Top Swiss sweet wines, including film subject Chappaz’s, tasted at Vinea
It’s easy to see why Fred Florey chose Marie-Thérèse Chappaz in Fully for the subject of his wine film, the 52-minute documentary Les saisons de Marie-Thérèse Chappaz, which has just won the Grand Prix Spécial du Grand Jury at Oenovideo in France. The film will be shown in Paris Friday 10 September at the Luxembourg Gardens as part of the awards ceremonies for this major international vine and wine film competition.
His subject would blush, as she does easily, at being called a romantic mythical figure, but she is becoming just that in the world of wine. She makes small quantities of beautifully hand-crafted wines, high on the Fully hillside, with a searing focus on her vines and the life of her vineyard. The film, which I’ve reviewed here before, starts with the odd music of clippers snipping back young shoots, and from that moment you start to feel there is magic in these vines.
Of all her wines, the most magical are her late harvest gems.
Sunday at Vinea in Sierre I was part of a group of international wine journalists who had an early morning tasting session of some of the best Swiss sweet wines, at the Grains Nobles ConfidenCiel stand at the wine fair. These wines are among the best sweet wines in the world, so it was a daunting replacement for strong coffee after a late night with the group.
To a one, these wines were beautiful. The final one we tasted was made by Chappaz, but I’ll come back to that.
After I tasted these noble rot nectars from heaven, to literally translate Grains Nobles ConfidenCiel, I rinsed my glass and had two long cold drinks of water before my visit to several wine producers’ stands to taste their regular wines. My hands felt like they had been dipped in honey from the sweet drops that drifted down the outside of my glass and they needed a rinse from the fountains, too.
Noble rot is the popular name for Botrytis cinerea, a beneficial form of gray fungus. The Grain Noble ConfidenCiel wines are all from noble rot grapes, very sweet, elegant wines produced by some 30 winemakers in Valais, who sign a charter that has 10 rules; they meet regularly to taste and give a stamp of approval only to the wines that meet their very high standards.
I had two personal favourites among the 12 we tasted.
Petite Arvine as a fine noble rot wine
One was a 2006 Petite Arvine made by Benoit Dorsaz in Fully, called Graine de Folie. This is a grape variety that I normally prefer as a pale gold, very dry, almost astringent wine with a touch of saltiness in the finish. This version is made with late harvest grapes grown on the lower slopes of Fully. It is vinified in barrel and then spends 24 months in new barrels. The beautiful gold tones this grape offers are still there, just deeper and richer. It has floral notes with fresh fruit and especially lime, citrus jams. The sweetness and the acidity Petite Arvine offers are wonderfully balanced: the finish is long, fruity and yet that surprising slight salty sensation (even to the nose) was still there. This is a wine that I would reserve for a late autumn night by the fireplace, with a slice of Roquefort or if you’ve just been to England, a slice of Stilton, or if you really want to enjoy that salty touch set out a bowl of plain but excellent walnuts. Serve at 5-8C, well chilled, CHF40 for 50 cl but as I write these wines are sold out, so you’ll have to wait for the next vintage.
Few of these Grain Noble wines are made with Petite Arvine, so the unusual aspect of this wine has appeal for me.
Another grape, another colour, another type of gem: johannisberg
Johannisberg as the most popular grape for making them.
My second favourite was Domaine de Mont d’Or’s 2008 johanissberg (a Swiss name for the Sylvaner grape) St Martin, which has a much deeper, almost amber colour compared to the Petite Arvine sweet wines we tasted. The wine comes from this large and old winery’s steep slopes on the hillside between Sion and Vetroz.
The wine’s name comes from the fact that traditionally these grapes are harvested late, around the time of the Feast of St Martin 11 November. This sweet version of johannisberg is vinified and matured in large oak vats, then barrels. The producer suggests serving it with truffle dishes, soufflés or shrimp with puff pastry, all of which sound right to me and I now itch to head out to the shops for the ingredients! The wine has a nose of fresh banana, fruit jam, apricot and mandarine with a hint of almond as well as lemon: in short, we’re spoiled for fun with this one but at the same time it is an elegant wine with a long and pleasing finish. At CHF29 it is slightly cheaper than some of the other wines that carry the Grain Nobles ConfidenCiel stamp.
The Chappaz nirvana experience
The final wine in the group that we tasted was made by Marie-Thérèse Chappaz, and it was simply extraordinary. She doesn’t sell it, and it’s easy to see why: this is an experimental wine that she made to see just how far you can push sweet wines made from noble rot grapes. This wine, made in tiny quantities, has a very low level of alcohol, 7%, but the density and sugar in the over-ripe grapes she uses are very high, 240 Oeschle. The residual sugar level is almost off the scale at 320 g/l. The explanation is that the wine is made from vines that yielded only 100 g/m2. Compare this to what would normally be considered a very low yield fine wine made from 500-600 grams of grapes per square metre.
In other words, she leaves these on the vines until she is fighting the wasps and bees who are getting drunk on them, then she hand-picks only perfect grapes affected by noble rot, pushed to the limits of ripeness. What she ends up with is a wine that tastes of very rich, alcoholic grape jam, or the free-run juices that run off in the cellar. It’s a wonder of winemaking that only the best would dream of attempting, and it’s so well-made that despite these extremes, the balance is there, the acidity and the sugar are on good speaking terms. That said, two to three sips are plenty.
Nirvana in small doses is best.