Impossible vineyards. Impossible to stand in the middle of Fully’s dramatic Combe d’Enfer in Fully, across the Rhone river from Martigny, and not be awestruck. There are higher vineyards in Switzerland and in the world, there are possibly steeper ones, there are wilder ones. My own home is higher than this. But the name gives […]
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Hunting for great Arvines (Bern)
It’s hard to stay focused at a good wine fair. I went to Bern recently to visit Vinumrarum, an annual weekend wine fair for independent family wineries. I decided to focus on Petite Arvine wines. The more people who make this increasingly popular wine (Valais produced 1.9 million kg Arvine grapes in 2016, about 100,000 […]
What makes a wine traditional?
Tradition is a hot word in wine marketing right now, one that reassures consumers – and yet few of us who are on the buying end of the sales chain question what it means, I think. If you have been making wine the same way for 50 years, does that make your wine traditional? 100 years? Or what […]
Five Swiss rare wines
LOCARNO, SWITZERLAND – Thursday evening I gave a talk to a sellout crowd at the Anglo-Swiss Club in Locarno on unusual and rare Swiss grape varieties. We then tasted five of these wines. Here are some brief notes on the wines, with contact information for the wineries. All of these wines are produced in limited […]
Regional travel & wine: Switzerland’s surprising wines
Republished from GenevaLunch.com GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Torches light the lovely 15th-century cobblestone courtyard, once a two- or three-hour carriage ride from Geneva. A hum of voices carries from an open cellar door where soft candlelight offers a glimpse of amphoras and barrels. Upstairs, in a renovated area of the old Grand’Cour château, Jean-Pierre Pellegrin describes […]