Diots in white wine: Savoie's autumn sausage recipe

When the first cold snaps settle over Chambéry, the smell of onions and white wine drifts out of Savoyard kitchens. The diots are simmering. This small pork sausage is one of the simplest dishes in Savoie cooking, and one of the most widely shared: at home, at markets, at village fairs. Here is where it comes from, how to cook it and what to serve it with.

The diot, Savoie's little sausage

The word comes straight from the Savoyard dialect, where diot or diau means a small sausage, or sausages in general. You hear it especially around Chambéry, in the Bauges, the Combe de Savoie, the Maurienne and the Tarentaise.

A diot is a minced pork sausage flavoured with nutmeg, 10 to 15 cm long. Savoie's butchers make several versions:

• plain, the most common one for cooking in wine;
• smoked, with a stronger taste;
• with cabbage, a peasant recipe that made the meat go further;
• with Beaufort, studded with cubes of the alpine cheese of Savoie.

Most butchers in the department sell diots, including several artisan workshops in Chambéry.

The diots in white wine recipe

The most common version simmers the diots in white wine with onions. Allow 1 h 15 in total, including 15 minutes of preparation.

Ingredients for 4

• 8 plain diots (or 4 plain and 4 smoked)
• 3 large onions
• 50 cl dry white Savoie wine
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 bay leaf, 1 sprig of thyme
• 1 knob of butter, salt, pepper

Method

1. Prick the diots with a fork so they don't burst while cooking.
2. Brown them for 5 minutes in a casserole with the butter, then set aside.
3. Slice the onions and soften them in the same pot over low heat without letting them burn.
4. Sprinkle with flour, stir for a minute, then pour in the white wine.
5. Return the diots, add the bay leaf and thyme, cover and simmer for 45 minutes over low heat.
6. Taste the sauce before salting: the diots are already seasoned.

There is an older version, diots aux sarments: the sausages sit in a pot on a bed of vine shoots soaked in white wine, without touching the liquid, and steam for 1 to 1½ hours.

Which Savoie wine to choose?

The same wine goes into the pot and onto the table. Choose a dry, lively Savoie white, for example a cru from south of Chambéry, at the foot of Mont Granier:

• Apremont and Abymes, made from Jacquère, light and fresh;
• Chignin, also Jacquère, or Chignin-Bergeron (Roussanne) for more roundness;
• a Roussette de Savoie, made from the Altesse grape, if you prefer a more aromatic white.

Some families also cook diots in red wine, but the white wine recipe remains the most common.

What to serve with diots?

Three side dishes come up in every Savoyard family:

• potatoes (tartifles in dialect), boiled or cooked directly in the sauce;
• polenta, which soaks up the wine sauce nicely;
• crozets, the small square pasta from the Tarentaise.

Diots are also eaten cold, sliced with mustard, in a salad or a sandwich.

A first step into Savoyard cooking

Diots need no special technique or equipment, just time over a low heat. They are a good starting point for discovering Savoie cooking before moving on to fondue or crozets gratin.

And to test what you know about the department between two bites, our Savoie quiz is waiting just below.

Cover photo: Arnaud 25 / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources: Diot — Wikipédia (based on Marie-Thérèse Hermann's Dictionnaire de la cuisine de Savoie) · Hachette Vins — Diots au vin blanc · iDealwine — Savoie wines · Chambéry Montagnes tourist office