Part 1 of a 3-part mini-guide for the Vinea wine fair
Reminder: Join me for a one-hour Introduction to Swiss wines and guided visit to Vinea, in cooperation with Vinea! Deadline is Wednesday night 29 August to sign up: details and registration on the GenevaLunch donations page; we will confirm your registration by return e-mail.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Faced with the happy option of sampling 1,500 wines by 150 producers from throughout Switzerland, where do you start? The best place is your brain: make sure you have understand some of the basics first.
The Vinea Swiss wines fair runs Friday 31 August and Saturday 1 September, the biggest outdoor wine event in the country and the best opportunity to really sample Swiss wines.
Here is a quick rundown on Swiss white wines, including some cliché-busters. I will follow this with information about reds, later today, then a post about other Swiss wines and a practical, how-to guide for Vinea, Thursday morning.
A nation of white wines? The cliché
Switzerland produces mainly white wines. Wrong! The famous Chasselas wine, called fendant in canton Valais, is served regularly as an aperitif wine, giving rise to the idea that white wine dominates. Red grapes cover 58 percent of Switzerland’s vineyards.
Switzerland’s place among world wines
The country has a little more than 14,000 hectares of grapes, only 0.2 percent of world production. It has a very good reputation among international wine specialists for its quality, and Swiss wines regularly appear among top winners at world wine competitions such as the Vinalies in Paris. White wines tend to perform particularly well.
How to read a Swiss white wine label
Swiss wines are traditionally mainly varietal, or single grape wines, and the labels often reflect this, with the name of the grape in evidence.
A major exception is Chasselas, so widely grown in its birthplace, canton Vaud, that you often find only the name of the village, the winery and the fantasy name, meaning one the winemaker selected.
The Chasselas from Cave Beetschen in Bursins, for example, shows the name given to the wine by its owners, Tradition, the name of the winery, and the village. The name gives you a clue as to what to expect, in this case a very good, classic style Chasselas from one of the best wine villages in the canton.
The fantasy name is usually given more prominence for blends, which are increasingly appearing in Swiss wineries’ lineups, as the Swiss become more proficient at blending.
The results of this are, for now, uneven. Some are excellent; others don’t quite make the mark.
Wineries are blending, not to get rid of their excess wines (a question I’ve been asked several times), but to offer consumers new wines that meet changing tastes.
New grapes have been introduced in recent years and these are being tested for blending, sometimes with very good success.
A good starting point is the winners of the “white blends” category in the national wine competition, the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse. The 2012 finalists were announced 22 August.
The main Swiss white varieties, partly a matter of region
Switzerland produces 160 grape varieties, an extraordinary number given the size of the national vineyard.
The explanation lies in the geography of the country, which varies hugely, from the open lakeside near Geneva to the remarkably steep banks of Lavaux at the other end of the lake, to the plains around Vully and the Alpine slopes of Valais and Ticino, not to mention the stretches along Lake Zurich and in the foothills of Graubuenden.
The six main grape-growiing regions each have distinctly different micro-climates. Ticino, for example, has areas in the north with some of the country’s heaviest rainfall and further south the vineyards are more like those of neighbouring Italy.
Climate changes are prompting growers to shift to new varieties; Switzerland has a great advantage over France, for example, in that the legislation allows them more flexibility in this area, although this will begin to change in France in 2013. Geneva is one of the regions that has benefited from this and if you’ve heard the old saw that Geneva’s wines are mediocre, ignore it – the canton suffered briefly in the 1970s and 80s, but it is coming back brilliantly, and its newer grape wines can be beautiful.
In order of their importance, by quantity of grapes grown
Chasselas (well over half), Mueller-Thurgau, Sylvaner, Pinot Gris, Petite Arvine, Sauvignon, Pinot Blanc, Savagnin and a number of others.
Chasselas is widely grown because it is an exceptional wine for reflecting its terroir, so don’t expect a floral Geneva Chasselas to smell or taste like a fruity mineral one from Vaud or one called fendant from Sierre, where one of its main roles is to help down a fine raclette cheese! And to put paid to the cliches, the top two Chasselas wines in 2012 are from Neuchatel and nearby Vully, both homes to many wonderful wines.
Prices, what to expect to pay
Another cliché that could usefully die is that Swiss wines are expensive. If you’re looking for a CHF2-5 bottle, true, you’ll have trouble finding it. But there are plenty of wines at CHF7-10 that, compared to wines in neighbouring countries, are very good value for money. I just spent three weeks in the US and compared the price range; Swiss wines are priced on a par, matching quality. Good wines in Switzerland, expect to pay CHF12-25. Very fine wines, CHF28 on up, and they are reliably good.