If you want to see what over 40 years of experience looks like, you just need to take a look at the Chopard Alpine Eagle. After designing Chopard’s first sports watch in 1980 at the age of 22, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele was convinced to revisit the St Moritz with fresh eyes for a modern audience. The Alpine Eagle was born in 2019, carrying across the integrated bracelet, eight bezel screws, and the Roman numerals from some of the later references, in addition to the blazing swirl that is the dial. The intensely gouged dial is based on an eagle’s iris, and this latest reference in the Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XPS ties itself into the Alps even deeper.
The Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XPS has a lot of new features, but we’ll start with the colour. Called ‘Monte Rosa Pink’, the hue of rose gold is inspired by the second-tallest mountain range of the Alps of the same name. Despite Chopard’s inspiration, the Monte Rose massif actually got its name from a mistranslation of a local dialect’s word for ‘glacier’ rather than any pink colouration. Semantics aside, the dial is gorgeous. The depth of texture never gets old, and enriches your viewing experience with every glance. The applied hour markers and hands are all made from white gold for a lustrous contrast, and loaded up with X1 Super-LumiNova that’s 60% brighter than standard and supposedly much longer-lasting.
If you feel that the Alpine Eagle 41 XPS’ dial stands out more than usual, it’s also due to a slimming of the bezel and case which allows for the dial to be proportionately wider. That makes room for as much of the iris design as possible, while also featuring a large small seconds subdial with circular guilloché. The case isn’t just special for its modified proportions however, as it is also one of Chopard’s thinnest watches. At a total thickness of 8mm, the 41mm diameter case is supremely comfortable on-wrist with enough curvature to not feel like a dinner plate, as some ultra-thin watches can. It’s made from a type of stainless steel that Chopard call Lucent Steel A223, where up to 85% recycled steel is mixed with certain additives and heated to a higher temperature for 50% extra scratch resistance, and a purer lustre. If you enjoy taking your luxury watches swimming, you can also do that here with 100m of water resistance.
Powering the Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XPS is the Chopard Manufacture L.U.C 96.40-L. It may not have a catchy name, but at 3.3mm thick it’s one of their most refined calibres to date. With a 22k yellow gold micro-rotor visible from the sapphire caseback, you can also pour over the wonderful finishing standards which earned this movement a Geneva Seal hallmark of quality. This is the second of Chopard’s movements to earn such a lofty accreditation, with the first belonging to the Alpine Eagle Flying Tourbillon. The movement is also a COSC-certified chronometer with 65 hours of power reserve thanks to stacked twin barrels, and beats at a smooth 4Hz.