GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The 2011 grape harvest promises to bring us some beautiful wines, but we’ll have to wait a while for them to mature in their barrels and tanks and then in their bottles next spring. Yesterday in canton Valais I spotted several vineyards where the harvest is still going on.

Meanwhile, as the evenings cool down, vineyards take on their autumn hues, and game appears on supermarket shelves and in restaurants, my thoughts turn to lovely reds, in particular local ones.

This is the perfect time of year for reds that are not too heavy, the Pinot Noirs that I love with roast chicken now that it’s cool enough to heat the oven, and the rustic Humagne Rouges that can be great with game dishes. Gamays, especially those in blends, also go well with not-quite-winter foods.

I recently took part in a blind tasting organized by romanduvin of a group of Swiss reds. We sampled several  lovely wines and I’ll now start posting the videos with my tasting notes, part of our continuing series in English (see complete list), French and German. As always, you’ll find links to my fellow wine-writers’ pages with their videos but since they write for audiences that include a large number of Swiss people who are familiar with Swiss wines, you’ll find that our tasting notes are not the same. Keep in mind that we do these independently so I don’t know what either of them think until we finish, which makes it all the more fun.

Santé! Here’s to beautiful Swiss reds!