Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial Watch Review
The new Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial builds upon the success of the raptor-themed timepiece released in 2019. Beyond its verdant charms, this model is blessed with a bewitching face, an ultra-refined torso and an intelligent mind. Mark McArthur-Christie shares his thoughts on this elegant sports watch.
Chopard St. Moritz (1980)
Back in 1980, with the Swiss watchmaking industry in full repel-boarders mode against the onslaught of cheap quartz watches from Japan, Karl-Friederich Scheufele of Chopard, just 22 years of age, developed the St. Moritz. It, like the invaders, offered a quartz movement but a proper mechanical option too. But where it really stood out was with its design. Unlike many of Chopard’s offerings at the time, the St. Moritz had a clean, unadorned stainless steel case. That was unusual enough, but the bezel, with its six screws set into what looked like reinforcement points, was radical. Eventually, Karl-Frederich persuaded his father (who was running the business) that this new watch was a good idea. It went into production and the watch flew, becoming a brand staple for several years. The variations ranged from the original plain stainless case model, with its clear and simple dial, right through to some serious gold creations festooned with gems. The latest Alpine Eagle is a direct descendant of the St. Moritz.
Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial – Karl-Fritz Scheufele
Fittingly, Karl-Fritz, Karl-Friederich’s son, persuaded his father that the new Alpine Eagle would be a good bet after seeing a St. Moritz in his office.
The lineage is clear to see. Karl-Frederich Scheufele describes the model as a ‘re-edit of the St. Moritz’. The eight screws, grouped in four sets of two and positioned at the cardinal points, are still there. However, the bezel now has a plain edge rather than being bowed in between the screws. It’s a cleaner look, for sure. The screws aren’t just there for decoration though. They lock into the matching caseback screw receivers and snug the bezel and caseback down onto the case, improving the watch’s water-tightness. There are further tells too; look at the way the crown guard is balanced by an almost identical guard positioned opposite. The Roman numerals are a link as well.
A word about those bezel screws… If you have a keen eye, you’ll notice their slots are neither uniform nor random (as on the St. Moritz) – they actually follow the curve of the bezel. That’s a neat bit of detail engineering.
Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial – Lucent Steel A223
The case material is a little different from that used for most stainless watches. Chopard describes it as ‘Lucent Steel A223 alloy’. It’s as hypoallergenic as surgical steel and harder than conventional 316L stainless with a Vickers score of 223 against 150-170 for 316L. Chopard claims a 50% increase in scratch resistance as a result. It’s good-looking stuff; the surface sheen makes it appear similar to white gold. Big environmental tick – it’s produced using 70% recycled steel, very much in line with Chopard’s green commitments. Its hardness is great for anyone who wants to wear their Eagle every day, but a proper headache for the casemakers; it eats tooling.
Image – ©Patrick Csajko
Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial – ethical 18-carat rose gold
There’s an 18ct rose gold option too. You’ll not be surprised to learn that the gold for the Alpine Eagle – as well as other Chopard gold watches – is smelted in-house and 100% ethical.
In terms of dimensions, both case variants measure a wrist-friendly 41mm in diameter and just under 10mm in height. The solid look of the case and the small dial help it wear a little smaller than its size.
At 10 mm thick, with vertical sides, it would be easy for such a simple case design to look slabby, but the vertical satin brushing and polished chamfers take the visual weight right down. They’re done subtly too; look at the way the lug edges are polished and taper as they move towards the case. And you’ll be fine – at least your watch will be, down to 100m thanks to the through-case screw system and the screw-down crown.
Talking of brushing, take a look at that dial. At first glance, it seems like a relatively standard green brushed sunburst, but keep looking. For a start, it’s actually stamped – the base brass disc is stamped before PVD coating – and is closer to an iris with a far deeper texture than a normal sunburst. Chopard calls the colour, appropriately enough, ‘Pine Green’ and it’s intended to evoke a summer forest floor.
So far so good, but Roman numerals on a sports watch?! That’ll upset a few purists. But why not? After all, there are plenty of Cali-dialled sports watches and the numeral choice seems to fit with the model’s highly engineered aesthetic. They’re rhodium-plated (or gold-plated if you go for the precious metal version) as are the flat baton hands. Everything’s easy to see in low light as the hands and indices are lumed with Grade X1 Super-LumiNova. The base of the second hand is fletched, appropriately enough for a watch named after a bird. Finally, the date window is dropped in between four and five with the date disc using the same shade of Pine Green as the dial. White just wouldn’t have worked with a dial colour this rich.
Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial – Chopard 01.01-C self-winding movement
Powering the watch is the Chopard 01.01-C self-winding movement. The Boss has already detailed exactly how this movement is made, assembled, regulated and tested so suffice it to say that the 01.01 is a hacking, automatic with 207 components, 31 jewelled bearings that runs at 28,800 vph and will keep doing so for an impressive 60 hours. It’s, as you’d expect, chronometer-certified. It’s a bit of a beaut as well, so all the better that there’s a glare-proof sapphire display back to admire it through, complete with Alpine Eagle Foundation logo. If you’re interested in tracing movement family trees, you can find this one in Chopard’s Mille Miglia and the Imperiale too.
Keeping the plot on your wrist is an integrated bracelet. Like the case, each ingot-shaped link is cut from A223 steel, which must have been an interesting project for someone. Not only is it cut, it’s polished, and all done in-house. It’s simple to size and adjust, with each link held with a central stainless screw. Holding the watch horizontally by the head, you can see there’s absolutely no lateral flex in the bracelet, the tolerances are so tight. It tapers down to 20 mm by the concealed butterfly deployant clasp. The raised, polished centre links are another nod to the original St. Moritz bracelets.
Alpine Eagle Foundation
Chopard is reinforcing its ethical credentials further with a proportion of the profits from the sale of this watch going to the Alpine Eagle Foundation for their project to reintroduce the white-tailed eagle around Lake Geneva, their original natural habitat.
It’s good to see a new watch that’s got some real depth of history but isn’t simply a re-issue. And there’s a symmetry with the way two generations of the Scheufele family have brought their own ideas and style to each incarnation of the watch; the Alpine Eagle is definitely a chip off the old block but still with its own clear identity.
Further reading
Technical specification
- Model: Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 mm Pine Green Dial
- Reference: 298600-3014 – in Lucent Steel A223 with Pine Green dial
- Reference: 295363-5007 – in ethical 18-carat rose gold with Pine Green dial
- Case: diameter 41 mm, height 9.7 mm, sapphire crystal to front and exhibition case back
- Functions: hours, minutes, central sweep seconds, date, stop seconds function
- Movement: Chopard 01.01-C, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4Hz), 31 jewels, power reserve 60 hours, certified chronometer (COSC)
- Bracelet: tapering bracelet in Lucent Steel A223 and/or in ethical 18-carat rose gold, wide links with satin-brushed sides and polished central cap, triple folding clasp
- Price: Lucent Steel A223 with Pine Green dial – £14,200 (RRP as of 10.9.2023)
- Price: ethical 18-carat rose gold with Pine Green dial – £48,100 (RRP as of 10.9.2023)