GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There were some good surprises at the Mondial du Chasselas awards Friday evening 4 July at the Chateau d’Aigle in eastern canton Vaud, starting with the big winner, Domaine Chervet from Vully, with 93.2 points out of 100.

The world is so used to praising the superb Chasselas wines from Lavaux (Dézaley, Calamin, for a start) and La Côte, with some fine Valais fendants, to use the local name for these varietal (single grape) wines, that Vully Chasselas will draw a blank for many consumers.

The surprise is good because it’s always fun to see upstarts get ahead, but in this case it’s also rewarding because Vully deserves praise – and to be better known as a small but dynamic wine region with some excellent wines.

Another surprise is that so many Vaud wines did well, given the catastrophic 2013 vintage in parts of the Lake Geneva region, with hail demolishing large parts of the grape crop in several areas. Overall, last year was very tough for Chasselas growers: hail, difficult flowering, cold weather at the wrong time. The end result was a very small harvest, with 20 to 40 percent fewer grapes, depending on the region.

The organizers of the Mondial du Chasselas note that participation in most regional and international wine competitions was down this year, due to the small quantities. The number of wines registered in the Chasselas competition was in fact stable, to their delight.

Complete list of winners on the competition’s web site

Saturday Chasselas festival for public

The awards evening Friday is followed by the Fête du Chasselas at the Chateau d’Aigle: Saturday from 10:00 to 18:00, CHF20 entry includes a glass for tasting 200 wines on offer and a visit to the vine and wine museum at the chateau.

Aging gracefully in Yvorne

A category that deserves close watching is the older vintages, as appreciation for older Chasselas wines grows. The gold winner was Château Maison Blanche, Chablais Yvorne Grand Cru 2009 – a wine I have had and found superb. The winery’s Chasselas, young or old, are consistently some of the best around, in my opinion.

Swiss wines and a few others

The Mondial du Chasselas is an unusual wine competition because the bulk of Chasselas wine in the world is made in Switzerland. So if fewer than 10 percent of the wines entered were foreign, and the winners were virtually all Swiss, this should not surprise anyone. Nor is it a surprise that 436 were from canton Vaud. (not including Vaud Vully).

Chasselas is a grape that comes from the Lake Geneva region and the Swiss argue that it is at its happiest here, where it can easily express its terroir, that special sense of place – soil, microclimate and more.

Nearly half of the judges were non-Swiss, thanks to a partnership this year with Germany’s Gutadel Cup – gutadel is a German name for the Chasselas grape.

The competition awarded gold and silver medals in four categories: of the 642 wines, 532 were dry wines, 20 were wines with 4g/litre of residual sugar, 21 were wines that have had special vinification and 20 were older vintages.

Other dry Chasselas winners were from Vaud

The Vully wine was followed, in the dry category, by:

Domaine Le Petit Cottens, La Côte Luins Grand Cru 2013, Domaine Le Petit Cottens – 92.4
Chant des Resses Chablais, Yvorne Grand Cru 2013, Artisans Vignerons d’Yvorne Société Coopérative – 91.1.

Germany’s sweet tooth

The two top slots for sweet Chasselas were taken by German wines – the Swiss rarely make sweet wines from this grape and the German taste for wines overall tends to be sweeter than Swiss taste. Gutedel Beerenauslese, Ballrechten-Dottinger Baden Markgräflerland 2009, Weingut Wolfgang Löffler won gold with 89.6 points.

Oaked takes gold

The special vinification gold medal went to a Vaud wine, N°1 – Cuvée E., Obrist Lavaux Chardonne 2013,  89.6: a wine that is matured in barrel, raised on its lees, with malolactic fermentation blocked.