Pinot Noir takes so many forms; I decided Monday at the Mémoire & Friends wine fair in Zurich to ask a small number of producers who make more than one Pinot Noir for details about the differences. Here are a few notes: Clones and styles Weingut Wolfer, Weinfelden, Thurgau, near Lake Constance. Martin Wolfer (whose […]
Archives for December 2019
Swiss wine 2009 vintage report
10 years on, how well are these wines doing? The Mémoire des Vins Suisses has become so well known as a collection of some of the finest wine producers in Switzerland that it’s easy to forget the original idea behind the group was to create a bank of diverse Swiss wines with aging potential and […]
Valais “star” wine awards
The Etoiles du Valais wine awards were handed out 4 December in Bern to the wineries judged the best in the canton in 2019, each for a wine that features the canton’s native son grape varieties. Vintages were 2018 except for Syrah, Cornalin and Heidi, which benefit from more time, and these awards were for […]
Chasselas, mon amour!
November brightened by gold in Lausanne The gold in question is beautiful Chasselas wines, 16 of them that have been selected over the course of a year by the quality label Terravin‘s industry experts. These are technically the best of canton Vaud’s Chasselas wines, out of 409 wines that had already received the Terravin quality […]
Changing of the guard in vineyards
Autumn shifting to winter is always a visually charged season, with dramatic color changes. This is particularly true in a country like Switzerland: the Swiss wine landscape holds mountains and rivers and lakes and gentle hillsides all in close proximity. Altitude adds another element. We veer from winter to autumn and back to winter in […]