The weather has been clement, holidays are over, and out in the vineyards, the steady snip-snip of electric pruning clippers fills the air, now emptied of migratory birds gone south. I will go home to a fine oaked Syrah tonight, ready after four years maturing and bottle-cellared. First, though, a walk through the vines. The […]
Wineries
The bark of wine
Uncork now: Humagne Rouge, Maurice Zufferey 2012 It was early evening as I walked across crusty January snow to the trunk of the old apple tree. Dents appeared on the white surface, small shadowed pits of snow gleaming in the late afternoon light. At 120 years the tree’s branches reach high into the sky but […]
A Pinot Noir by any name
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 […]
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 […]