“What year is it?”

“Vin de Pays d'Oc does not have a year.”

Could this be true? I asked him to bring something else and he came up with a local wine, a mondeuse. When I sneaked a look at the label of somebody else's empty cabernet sauvignon bottle, I saw that it was marked 2007. It seems that bullshit baffles even the bourgeoisie.

The sommelier was the only black mark at the Abbaye. The rest of the staff were charming, and if they told us any lies, I didn't detect them. Talloires is a sleepy town that comes to life for a few months in the summer. There are few surprises, except one: the beach is grassy, which would make cricket possible if it were allowed.

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Otherwise there is boating, water-skiing, swimming and snoozing. Overhead, paragliders float like confetti. My wife outraged the locals by performing yoga moves on the hotel's private pontoon while my daughter and I pretended we did not know her.

The largest lake is Bourget - although some Savoyards claim Lake Geneva as their own, and there is at least some basis for this, for the southern shore is in French territory. Lake Bourget is 18km (11 miles) long, 3.5km wide and 85m deep on average. Apparently it holds enough water to keep France happy for a year.

The mood at Aix-les-Bains is somewhat different: there is a delightful sense of faded grandeur. The place is famous, as you might expect, for its baths. Although it has Roman roots - they were the first to discover the hot springs - the town only became fashionable in Napoleonic times.

The Astoria Hotel where we stayed is Art Deco. The rooms are enormous; you almost need a bicycle to get from the bed to the bathroom. From our window we had a good view of people visiting the baths. Hot water gushes from the hill and the French think it is good either to drink or sit in. We did neither, but went for a drink in the agreeable Café des Bains, which had a good selection of cold beers.

The lake itself is a couple of kilometres from the town, and to catch one of the boats you need to go to the Grand or Petit Ports. There are a number of horrible apartment blocks near by that look as if they have slipped down the mountainside from a particularly nasty ski resort.

The Le Bourget-du-Lac boasts the most Michelin-starred commune in France. We ate at the Hôtel du Port. Asparagus was in season, the Salade Savoyard was enormous and my wife's salmon smoked by the owners. This is a place where eating is taken extremely seriously. The rest of the western shores are known as the Wild Coast and largely inaccessible to traffic.

The smallest and least developed of the three lakes is Lake Aiguebelette. Its main claim to fame is that because of its compact size and lack of wind, Olympic rowers, including Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, come to train. The only drawback is that the place is crawling with Dutch people in July and August. Since they like to bring their own food and swim without clothes on, and sometimes even smoke illegal drugs, this makes the locals uneasy. They will be even more twitchy if George Clooney shows up.

Rupert Wright is the author of Take Me to the Source: In Search of Water, published by Harvill Secker on July 3 at £12.99

Need to know

Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Grenoble from £30 return. Holiday Autos (0870 4000010, www.holidayautos. co.uk) offers one week's car rental at Grenoble airport from £165.

Stay: Abbaye de Talloires (00 33 4 50 60 77 33, www.abbaye-talloires.com). From £104pp a night, half-board. Hotel Astoria (00 33 4 79 35 12 28, www.hotelastoria.fr) in Aix-les-Bains. has room-only doubles from £84.

Where to eat: Restaurant L'Ecuelle (00 33 4 79 35 26 64) in Aix-les-Bains.

Information www.rhonealpes-tourisme.com; www.savoie-mont-blanc.com; www.franceguide.com

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