what is interesting is
that these hamlets really fit into the landscape. They are made of stones
taken from the site and one has the impression that they fit in with the mountain”
“For several years, Florence’s mission has taken on a new dimension”
“Preparing the villages of Savoie to face the lack of snow which is more marked each year”
“The mountain is reinventing itself, beyond skiing, today the villages are rediscovering their
characters, their appeal, the fauna, the flora which can be present there, the agricultural activity.
Global warming should not be experienced as a danger but on the contrary as
an impulse to give to the territories to ensure new horizons in
terms of tourist development” “The plane goes up the Maurienne valley”
“On the way it flies over the most impressive defensive barrier in the region”
“Different fortifications protected the Duchy of Savoy from the Kingdom of France”
“Under our feet we can see the Esseillon forts which were built
to defend the valley. From the moment the annexation to France took place in
1860, the forts lost their defensive use. Some will be destroyed, others have
now been rehabilitated” “The villages at the bottom of the valley need
to live and suddenly there is a dynamic which is being implemented with a reappropriation
of the heritage which must allow them to be given new life and meaning”
“Florence leaves the Maurienne valley via the Col de la Madeleine”
“There we fly over the valley which opens onto Chambéry, so we have
the Lac du Bourget in sight. It’s just fabulous to have this global vision of the city of a
territory which is that of Grand Chambéry which is in its setting bordered by the massifs
on one side the Bauges and on the other the Granier ”
“Facing us, the sumptuous lake of Bourget which has long inspired
writers, poets, such as Rousseau, Lamartine ” “On the west bank, appears the jewel of the lake:
This Cistercian abbey of the 12th century is still inhabited by a religious community ”
“The Abbey of Hautecombe is the only occupied site on this part of the lake since we have
very steep foothills, the interest for the monks is that they were on an isolated site
and not in direct connection with civilization and the city ”
” Above Aix-les-Bains, the plane
takes the direction of a massif under high surveillance: it is the Mont Granier »
“Two years ago, part of the mountain collapsed, here we can clearly see the last
collapses, the last scree” “Florence wants to observe these cliffs which are
still unstable. Even today they threaten the surrounding villages
and scientists remain vigilant” “So here we have a new lake opening up to us,
we are taking on an emerald color, it is really a characteristic of Lake Aiguebelette which is
due as much to the relief as to the plankton in the lake. There are five communes bordering Lake
Aiguebelette and these communes are well aware of the
natural, landscaped and architectural heritage that may be theirs. So, these are municipalities that
contact us quite often and that we may be required to accompany regularly”
“Having become a popular holiday resort since the 19th century, Lake
Aiguebelette continues to be a sought-after site for its beauty and spectacular view” ”
This morning, Florence has a meeting in one of the most beautiful villas on the shores of the lake”
“These sunny banks have been attracting nature lovers for over a century”
“On the west shore, we find the fortunes of the lake, insofar as we were
on the best exposure, we had the sun for a good part of the day”
“This house was built in the middle of the 19th century and in fact it was coupled with
a tile factory; So the owners who were bankers had continued the exploitation
of the clay which was very present all around the lake. So it really has
its own architecture, we still find the boathouse and frankly, it is one
of the most beautiful houses on the lake in my eyes” “Florence is getting ready to dock at the quay
of the villa that interests her today” “We have this round house which dates from the end
of the 1930s, which is really characteristic from an architectural point of view of
this period. It is one of those few houses that has a boathouse”
“She was invited by Annick Lacroix, who fell in love with the place more than 20 years ago”
“It is a house that is a beautiful construction in cut stone with practically one roof per
room on 3 and a half levels. And we can notice the rounded windows and the portholes on the
ground floor which are like ship portholes and it is these portholes which
overlook the pier where the boats are moored. This house is reassuring,
because we have an impression of solidity, it is well in its setting, it gives
a little comfort and reassurance” “Here, follow me! »
“We are in contact with the lake” “Completely”
“We feel like we have the lake in the house”
“It’s very pleasant to live in because we are both inside and
outside. It’s serene, it’s peaceful” “The pleasure of living here”
“There you go” “Inside, everything has been preserved”
“The furniture was built at the time of the house for the house and the owner who
built this house was a fishing enthusiast, and that’s why everything reminds us of the
fish, the lake. His passion for fishing led him to include fish in his
staircase, amidst the ironwork. There you see on this window, there is even
a mermaid engraved in sandblasted glass which is also from the period. Everything here is period.
There are some fairly typical pieces of furniture. You see this bar there, which was built by a
cabinetmaker and decorator named Christian Krass. Everything is well done and nothing is broken”
” Florence leaves Lake Aiguebelette and
joins the Upper Tarentaise Valley” “Another mission awaits her in an
isolated hamlet at an altitude of 1600 meters” “It overlooks the Tignes dam. A
work that profoundly transformed the valley in the 1950s”
“We will take the small road that leads us to Villaret. This road
is very narrow. Le Villaret was what we call a summer village because access
was not possible in winter. So the particularity today is that the commune and the inhabitants
agree to the renovation of this access road to allow year-round living”
“Florence takes advantage of the village festival to come and see the recently restored houses”
“Villaret-des-Brévières bears witness to the architecture of mountain hamlets
from the beginning of the 20th century” “When you arrive in the village of Villaret,
what is interesting is to see the orientation of the houses. They all have a
North-South orientation and we have the impression that they are turning their backs on us. So there were very few openings
to protect against the wind, which was quite violent at certain times of the year.
“Here, you shouldn’t expect to find a wooden chalet, as the wood was used as the
frame of the house, the roof, the joinery and was ultimately a
fairly rare resource and therefore one which was preserved.” “The houses in the village are
being renovated. Work carried out according to the tradition of the valley »
« The particularity of these houses was the overhanging roofs to protect the
main facade and this overhanging roof allowed the positioning of the dryer
and today this same dryer as part of a house renovation becomes a
balcony from which we can admire the landscape, sit down and enjoy the views that are offered
to us. We have of course larger openings , but we will respect the volumes
and the choice of materials corresponds to those that have been used until now”
“Today, in Villaret-des-Brévières, it is the bread festival”
“The inhabitants invited their neighbors to revive this custom of mountain villages.
Lionel Badoz lives in Lyon. He has been spending his holidays in Villaret since his childhood. »
“Attention, Attention! » “Today is the bread festival, like every
year for the past few years, we are lighting the oven again, and so here we are in September,
everyone is back from summer, it’s not winter yet, we are enjoying this magnificent day,
the glaciers, we are going to meet up, the people of Ste Foy, the people of Tignes, the people of Val d’Isère,
a large community and enjoy it all together” “Since yesterday, we have lit this ancestral oven again
which is enormous, which is made entirely of stone inside, a huge oven that they lit
very rarely because they made a lot of bread which they dried, which they
preserved, which they put in the soup, they made
astronomical quantities of it. So the oven is made for that.” ” What do you think, Pierre? »
« It’s not bad, now we have to take out the embers »
« No, but wait, we ’ll move them apart a little… »
« Baker in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Pierre is experimenting with this oven for the first time »
« It’s nice because it’s a change from the classic bakery – It shows that the wood,
the bread, the fire, it’s all linked. It takes us back to traditions, it takes us back to the fundamentals
of baking and it’s a bit tough. Come on Mathieu! »
« Built in the 18th century, this wood-fired oven is the last in the region.
The others were swallowed up with the village of Tignes”
“The village of Tignes, we see, was behind this wall which is the
dam that was filled with water in 52, over there it was a large, magnificent, sunny valley,
a very developed pastoral place and finally, there was a need to rebuild after the war,
there was a need for energy and the life of this small village did not weigh very heavily and they
decided to flood the village while the people had been settled there for centuries and they took
everyone out. People didn’t really want to go there, they sent
mobile guards to get them out, they dug up the dead from the cemetery, it was quite difficult”
“The testimonies of pastoral life were rather swallowed up, so here the bread oven,
obviously, it has sentimental, historical, heritage value and all that”
“Here’s some fresh bread! » “I don’t live here entirely.
I live there as often as possible, but not completely, in fact, my
goal is to come and live there year-round. We reinvested the chalets that were in ruins,
we restored everything to ensure that these hamlets came back to life. There was only
one inhabitant here, fifteen, twenty years ago, and now we are starting to see the chalets
all come back to life and that is very nice for us”
” After the Tignes dam,
the Isère valley opens up” “This valley is called the Tarentaise.
This is where most of the major winter sports resorts were created” ”
To the South, Maurienne is the other large valley of the Alps which leads to Italy” ”
Between the two, the Belleville valley is a territory which has managed to retain all its character”
“It is the land of the heart of a man who has become over the years, one of the ambassadors of Savoie”
: “What I like here is nature, this tranquil side, it is
all this simplicity which is important and which is true”
“We are on the sunny side, therefore the much sunnier side
compared to what we have on our left, which are the northern slopes. On the left, therefore, different
resorts, La Plagne, behind us we have Les Arcs, La Rosière, Montchavin les Coches”
“Maxime Meilleur belongs to the very exclusive club of 3-star chefs”
“A success that his family built in a small traditional village in the valley”
“This road, these were the slopes favored by the inhabitants because
it was a land that was sunnier, so there were orchards, we had
vineyards, and in fact, in the 50s, when the ski resorts were built, people
abandoned this south-facing part to have snow which was more significant on the north side.
In front of us, we will arrive at my valley, the Belleville valley, which is three
resorts from Saint Martin, Les Ménuires and Val Thorens and as the crow flies, we are 10 km away.
“It is in the small village of Saint-Marcel that Maxime’s father created the family restaurant. It’s noon. In the kitchens
of La Bouitte, it’s a rush” “René: I’m missing one there! »
« René Meilleur and Maxime are the chefs of this house »
« Their reputation is based on a talent: sublimating the rustic flavors of the mountains »
« It is with trout au bleu, a very simple traditional dish that they
won their second star » « For trout au bleu, it is especially important not to
remove the silt that is on the skin of the fish, it is its little covering that keeps it
warm because it has no scales. If we remove the silt, it will actually
be gray, it will no longer be blue. The secret to a beautiful blue trout will
be freshness, the fresher the trout, the more it will curl up”
“With this recipe from his childhood, Maxime has revalued this mountain lake fish.
He made it into a unique, very high-end dish.” “Trout au bleu was a
cooking method that was done in the 80s, which was completely forgotten because today,
unfortunately, we no longer have fishponds, no more fresh trout, and so it was very
complicated. I said to my father: why do n’t we make blue trout again? He said
why not. And we set up the recipe like this. In our house, butter is life, so we’re going to
cover it with butter, just melted butter. Our goal was to give
this trout a certain nobility without distorting it. And in fact, that’s what we do best”
“I think it’s great, because there are still stories: at one time, my
father would go and get the trout from the stream, he would stroke their bellies and take them out and
we would eat the trout straight away when we arrived, it was extraordinary”
“It was an evening meal” “It’s an evening meal, a family meal,
it’s natural and there were plenty of trout in the streams and it was a real joy. That
Maxime puts this back in place, it’s great! This is a 3 star dish. What is three stars
? Taste, technique and pleasure. So we got there”
” Father and son have been working together for 20 years”
“And together, they have become legendary” “The strength of La Bouitte is that it is a
two-person operation. We are completely interchangeable, but also, when one is not there, the other misses him
. “We are missing something” “We understand each other completely, we don’t need
to talk, and everyone knows what they have to do. If we create a recipe, I am
a little more creative or something, he is more rigorous and goes
deeper into things. I am more of an artist” “The artist’s muse is his culture”
“René is a Savoyard at heart. Everything in his restaurant bears witness to his
attachment to the history of his region. “Here I have a piece of period furniture, the exact period I don’t
know, but a very beautiful dresser, on top of it, for example, I have my father’s school bag with his
school books, I don’t know if they are really his, it’s something that is in the
family and that he was kind enough to entrust to me. So it ‘s magnificent, it’s very simple but it’s
still worked and he wore it over his shoulder, like that and inside he had a snack,
there was everything he needed to go to school, because he stayed at school all day. I care about it
because he’s my father, it’s in the family. This one will stay there and then go to my place and the
day I leave La Bouitte. Maxime will get it back, but for now, it’s mine. »
«But we also have, which is much bigger, it’s a wedding chest. The
wedding chest was made to give to the bride on the wedding day. It was
his welcome gift to the family. It’s this idea of ​​what
I collect and what I like because it’s a part of our culture that is there”
“Because we are mountain people, we know where it comes from, and we have a real story to tell and
above all not to forget all these stories that we can have, it’s very important”
“René keeps some of these treasures in his secret reserve”
“An Ali Baba’s cave where he carefully keeps the memory of Savoyard heritage”
“So, it’s my reserve of butter molds among other things which are absolutely magical.
There you have bread marks because bread was made in the village oven every
three weeks. And every three weeks, the whole village made its bread and to
recognize it everyone had a mark, the imprint which was put on the bread and it marked and
when it came out we knew whose bread it was.” “I just got this very beautiful piece of furniture, a
grain chest, simply. It was filled with grain and as time went on it
got lower, a piece of wood was removed and grain was still used quite easily. These
are beautiful pieces of furniture, they have an original patina, so they are soft, we love them!”
“If we start thinking about where we’re going to put it, we don’t buy anything because we don’t have any more space,
so it’s just a matter of impulse. This must not be let go. We must not
lose it, if we lose it, we lose our soul, the soul of the mountain”
“René created his restaurant in the village where he grew up”
“Saint Marcel is the magical place, the place where we spent our entire childhood,
the schoolyard was in the village, the school is a little further away, but we
ran everywhere, and we always arrived late for the start of classes”
“He kept amateur images of the village, filmed in the 1950s. They
bear witness to a time when white gold had not yet transformed the valleys”
“They reveal to us a life based exclusively on the resources of the mountain: stone,
agriculture, livestock, trout fishing” “This is my house, I
built it with my wife, we assembled everything, the stones, the roof, the balconies, the doors, we have
everything manufactured. It took us three years, that’s a long time. We will collect the stones from the mountain. We
dug, we took the stones that suited us and with that we built the house”
“René was inspired by the architecture of the houses in the village to build
his restaurant which he named La Bouitte, “little house” in Savoyard dialect”
“Our way of building was that we enter a place, we go upstairs
and we go to the neighbor’s. That’s a bit like it, when we went to our friends’ house,
we went into the stable below and we went up to the barn and we went into the
living room, the place where we made sausages, or whatever. So today at La Bouitte, there
are corridors everywhere, people often get lost because it’s a labyrinth, it goes
in all directions. It’s a small concentration of our local villages”
“The next day, we follow René and Maxime on a tour of the region”
“We are on the road to the Col de la Madeleine, it has a mythical side because it was a
supply route between the valleys. So there we are in the Tarentaise valley and when
we are at the top of the mountain, we will be in the Maurienne. And there on the left, we are
next to our house. The Belleville Valley is really just on the left”
“This morning, they will meet for the first time a breeder who produces an
exceptional product: the rarest cheese in the Alps” “Each cheese, we know the person who
made it. We are already bringing a region to life and that is one of the most important things for us”
“These mountain producers have been supporting René since he created his restaurant in 1976”
“The big resorts of Les Ménuires and Val-Thorens had just started up, I could have easily set up
a business there, except that I had the opportunity to exchange a field
of potatoes for the repair of a roof for a lady in Saint Marcel. She said to me, “If you
come and give me a hand with the roof, I’ll give you the land.” I said OK.
That’s where we started cooking, making fondue and raclette, and
so little by little it evolved into our own cuisine.
And then Maxime arrives and that’s where it all really begins.
“I was a top-level athlete, that kind of education means that one day you learn
to surpass yourself and then in 96, I’m no longer good enough. Dad said to me, come help us and I went in to
make a custard, I found myself in the kitchen like that and I never left”
“Here we’re going to stop just to look at the slate quarry, here, they did everything
by hand, they didn’t buy anything of course” “On the roofs, in the villages, they had
stone, so they needed very, very big frames because slates are
very heavy and depending on how they split them, there was between 400 and 500 kg of stone per m2”
“Especially they brought them down in winter when there was snow to slide them on sledges,
more than on cars, the backs of animals” “There, we really see these ways of extracting
slates, we really see these cracks and they had to go up from the right”
“Or ladders, it’s a real job. It’s incredible”
“We can see that it’s dangerous, even on the right there, there’s a rock, it’s ready to fall”
“For the two leaders, this road to the Madeleine offers more than a magnificent landscape”
“It tells a story: that of all the Savoyards who came before them”
“This road to the Madeleine, on the pass, was where the young people from
each valley met to exchange for the fire of St John in June, and it was there that
the young girls and young guys met to see if there was a connection”
“There we arrive at the pass, we arrive at 2000 meters above sea level. So there, we change
valleys and there we will see the whole panorama which opens onto the Maurienne”
“The Maurienne valley is the longest valley in the Alps. It hides
some astonishing geological curiosities around the bend in the road . »
« Coming down from the pass, we just saw the young ladies with their
hair done. We’re going to take a little break” “The coiffed ladies are
these large columns of crumbly rock worked by erosion.
A more resistant stone forms like a cap at their summits”
“It’s absolutely magical. Nature is very artistic, we can be inspired
by nature, we in our kitchen, we are inspired by nature, we see
something, we say to ourselves that it would be good at home, how can we bring it to our plate?
“We could imagine a dessert with that. The topping could be a piece of chocolate that
is a little harder, we could take up the idea of ​​a brisley which is a Savoyard waffle that we
could twist which could make the base of this dessert with this topping on it, that would be nice.
“We are mountain cooks because it is our environment and ultimately everything
that surrounds us inspires us. And from time to time, we find cool things”
“Maxime and René arrive at the foot of the Tignes glacier”
“On these steep hillsides graze the goats of Anémone Marmottan”
“She is now the last one to make the cheese specific to this
commune: Persillé de Tignes” “It’s really funny, because for my
father, it brings back memories, but I never experienced that, I was born in 75”
“In our family, we lived with the animals on the right and the people on the left, with a
small wall 1 meter by 1 meter high so it was the warmth, all that allowed us
to survive in our mountains especially in winter” ” Persillé de Tignes is a
cheese that is half goat and half cow. » “The rocky slopes are home to
goats while the alpine plateaus are a paradise for cows”
“Anémone has planned for its guests a tasting of cheeses at different stages of maturation”
“Here are the blue-veined ones. This one is very fresh”
“This pressed paste owes its name to a particularity: the cheese begins
to marble after several months of ripening” “It is just a week old. Once we
remove it from the mold, we take it to the cellar, then it changes atmosphere. After 3
weeks you can start to have it like the second one. “What we see here”
“Do you rub them?” » “No, I just turn them”
“It’s beautiful because the cheese has so many colors.
You have a magical creaminess, the inside with all the granules that are
inside, it almost looks like a cake. It looks like a pastry. It’s not something
that’s very powerful, very hard to eat, it’s really finesse that we have there”
“This cheese owes its rarity to the singular history of Tignes:
When the waters of the dam engulfed the pastures, the inhabitants
abandoned livestock farming, abandoning a cheesemaking know-how passed down for centuries”
“It’s a little piece of terroir, a little piece of know-how that is apparently
very old. Apparently Charlemagne was already tasting it at the time, so we say that we are
responsible and guardians of the recipe. “It absolutely has to continue, so I do
n’t know how. We can help him by putting his cheese on our cheese board and
explaining what it is, how it is made, and by whom, that is important”
“We are lucky, everything is going well, we are in great places, we have people
behind us who follow to promote our products, I am not worried”
“What a beautiful story, another beautiful story! ”
” Health ! » “Thank you for welcoming us”
“ Inspired by the mountain landscapes,
Maxime wanted to put on his menu another essential part of Savoyard culture”
A cheese which owes its name to the crevasses which fracture the glaciers: the seracs.
In his Belleville valley, a cheesemaker makes it with the milk of his sheep. Serge Jay
is one of the last to carry on the tradition. “We’re going to set fire to it. Come on, let’s go! There
is at least 15 L. 15 L of whey. We agree, Sérac is made after Tomme.
So this morning the Tomme has already been made , and there is still the whey. And this little
milk is warming up now.   You mustn’t let it boil, you must make sure
that these kinds of small volcanoes, in the shape of small craters, that the foam comes out, and then, at
that moment, you turn off the gas, and now you just have to mold these little seracs”
“Whey is what people ate in the mountain pastures every day, every day,
every day. These people either fed it to the pigs or ate it themselves. But
people were a little ashamed of their work, of their profession, it was hard, for them there was
nothing gratifying in all this, whereas now eating a serac
is something extraordinary. » “It’s a product that has become noble with…” “
Which is noble and has always been noble” “But at that time for them, they were
n’t rich, it was a poor man’s dish and as they didn’t want to be seen as
poor, they didn’t say, they ate it and they especially didn’t tell
anyone that they were eating it” “And as usual, to enhance
this cheese, it was in Savoyard history that Maxime drew inspiration. »
« Since the serac was for the family and it didn’t bring in anything, there were some clever people in
the valley who put a piece of serac in the butter that they sold at the price of butter and so
one day, I said to myself: why don’t I do it ? And we’ve had it on our table for a year
and a half. It brings to our table the stories that our parents, our great-grandparents,
all the people of the valley lived and which for them was their daily life, and brought up to
date, it is what people come to look for in our houses” ”
On the terrace, it is time for tasting”
“There we have the fat of the butter, the freshness of the serac, the taste of the sheep,
a little fleur de sel on top with crusty bread.
And that’s enough. A good walk in the mountains and
we’re off again for three days. Exactly ! »
“It is above the farm, in the heart of the mountain pastures that Serge grazes his sheep. »
« Here we are in the plots where the sheep spend most of the summer
feeding and producing milk » « But today, Serge had to
change his breeding practices, to protect his sheep from a new threat »
« I am bringing them in because for two years the wolf has been active and now we are afraid of being
eaten. We can see that we are at the edge of the woods and he is hiding
in the woods, he is looking at us and sees us, and they have sensed it because they do not
need to see him to realize that something is happening and that there is danger. And
suddenly he stressed them so much that a third of the herd had an abortion.”
“When they have an abortion they no longer have milk, he no longer makes cheese, he no longer supplies
us and other customers and then it’s a significant financial loss because his income is
not just meat, it’s everything else.” “We’re going to have to adapt, because we’re not going to
eradicate the wolf, that’s out of the question, but we have to make sure that he can stay
as far away as possible from the herds and the chalets so that
everyone can share this territory. » “50 km away, the torrent of glaciers
digs a particularly deep valley: the Chapieux valley”
“There is a cow that escaped” “ It is the territory of exploration
of two architecture enthusiasts” “ We are at the border of Haute
Savoie which is located right at the summit all along the ridge and on the right
we will arrive at the glaciers and we will be at the Italian border of Val d’Aosta.
“Every time I go up here, I enjoy seeing these mountains with the light
that never offers the same images” “Pascale Vidonne and César Carrasco
know the region well because they travel through it all year round”
“I am mainly responsible for restoring the old built heritage, particularly the
chapels, and you should know that in Bourg Saint Maurice, we have around thirty chapels. And the
difficulty is that they are far from each other. And so there is a lot to do”
“César is a restorer of sacred art” “Today, Pascale asked him
to accompany her to discover a building that intrigues her”
“We have been working together for years and when I have projects, I like to
talk to him about them beforehand to see what he thinks. And a little further down the valley
of glaciers, there is a very pretty little chapel which is a private chapel. I am
happy today to be able to discover it” “To get there, they are
exceptionally authorized to take a road closed to cars. »
« This is where you must not meet anyone for this famous climb. It is
a road that is very narrow, so it does not allow two vehicles to pass. »
“This valley is completely closed in winter. There are a lot of avalanches in the area with
the very steep terrain in this very narrow valley, so in winter,
life is almost impossible. » “We’re a bit cut off from the world,
we’re completely cut off from the world” “Damn! What is she doing there? »
« Wait, she stops, it goes over there. » “It’s a bit steep down there so it
would cause a lot of damage if we fell. ” ” However, we had asked if the route
was clear at this time.” “She’s backing up, she’s backing up, it’s cool. »
“The priority is the one who goes up. ” So now I can
go through, that’s good! THANKS !” “So there we see the ice, the
eternal ice, we can clearly see the retreat of the glacier, we can see the rock which is clearer, the ice
20, 30 years ago was right at the bottom. » “This ridge line draws
the border with Italy. A proximity which made this
valley a hotbed of conflict during the Second World War.
“Today everything seems peaceful, we are here, admiring the mountain, but we
must remember that it was the site of bloody battles, where several resistance fighters
lost their lives. It was mainly on August 21, 22 and 23, 1944, that there was fighting.
Moreover, there you can see a buried fort. You have to imagine a whole circuit of galleries
underneath. It was actually to block the passage. “This is the famous Glacier Chapel”
“This chapel belongs to a family from the mountain pastures. »
« Pascale and César do not know what they are going to discover there. »
“Oh yes, great! This little chapel is magnificent!
It’s chapels like this that I like. Who are still with their plaster, their
lime plaster. It is a typical mountain chapel, a very simple plan, a single volume. »
« On the other hand, did you see? It’s riddled with bullets. They are everywhere. »
“Given the fighting that took place in the area…” “ It’s really in its place, with the Aiguille
des Glaciers behind it, it’s placed there, it’s fabulous, it’s the entrance to paradise.”
“I can’t wait to see the inside anyway.” “Ah yes, you see, as I was saying, it’s a
small vault right in the center, with a small altarpiece, did you see?!” with a 19th century decor »
« At first glance, I find it magnificent, this altarpiece is not very damaged.
Super good condition, there are some flaws, but it’s not too bad. This is the
first time I’ve seen something like this, it’s a little drawer hidden underneath. »
« The surprise is good for Pascale and César »
« But one detail catches the craftsman’s trained eye »
« That’s not at all natural, it looks like something happened and what
alerted me was this shard that is here, there it looks like a
small grenade or something went through from underneath. These fragments,
we see the projectiles arriving here and here. I think there are people who
are hiding in there. Yes, I think there was something very hard about that. »
« Evening is coming to the valley of glaciers » « The family who owns the
chapel finds Pascale and César. » “They were my great-great-grandparents.
They made this little chapel to protect the valley. »
“It’s true that it’s good to have a chapel like this, not
everyone has a chapel in their family. So we try to hold a mass every year to
keep the tradition going and keep it that way. And pass it on from generation to generation”
“So we had our son baptized last year in the family chapel and
we will certainly have the next one baptized next year in the city of glaciers. »
“The Baroque chapels are the identity and soul of Savoy. »
«The commune of Bourg-Saint-Maurice has nearly thirty of them. »
“A real challenge for Pascale who wants to open them to the public
while protecting them from damage. » “In the small village of Vulmix,
the curator succeeded in this challenge. It offers visitors one of the most
beautiful painted chapels in the region. “This chapel deserves
special attention because it has a decoration created in the 1460s
and it tells the legend of Saint-Grat. » “I’m coming to make a quick assessment, to see if
there are things to prepare for the visit, to see if there’s a little cleaning to do because
there are volunteers who take care of that. And then at the same time, I come to make a small
assessment of the state of conservation of the paintings, to see if there are any problems”
“In this chapel, a cycle of frescoes retraces the journey
to the Holy Land of the Bishop of Aosta. » “He went on a mission to the Holy Land to
recover the head of Saint John the Baptist which had been thrown into a well after his
beheading. The signs are read from above. In fact, you have to turn, you
have to go back like this, you have to follow, that’s it. » “One of the rather amusing scenes in
all these paintings is this one, the one that represents Saint Grat bringing
the head of Saint John the Baptist to the Pope of Rome, and the latter, to thank him,
unhinges the jaw and offers it to Saint Grat as a precious relic. »
« To highlight this 15th century work, Pascale created an arrangement:
This lighting illuminates the paintings but, in the long run, it could also damage them. »
“Even though it’s a cold light, it still provides a bit of warmth and it’s
still radiation that’s not natural radiation so it’s really used
very sparingly. Generally, people understand the problem well and accept it.
” Pascale has another dream:
to integrate the chapels of her commune into the Baroque Trails: a very famous tour circuit. »
“She has an appointment in the village of Versoye with Sylvie Gotteland”
“There was the old presbytery” “It was she who initiated this
discovery trail. Pascale hopes that the Versoye chapel will interest her. »
“It’s very pretty” “Here is our beautiful church, I’ll
let you discover this whole thing. Richly decorated but with a decor that
has disappeared over this whole part there is restoration work
that is certain but it is interesting ” “Sylvie is immediately intrigued
by certain art objects. » “This statue is pretty. There is
a Holy Bishop. You see, it’s interesting for us with the visitors because we can
show them the sculpture technique, with a wooden sculpture, hollowed out at
the back and you can clearly see all the gilding. “Too damaged, this chapel
remains closed to the public today. But Pascale Vidonne hopes that one day she
will be able to join the Baroque heritage discovery tour led by Sylvie.
“We cannot simply enter this chapel and show the decor in this state; there must
be restoration projects behind it. There is potential in this chapel
because Baroque churches are very well known, for 25, 30 years, now there are
still some somewhat secret places like this one or places off the beaten track
that deserve to be valued more. » “The route of the Baroque chapels
follows the valleys used by Italian artists in the 17th century. »
« Passionate about this story, Sylvie Gotteland crisscrosses Savoie in search
of new, little-known or unusual gems. » “Today she will discover the
chapel of Notre-Dame du Charmaix, in the heart of the Maurienne valley.”
The chapel was built against the cliff simply because the statue of Notre-Dame
du Charmaix was in a cave which was located below the bridge. The first traces of
dating of the chapel are the traces of dating of the bridge which dates from 1401.
“This chapel which is clinging to the cliff, it is
not at all ordinary. We say to ourselves: what a job! And now I really want to go and see below. » « «
This old road that led to Piedmont, Italy. »
« Just above, 5 minutes away, there is a ski resort called Valfrejus
and this ski resort has a history which means that the ski slopes used to pass through here.
It’s quite improbable, quite extraordinary, but when I was little
I used to go home to Modane, passing under the porch of the chapel on skis. »
“Its unusual architecture is not the only originality of Notre Dame du Charmaix.3
“Go there” “It is dedicated to the cult of a black virgin. »
«The particularity of this one is that it is made of marble and not of ebony wood
as one finds almost everywhere, and it is of a double color. She is
simply black from head to waist and then she is white. And at present
it remains a mystery because we do not know why it has this peculiarity. »
“ This 15th century chapel houses a
perfectly preserved 19th century altarpiece and side altar . »
“ But what makes
this chapel unique are the small, more modest paintings: the ex-votos which
bear witness to the devotion of the inhabitants. ” These are paintings that were offered to
thank the Virgin for granting wishes. We can clearly see that these ex-votos tell a
story, in particular, you just have to approach them, there are many of them: we see a woman who is
praying and who is not praying to just any virgin, we can clearly see that it is a black virgin
with child, so it is indeed the virgin of this chapel and there a man who is bedridden.
“It touches me because these are scenes from the daily lives of the region’s inhabitants.
Obviously there are the very imposing altarpieces, but there are these small paintings which are much
more discreet, you have to get closer to discover them. Ultimately, the sacred was close to
men and women and that is what they also came to seek; the sacred was not lost
up there in the heavens, it was there. For them, it was a place that belonged to them and it is a
place that is still inscribed in time today. » “Every September 8, this chapel is the
most visited pilgrimage site in Maurienne. » “Back in the Tarentaise Valley”
“Chef Maxime Meilleur is back on the road” “Les Chapelles… 2 km! »
« He will discover the result of a work that he commissioned from a craftsman. »
« We went to the Forge des Montagnes, which is located in a small village, in Les
Chapelles, to see Stéphane, a blacksmith who created a line of knives for La
Bouitte and who will present them to us. » “A year ago, we met him
and I wanted to make a very high-end Savoyard knife with him. »
“Hello Stéphane, are you on my knives? » “Yes, I am forging a blade.
Doc, I’m going to work on the tip, a little below 900°, around 900°. »
“It’s a big challenge because it’s one of my first big orders so I’m a
little nervous, I’m moving slowly and I’m happy with the result. Maxime awakened my
creative side in me by being very demanding in terms of creation, creativity and innovation.
It is a series of knives but they are unique pieces so it is the whole
artisanal character which will come out in the object. » “Do you want to try…” “
Practice makes perfect!” » “What I like is when the tip is
slightly drooping. You’re going to bring the point back, and then you’re going to quickly counterforge it.
” “Are you ready? » “A former webmaster, Stéphane Thomat has
retrained in the world of cutlery and left Toulouse
to return to his homeland. » “ So I bring the blade flat, on
the edge, and there it is, off it goes. Come on, counterforge. It’s just to straighten the
blade. You see, it’s slightly more tangent. You’re still much better than me! »
« a few years of experience » “Today, being a client of Stéphane
and bringing his know-how to a Savoyard table made by a Savoyard, the
circle is complete. We are in the region, we are making the region progress and we are making
the region known, the circle is complete. It’s not me who’s going to make him sell 100 knives, that’s not
the story, the story is human and about bringing something that is Savoyard to us. »
“Stéphane had to create no less than 9 prototypes to achieve the
creation of a signature knife. » “We find all your prototypes there. »
«We were looking for knives that felt good in the hand, had an original feel, and above all,
that told a story. Something that made me fall in love: my mountains. And for me,
haute couture, whether in the kitchen, is all about the details. There we have the finality.
We have our little mountains, we have our raw forge, we have the emblem of Savoy, we
have the knife which is heavy and for me it is a total success and my father when he saw that,
he saw a chamois paw here. And that for me, is very, very beautiful, very, very beautiful.”
“Back to Saint-Marcel where the evening service is being prepared. Maxime introduces his
youngest son to the basics of gastronomy. At Les Meilleur, three generations
come together behind the stoves. » “Calixte, 11 years old, has been appearing
in the kitchen since this year. » 03:48 « His brother Oscar, 17, is in
vocational baccalaureate and is working on entrances. » “Calixte, today is Saturday night,
he’s coming with us instead of staying home.” “Please serve.” »
« He knows what he has to do, he does very simple things, put
small onions on small puff pastries, he will put these small powders of
fir bud. On the other side, Oscar is with us too. Today, the family’s guiding principle
is to work together; what we need to give them is a taste for
effort, for doing well, a taste for what is good. In fact, I was educated by my grandparents,
by my parents here in the restaurant, and in fact the children simply follow
what was our education for years, and it seems completely normal. I’m going back. »
“Oscar, be ready for two caviars. » “Did you oil it?” Are your circles oiled? »
« We are making a caviar with a thickened lemon cream, fresh hazelnuts,
carrot pickles. To make a dish like caviar Savoyard, we made
carrot juice with water and it gives us snow, like snow in the mountains. Did
you get some dried caviar? Oil, did you put it? “The weekend is an opportunity for Oscar to put
into practice what he learns at school. » “I really like working with my family. I find
it great and very enriching. We learn a lot of things and we often have little tips
from our dad who helps us. You have to be up to it. » “Let’s go, 2 caviars”
“I created the first chef in the family, and Maxime has already
created the 3rd generation, so that means we can become a family of chefs
for a long time. That’s what I would like…” “We’re off, two lambs!” »
“ The next day is a day
off for the young chef. The opportunity for a hike between father and son. »
« We take the time with Oscar because we have very demanding jobs, and I am lucky to
have him with me a little in the kitchen, to take little walks like that
together and discover places that I was also shown when I was little, it’s great
and in the family education that I had, these are things that are important. ”
It’s a little complicated to get here, the roads are chaotic.
We have to keep our feet on the ground, because in our mountains there is
a kind of hardness in the way of being. You have to walk, so it’s physical, there’s
the altitude, there’s the wind, there’s the cold, there can be heat in the summer, but this
difficulty is compensated for by the landscapes, by nature, by this environment which
is around us which for us is natural and in fact it’s our
daily environment with the children and that’s still a bit exceptional. »
« After a few hours, Maxime and Oscar arrive at the edge of Lake Crintallia. »
“A lake that is difficult to access, at an altitude of 2,500 meters. A natural and confidential haven. »
« Oscar enjoys fishing, a hobby he inherited from his grandfather. »
“I love the mountains, the contact with nature. There we are all alone, there
is no one to bother us, we are peaceful. “It’s moving a little. Oh, that one is beautiful. »
“It’s really not very big, but it’s a trout, it has beautiful colors. »
“That’s the savages” “She’s a real little savage. »
“When our customers make the effort to come to our homes, we have a duty to
share with them the state of mind of a family, of a region, of a village. It’s truly a
treasure! We have an incredible heritage in Savoie . In fact, there is
nothing missing in Savoie, nothing missing. » “A little further on, another
figure from the valley begins his harvest. The fruit of a true passion. »
“It’s a bit of a bee paradise at that altitude… it’s true that they’re
quite happy there. We’re going to put a little smoke in it. It’s okay, there aren’t
too many around, they’ve come down well.” “I live in my hives, that’s
a bit of an exaggeration. Let’s say yes, I like working with bees
“This one is magnificent, that one, ah yes, magnificent”
“Klébert Silvestre is a renowned beekeeper. It is the
beginning of summer, and with his son Zacharie, he is enjoying the full flowering season. »
« In our area, the environment is quite well preserved in St Marcel. We have a farmer who
works well, which allows the flowers to have time to produce
nectar before they are cut. We have white clover, we have birdsfoot trefoil,
we have mullein, we have rosehips. It’s really a wildflower honey
, so that’s why it has a very particular taste anyway. »
“When I’m alone, I talk to my bees, just to keep them company and
it’s nice to explain to them what we’re doing, to come with good intentions, that we’re
not a predator. We put our hand like this, we tell them to calm down, I’m
not going to bother them. In general, they understand and are calmer. »
« At this time of year, Klebert prepares his bees for their summer journey
which will begin at nightfall. » “The day is slowly declining. »
« For these bees, it’s the big night: they’re going to move. » “
It’s 8 p.m.: Klébert is selecting the hives for transhumance. »
“So, this one. Since the flowers here are fading, we’re going to move them
a little higher up the mountain to where they’re in full bloom. It’s also good to not
put too many hives in one place either. Otherwise, it causes overpopulation, it’s like
overgrazing. That’s over-the-top. » “Klébert and Zacharie wait for
nightfall to be sure that the bees have all returned to their hive. »
«And concerned about their well-being, they have their method. »
« We transport them with the hive open, the entrance to the hive which is here, we leave it
open. In nature, bees are never confined. So here it’s the same, we do
n’t block their entrance to our hives. When they want to go out for some fresh air, they
can go out for some fresh air. So they are not stressed. It’s a bit like us,
if someone locks a door, it stresses us out, well, it’s the same with bees. »
«Here we are at 1200 m and we are going to take them up to 1700 m under the Cochet mountain. »
“ I like the place up there. There are some
pretty flowers, including rhododendron, which will allow our friends the
foraging bees to make rhododendron honey. This allows me to
have different honey while remaining in the valley by having hives at different altitudes. The higher you go in the
mountains, the less strong the taste is and the clearer, more transparent the honey is. »
« At 10 p.m., the bees arrive safely. »
“ Here we have just dropped them off.
They go out a little, it’s normal… They wonder what’s
going on. On the other hand, by tomorrow morning, things will be better, they will find each other again.
They will find their way back, they will do their orientation flight tomorrow morning.
We’ll go and find the roofs and then it’s over, we’ll go home. »
“ The next day, new mission. »
“Klébert is an activist. Saving bees is a personal struggle. »
« Here we are in the heart of the Encombres valley in the Bellevilles valley, »
« He takes us to a little paradise where he created his laboratory. »
«Here he doesn’t collect honey, he raises queens. This is the conservatory
of the black bee of Savoie” “The black bee is a local breed, it is
called appis mellifera, a rustic breed, like the Savoyard, it is economical, it does
not develop too quickly in spring, on the other hand it always keeps provisions.
It is adapted to our environment. It’s pretty awesome.
It has been in Europe for 10,000 years and has survived two
ice ages. We hope that we will be able to preserve it for our grandchildren. »
« In this isolated valley the black bee can reproduce without any
alteration of its genetic heritage and thus perpetuate the species. »
« It is true that in France, at the moment, there are a lot of bee disappearances
due to pesticides and insecticides, but also because there are breeds that are not
adapted or there has been too much crossbreeding of breeds, so because of that, we can also lose
bees. So by keeping bees that are locally adapted, we have less loss. »
« Kléber offers its queens to beekeepers in the region to develop colonies
of black bees throughout Savoie. » “This very demanding breeding sometimes leads him
into astonishing quests that he shares with his son Zacharie. »
“Can you see the road?” “Yes, towards the hole below”
“Equipped with helium-filled balloons, they seek to uncover a well-kept secret.
“We are looking for the gathering place of the males where they gather
to fertilize the virgin queens. They gather and every day between 11am and 3pm, they
go to a place and wait for young virgin queens to pass by and
we don’t know this place so we go looking for it. We’ve been looking for several years. »
« Klébert uses a method based on the reproductive system of bees. »
“Get your cage down please, Zach” “Here, I’ve collected some young virgin queens
and I’m going to put one in a cage for him to attract the males. It emits
odors, pheromones, and thanks to this, males will be attracted to it. »
“Let’s go!” We move 20 m away so we can keep a distance between us. »
« The 3 men begin their search. This mysterious gathering is
called by beekeepers the bee ball. “We need a balloon because the males
are between 10 and 20 m high, so to attract them, we need something high up,
and a helium balloon is what works well. » “We listen, we look at the
queen cages, if we hear males arriving. It’s a kind of buzzing, it goes bzzzzz”
“After a few minutes, Zacharie has a bite”
“There are two or three males. » “Where, on cage 2 or 3. There
are at least 5 on the cage. » “Do you want to try moving around
a bit and see if they follow?” » “They’ve been following me for 20 meters already.”
“Zach, have you seen any?” » “Yes, I have 2 or 3 on my cage”
“I have about ten. » “Don’t move, Zachariah. »
« The gathering place will perhaps be discovered… »
« Ah, there are some who are coming to me. There are some who come to shoot. Two,
3, 4, 5. I have 5 or 6 of them spinning towards me. We’re in the zone! On the cage,
look! . Seven, eight passing, all around the cage. So I think
this is one of the places where… It’s great, we’re seeing males coming
towards our virgin queens, I think this is one of the gathering places of the year, it’s here. We
found it! we found one. This is great! I didn’t expect to be so lucky
. Honestly, I didn’t expect to be this lucky. This is awesome. It’s a
clearing. There’s a forest edge down there so it’s certainly a landmark for the
males, it’s a nice plateau, quite sunny, quite warm, a little protected from the wind, so
that’s one of the reasons why they’re there. We will be able to come several times at different
times during the year, this will be able to refine our knowledge a little, how fertilization takes place
and if we are very good, one day we will see fertilization in flight. Downright. »
“It’s a day that we won’t soon forget, it’s certainly one of the best days of my life. »
“ In the neighboring valley, a family goes on
an expedition for an original harvest. » “I think the meadowsweet
is well advanced this year. » : “We are in Valmorel, it’s the
Morel valley. The Morel is the watercourse which descends from the valley floor.
The valley floor is a large cirque, it brings together all the torrents and so the Morel will
really flow into this hollow on this descent. And so there we go down and we go to our
picking area, we are going to pick wild garlic for our preparations. »
« This morning, Nicolas, Marion and Louise are going to look for one of the
essential ingredients for their production of crozets, the local pasta from Savoie. »
« On the way, they pass through the village of Pré. ” “You have to go a little way, we do
n’t go that way often. ” ” There it is one of the, one of the beautiful, it is
one of the beautiful chapels frankly that there is in the valley it is very luminous
and its particularity is in the offerings, at the time there were two trunks. There was a
classic trunk, let’s say for Saint Barbara, and a trunk in which people could make
their offering with wheat, which is exceptional , you don’t find that elsewhere. »
“Nicolas was a ski patroller in a large winter sports resort. »
“He left his job to embark on a crazy project: making organic crozets with wild plants. »
“His goal: to live with his family in harmony with the mountain. »
“Come on Galipette, come on. » “and here we are in the cool. »
« We joined the Morel course, so we are really on the edge of a watercourse, and
wild garlic really likes this freshness, so here we are in the perfect zone for wild
garlic, I smell the garlic, it’s true that the smell guides us and it reinforces our place, you know.
“As soon as you touch a leaf, as soon as you crush it, it smells of garlic and it’s true that in
terms of taste, you really find garlic, more subtle than the garlic you can use
in cooking. It’s very recognizable. » “You can eat it fresh, as pesto. So
we chop it up and put it with olive oil, so it can be used as a seasoning for pasta,
fish, and then we can eat it in soups, it seasons all dishes in fact. »
«This herb takes its name from the bears that eat it in spring to purge themselves
after the long period of hibernation. » “It’s a plant that we pick
before flowering and its properties will be to detoxify the body, that is
to say the liver, the kidneys, the intestines, it will cleanse us just after winter. ”
It’s a continuity in fact, I didn’t invent anything, we are in the continuity of the people
who have been picking for a very, very long time. » “Nicolas settled with his family in
a small village at an altitude of 950 meters at the entrance to the Tarentaise. »
« Here he makes his little Savoyard pasta enriched with
all kinds of wild plants. » “And what matters to Nicolas
is to rediscover, at each stage of his recipe, the gestures of the elders. »
« We are using drying methods that are long and gentle, we are not going to traumatize the plant at all. All
nutritional values ​​will be present even at the end of drying. A plant like that
will be dried at around 40, 42°, so compared to an industrial process where we dry
very quickly, in 4 hours at 120°, at the end, we do n’t have the same products at all. That’s obvious”
“Here are the crozets that Nicolas prepares from buckwheat, a plant
traditionally cultivated on poor mountain lands”
“We created a recipe that was as close as possible to the authentic recipes
that were made by the village elders. We tried to find this taste of
buckwheat, this binding side, plus the plants. » “It was his love of nature and his practice
of sport that gave Nicolas the idea of starting to make crozets. »
“We practice ski touring, ski mountaineering and mountain trail running in the summer.
We needed food that would last a long time. These raw materials are
ingredients with very low glycemic indices, which allows us to have energy
that will last over time and during exercise. » “Nicolas has trained and
set up his own laboratory at home” “A crozet is really easy to make”
“The little pastas are almost ready. They will dry for another 11 hours before
being packed and transported to their final destination. »
“Because the day is not over for Nicolas: he is on all fronts. »
« I will deliver mainly to Savoie, Haute-Savoie. It’s important that
it’s local. For us, we already make a product that has a Savoyard identity
and we have strong local demand. So we don’t need to sell our products further
than the Rhône-Alpes region, in general. » “Nicolas and Marion embarked on
this project without any personal contribution, but with a lot of support. »
“We started with crowdfunding and it worked very well. We
were a bit under the illusion of the amount, but on the other hand it allowed us to communicate. »
“There were people who really believed in the activity and who really put in a good ticket,
people we didn’t necessarily know and with regard to these people who believed in us,
it boosted us, it allowed us to really launch the project. »
“ A year later, the bet has paid off! Nicolas
produced 8 tonnes of pasta and crozets and gained the trust of around twenty organic traders. »
“Hi Eric, I’ll bring you the crozet delivery” “Thanks, here we go”
“We don’t have as many of our local products in Tarentaise as we would like. We are not a big
region of producers apart from cheese, and Nicolas is the only one to offer pasta, we
find crozets but not necessarily artisanal, not necessarily as high quality and so
it had its place in this mural. “And there you have it. And the crozets in bulk »
“You have the whole order. I gave you I think 18 nettles response, you will tell me how it goes”
“We inform customers in a more human and more transparent way, since we know exactly,
Nico, there is no subcontracting, it is Nico who does, it is Nico who delivers, it is me who receives,
it is me who sells to the customer. It’s the shortest route you can imagine and that’s
nice. For us and for the customers. » “See you next time!” »
« Thanks Nico » “Hey, we’re going to the pastoral feast, if
you don’t know what to do on Sunday. ” “We’ll try to get there then!” »
“Thanks Nico, good luck, see you soon! » “This celebration is Saint Joseph’s Day. The inhabitants of
the three neighboring hamlets gather together and each brings their homemade dish. »
“This year, Nicolas prepared a crozet gratin with Beaufort cheese. »
« Ah well, now I’m going to be judged and put through the mill by the oldest men
and women who have been doing this for generations. I will have a
grade assignment at the end of the evening. » “Christiane, where should I put this for you? »
« Nicolas is expected at the turn by his neighbors, impatient to taste the crozets. »
“You’re the one who stops me, otherwise I’ll continue, just a little longer? Come on ! For the
village elder. I didn’t skimp on the cheese. » Live with the little ones
« I had never tasted your crozets, they are very good »
« Thank you, it’s a pleasure » « The crozets are very good »
« I have a crozet fan club. “It’s good that he embarked on
an adventure like this, it’s courageous. For a small village like that, a small
commune like that, it’s very good to be able to bring out products like that, which are
local and it allows people to taste them and also to enjoy them, to buy them too
and most people little by little will go and buy from Nicolas.
Eating local is better than having products imported from who knows where. »
“So from 1 to 10 what do you say? » “I was missing a little salt”
“I was sure of it! » “But they had a very good taste, a deep earthy taste
and with a subtle herbal taste, a grass of I don’t know what, there…”
“Did you smell the little taste of wild garlic from the Morel? »
“Although this dish is best enjoyed in winter by the fire, it’s a success! »
“It’s the convivial side of the dish and in fact, whatever the weather, we eat
crozet. The crozet is truly anchored in the Aigueblanche basin.
We first heard about the crozets in Cellier, the valley right next to ours, and
the first written records date back to the 17th century. Before Savoy was French. »
« What we prepare here are dishes that are timeless, it is heritage, just
like what you see all around you, whether it is the mountains, the monuments, the
baroque, etc… when you eat crozets, there is exactly the same spirit, the
same identity and the same culture. » “A few months later, we
found Klébert, our beekeeper, on the snowy peaks of
the Vallée des Belleville estate, in Les Ménuires. » “I grew up in St Marcel, so I’ve been hiking these
mountains since I was a kid. On foot in the summer, on skis in the winter, so I know the area very well
, and it’s always wonderful depending on the day, the light, the seasons,
it’s a real pleasure to be in nature. » “Summer is about bees and beekeeping
, and winter is about the ski area, the slopes, rescue operations, and avalanche control. »
“It’s March, the ski season is in full swing. It is 7 a.m., with his
colleague Margot, Klébert leaves for a security operation. »
“ Yesterday it snowed, so we come to the field, we are going to do a PIDA, that is to say
an avalanche triggering, so we are going to prepare a grenade, we are going to prime it
and we are going to look at the slope where it is best to throw it and we are going to throw it down the slope. »
«Temperatures are much less stable than before, this winter we had a lot
of quite exceptional temperature differences , we went from
-7 in the morning and in the evening it was +7, this means that the snowpack is warming up
quickly and there could be types of avalanches that we didn’t necessarily have before.
“The aim of this operation is to secure the runways just below. »
«For now, we’re going to prepare the grenade, so I’m going to cut the slow fuse, and then
I’m going to put a detonator on the end. “It’s a risky job, but these are
controlled risks. It is up to us to reduce them as much as possible,
but we know they are there. » “Here is the cartridge, it
is ready to be primed. » “I’ll wait for you there. »
“I think we’ll put it on the right, that’s where there’s a better chance it’ll trigger
a flow. I’ll light it, you time it” “Go ahead, I’m ready”
“It’s still dynamite, so there’s still a risk of explosion” ”
From now on, the two trackers have one minute and a half
to get to safety. » “We’re going to throw it away.”
“It’s the most tense moment since we threw the grenade, so with the detonation,
the lit fuse, we hope that it will explode, because if it doesn’t explode, then it’s a
shooting accident, and that’s complicated for us. That is to say that if there is a shooting accident, if
the fuse is not good, something like that, then there is a whole procedure which takes
a lot of time. Afterwards there is always a little danger so it is always the
most tense moment, it is just now. She just has to explode, then we’re fine”
“5 seconds! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 1.30 » “Spot on”
“You have to watch out for the gas return. “We’re waiting for it to drain away.”
“A landslide like this triggered by a skier can be catastrophic. »
« I’m going to go see what it did: ah yes, not bad, it’s gone, the little plaque behind. »
“We purged” “Perfect. »
“It’s 8:45 a.m., now we have to go back down for the opening of the slopes. »
“Hi Fabien, it’s Klébert, it’s okay for the opening, you can send it.
THANKS. Good day, bye! » “Nearly 200 people run
the estate every day. » “It’s a team effort because the snow
groomers have to have come and gone, they have to have finished their work, the ski lift people
have to have prepared their ski lifts, done their maintenance, checked safety
etc. and after all that, we agree between us that we will send it as soon as it’s ready. ”
When you come up in the morning and you’re the first ones on the slopes, the
good thing is that you have the first chance. The track is completely smooth, so it’s
still a pleasure to make your first track in the morning, it’s visual, it’s sensual. »
« Klébert will be surveying the resort of Les Ménuires and Saint-Martin-de-Belleville all day long
to ensure the safety of skiers. » “At the end of the day, it’s the
groomers’ turn to get into action. » “This evening, Klébert is accompanying Alberto
to prepare the station’s trails. A high-flying operation. »
«We are entering a forested area, we are going to have quite a few alders, maples,
things like that. The difficulty here is that we are just passing between the trees and there we are going to
have a hairpin where we have to turn, plus the snow is heavy, we cannot turn
in one go, so we have to maneuver. Avoid touching the cabin and the cutter. ” ”
Here, for example, we cannot go any further, we will be forced to make several maneuvers.
I’m going to have to do several maneuvers, hop and there you go. Having gone under it, and everything is fine. »
« The problem here is that the snow is wider than the actual dirt road
, so you have to be careful at the edge, never go too far towards the edge because the
machine can start to lean and it will be very difficult to catch up,
or you might not even manage it. » “Alberto has been a groomer on the estate for over twenty years
. His long experience allows him to work on the most perilous paths. »
“ There, I’m not hanging around too much against the edges
because… I’m going to be careful on the Bernadette path…” “It’s wet today!” »
“They manage to work in all snow conditions, it can be
wet snow, it can be windblown snow, it can be powder, it can be
frozen snow… Depending on the temperatures, the snow groomer’s work can be very different. »
« So from now on, we’re going to be on a slightly narrower path, and we have to be
careful. It’s very, very dangerous, yes. And we see on our right
that the slope is quite steep and the bottom of the valley is quite far away, so if we left… we
would be at a 200 m to 300 m drop with barrels. ” Klébert Sylvestre
” Within the piste service, there are the
pisteurs, and there are the groomers. It is complementary. Without the snow groomers, our
work would be much more difficult. In the evening the slopes have been worked so much
by the skiers that they are damaged, there are bumps, there are bad tracks,
so when we close the slopes in the evening, sometimes we say to ourselves “but the state of the slope
!!!”. But they put everything back in order and the next morning, we have the impression
that we have brand new slopes, all smooth, perfect for skiing.
“Tonight, Klébert and Alberto will work until 2 a.m. »
« The next day, Klébert resumed his role as beekeeper to visit his bees. »
« I go up to see my apiary because even in winter, it’s important to go up to see them,
because when there are storms, they take our roofs off, there might be a deer
or something that knocks over a hive, and what’s more it’s also a pleasure because we’re not walking
in the mountains, we’re doing a little bit of walking at the same time, so it’s also a pleasure. »
“It’s true that I find it hard to do without it, once you’ve established a relationship with
your hives, it’s hard to do without it. » “ There, we see a bee
coming towards me. “For Klébert, it’s a surprise. Nature
is 15 days ahead of schedule and contrary to what he expected, the bees are already outside. »
« We arrive in March, we have an exceptionally warm day, so the bees
in winter, when it warms up beyond a certain temperature, they come out, they do
a little maintenance, we can say that it is the spring cleaning that begins. »
“There, there’s one that’s bringing in pollen, there. She’s going to come, she’s going to come into
this hive with pollen on her legs. Two with pollen on their legs. »
« Here, it’s true we are at 1550 m, there are no flowers right away here, on the
other hand, a little lower down, Saint Martin, at 1300 m, there is a tree called the Marceau willow
which is starting to flower, so she can move a km and a half to go and get some. »
“The good thing is that when you see a hive in spring that has bees
bringing in pollen, you know that inside there is a queen who is going to start laying
some eggs. She brings in the pollen, because we know that pollen is the
protein to feed the young larvae, so if they start to store up
pollen, it means the hive is in good shape. ” ” I’m happy to see them working like
this, it’s good, it’s the start of the season that’s coming. »
“ On the opposite slope, two men
seem to be walking on the roof of the world. » “I love it, we go up this ridge, you
see, in the summer, hop, Quermoz, all there. » “Under this winter hat, here is Nicolas Mathieu,
the maker of organic crozets from Valmorel. » “Today, he is accompanied by Patrick Gohel
who is in charge of the Nâves ski area, a place completely different from the big resorts. »
«They will spend the night in one of the few shelters guarded in winter. »
« On the way, Patrick wants to show him his great pride: the Carrolet panorama. »
« Carolet is the emblematic site of Naves, it is the highest in Savoie, we have a
breathtaking panorama, 360°, truly extraordinary. »
“It goes from the Matterhorn to the Ecrins, we have the entire border chain with Italy and
the great emblematic peaks of Savoie. » “This is the most beautiful balcony in the Alps, here”
“It’s not bad, it’s not bad” “All the peaks facing us are
between 3400 and 3800 meters and below these high peaks, you see the beautiful
Tarentaise resorts, that is to say the big resorts. You know that in Tarentaise, it is the highest
concentration of ski areas, so there is La Plagne which is in front of us, Les Arcs, a little
further, there we have the 3 valleys with Les Menuires. And so we see in front of us all these cuts
in the forest, this whole mountain which has been shaped for skiing. »
“It’s a real contrast with here in the Naves Valley, there is no development, there
is no human footprint like we have opposite. So there are really two
little worlds for winter. » “Nicolas worked for years
in these big ski resorts. But he changed his way of experiencing the mountains. »
« He also became a hiking guide and takes his clients to discover
wild spaces like the Nâves estate here. » “This is my area, it’s a village that
is preserved, there are no ski lifts and yet there are a lot
of people who enjoy the mountains here, who come on holiday, who are satisfied. »
“It’s true that gentle activities have the advantage of being in a
natural setting and, unlike downhill skiing, people will be more contemplative,
they will look around them a little and really experience the mountains.
“This morning, the two men will work on a new project of Nicolas. »
«They are heading towards a forest which conceals a resource with little-known virtues. »
« The sap of these birch trees is prized for its benefits. They will come back to
harvest it in the spring. ” ” There, we will measure the diameters of the trees,
the birches to see if they are usable or not. This one is over 20, it’s even a good
22, so it’s exploitable. We can use it this spring and draw the sap from it.
We will place conical tips which will pass through the bark and when
the sap rises, the sap will flow into our receptacles. »
« Yes, this one is good too, it’s 22 “This one is not good”
“Nicolas uses the birch trees with respect for the forest. He is
very rigorous in his measurements. » “That one is definitely good!”
“We start with trees that are sufficiently beautiful, and it doesn’t pose any problem for them because when
we do a tap, it represents approximately 5% of the total volume of what it produces in daily sap flow
, so it has no impact on the development of the tree.
“This one too, it’s almost 25”
“The sap is a natural detoxifier which will provide a lot of
mineral elements, iron, copper, manganese and therefore it will regenerate us. »
“Birch is an endemic species in the country that grows naturally. In
forestry terms, it is considered a pioneer species, meaning that it
establishes itself on a site that is initially virgin. Here, it is typical, it needs a lot
of light, water and sun, so all the conditions are met
for us to actually have these groves which are quite remarkable, it is
quite rare in the region, moreover, that there are so many and of such quality.
“It was a valley that attracted me more and more because of the environment, the
nature aspect and then its natural resources, so we have a wealth and I found that
it was worth trying to exploit that. “It’s 5:30 p.m. Time for Nicolas and
Patrick to reach the shelter that will accommodate them for the night. »
« This evening, at the Nant du Beurre refuge, a surprise awaits Nicolas. »
“Pascale Meiller, the mistress of the house, has concocted a tailor-made meal: a croziflette. »
“I discover my crozets at your place. This is the first time I’ve eaten crozets at your place. »
“Crozet crème fraîche, did you have to spread a little Beaufort on it?” »
“No, reblochon!” » Hmm, so good, Pascale can feel things.
It is well risen, melting, it is just perfect. »
« I always made them, then I used other crozets, and since
I met Nicolas, I have been working with him, because I think that favoring
short circuits is important. Plus they are good and very popular, so I continue! »
“It does something to me to know that this crozet has been through the workshop and there it is,
it’s my production, so it’s true that it’s pleasant, it’s really pleasant. »
“ Every morning I go out and I appreciate being
here because I am privileged. It’s beautiful here. We have a beautiful opening onto
the Alps, we have an impression of space. ” ” Every morning is different, and
every sunrise is completely different, and it’s beautiful and it’s a
blessing. Because I am not in the tumult of others, from below. »
« Pascale and her dog Enka have been the guardians of
this refuge at an altitude of 2,080 metres for 7 years. » “Once a week, they go down to
the valley to get supplies” “It will take Pascale 30 minutes to
reach the bottom of the estate where her supplies await her . »
“ The day before, she went to
Albertville and now she has to load everything onto her snowmobile. »
“I have 40 people tonight. Like every Saturday, it’s full and so I prepare
food for them and this evening it’s fresh vegetable soup, there are potatoes, carrots, leeks.
It’s physical because we’re always loading and unloading. If something
goes wrong on the way, we put all the goods down and then we go up
on foot. It’s little things like that. » “The refuge is a 2.5 hour walk away. The
peace and beauty of the landscape come at a price: foolproof organization. »
“Above all, above all, you must not forget anything, otherwise you will lose 3 hours of your day. This is not the hardest part.
The hardest part is driving the snowmobile. » “It’s hard to drive, it’s very physical and it’s
not stable. If you drive too fast and don’t have much control, it can be dangerous. »
“ Despite these difficulties, Pascale enjoys
special moments every day. ” ” There, I saw the wolf tracks this autumn
on the Tuiles mountain, there on the ridges, I never had the chance to see them. Now,
I’m not saying I’d like to be one-on-one. But it must be nice to meet them. »
“That’s our little ritual, she knows that at a certain point she runs, then she comes towards
me, and I stop a little higher up beside her and she will start running again. That’s his
sport for the week. And she likes it and so do I, I like to see her running alongside. »
«The slope that is in the shade is an avalanche slope, and in 2014, the whole slope
fell, it crossed the stream and since then they have made this track to make it safe. »
« And as Pascale returns to the refuge, Nicolas reaches the ridge, for one last challenge. »
“First experience, I trust you. » “We’re going to put on the helmet”
“I can’t wait to see what it’s like. We’ll see in flight, he’ll wake me up if I
faint. You’ll pinch me to see if I’m dreaming.” “We’re heading straight for the slope over there. And we
let ourselves slide. We left, we let ourselves slide. The skis are taking off! You can get down in
the saddle, your butt slides well” “Welcome to the air! »
“Thank you, thank you, magnificent” “Ah, that’s huge.
You see, I have to reach 50 to discover that, it’s great. »
“There is no age limit. » “It’s incredible because
I know the valley down there by heart, and then to see it like that, you feel like you’re
visiting a postcard, it’s incredible. » “It feels great. »
“Well yes, absolutely, thank you. There you are making me experience something nice. »
“It’s beautiful to see the landscape beneath your feet like this. »
“And look, you have the birch forest right below us. »
“Oh yeah, that’s great! » “There is not only the ski economy
in our beautiful Tarentaise valley, there is something else, we must seek
other resources, because ski areas are not eternal either, we do not
know how long they will be able to feed us economically and I think that there is a
diversity that must be put in place if we also want to live differently in the mountains. »
“Do you want to try flying?” to drive? »

La Savoie, été comme hiver, est un terroir d’excellence.

Amoureux de la France et du patrimoine, ses trésors n’auront plus de secrets pour vous 👉https://bit.ly/4dnI1h1

Rencontre avec Florence Fombonne-Rouvier, urbaniste, René et Maxime Meilleur, chefs d’un restaurant trois étoiles, Klébert Silvestre, apiculteur, Nicolas Mathieu fabricant de crozets et accompagnateur en montagne, Pascale Vidonne, responsable du patrimoine à Bourg-Saint-Maurice, chargée de la valorisation des chapelles baroques.

“Terroirs d’excellence en Savoie”
Un documentaire de la collection Des Racines et des Ailes, écrit et réalisé par Jean-Luc Orabona.
© ECLECTIC PRODUCTION
Tout droits réservés – AMP

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