An Alpine Winter Feast: Cheese, Wine And A Side Dish Of Snowshoeing In France

A medieval Haute-Savoie village makes a great base for a gourmet break, with delicious comfort food and local wines. And the snowshoeing and skiing aren’t bad either, if you can drag yourself away from the table

The unmistakable whiff of cow – pungent, but not unpleasant – hit me as soon as I arrived at Ferme Dunoyer above the Haute-Savoie village of Samoëns. Rather than put me off, the scent heightened my appetite for the cheese blowout that was to come.

Sat at a wooden communal table inside the pine-walled restaurant run by the farm’s owner, Blandine Dunoyer, I waited for the bonanza of mountain comfort food: fondue savoyarde, tartiflette, raclette, then diots (smoked pork sausages) with polenta. Somehow, I found room for potée savoyarde, a rib-sticking dish of slow-cooked pork shoulder, cabbage and potatoes, then a round of top-notch alpine cheese, reblochon and tomme de savoie, before a creamy blueberry dessert.