It’s finally happening: the long-planned and anticipated Fête des Vignerons in Vevey, that once a generation event. It is well underway – crowds are big, security is good, the best vignerons-tacherons (the festival is centred around them) have been crowned, Vevey is abuzz with things to do and see, wine tasting is happening everywhere, and […]
Blog
2018 Swiss white wines: state of the art
Between March and late June I was busy tasting scores of Swiss white wines from every corner of the country. March is when the earliest bottled wines (except the January Neuchatel unfiltered wines) begin to show up at professional tastings. I’ve tasted them at wineries, some before they were bottled, others at a series of […]
Winespeak
One of the differences – there are many – between French and Swiss French terms in the vineyard: while the French vigneron, who makes wine from his own grapes (and is normally called a vigneron-encaveur in Switzerland) cuts back summertime exuberant growth and speaks of le rognage, his Swiss counterpart uses the verb cisailler. Both also use effeuillage more formally. The point of the […]
Uncork now, Geneva white, Schaffhausen red – 30 May 2019
May and early June are for me the in-between time for wines, too cool to sip whites all evening outdoors but a night of red can feel like too much – we want to move on after a winter of them. I dropped in briefly at the end of a day of tasting organized by […]
Book reviews: gardens, wines
Bergli, an English language publisher in Basel, has two new books out that are relevant here: Gardens Switzerland and The Landscape of Swiss Wine. The first, about large public and private gardens, is a gem. The wine book has good points but is significantly flawed.[…]