What Arvine en Capital gets exactly right It’s all about the way your nose sniffs it, isn’t it? twitching like a rabbit to get a whiff of rhubarb or maybe wisteria in the air. And about the way your mouth lets it flow in, air and wine in a tight weave, moving together so that […]
Benoît Dorsaz
Arvine, November 2019 picks
Background article on Fully en Capital, the wine-tasting event where I sampled these wine selections. Arvines to fall in love with The 22 wineries that are members of the Association Fully Grand-Cru present their Arvines each November. Arvine is the second most widely grown grape in Fully, 32.3 hectares versus 73.3 ha for Fendant (Chasselas). […]
2018 Swiss wines: young Valais wines tasted in May
Les Glorieuses is a series of wine tastings held on four Mondays in May every year in Martigny. It’s open to wine and food professionals and tends to attract many sommeliers – Mondays were chosen because that’s the day when many restaurants are closed and sommeliers have a day off. I made it to two […]
They were right: small yields, great old wines
A remarkable tasting session Monday 12 November, of older wines from Valais, made by a group of small independent vignerons-encaveurs, members of the Charte de qualité St Théodule. The oldest wine was 1964, just two years before a handful of pioneers, intent on making quality wine, created the charter. They were firm in the belief […]
Rare grapes, do we love their wines?
What do rare wines from old and new grapes taste like, and should we love them? See also: The strange world of rare grapes Discovery wines Serge Heymoz of Cave les Sentes sums up my feeling for many of the old varieties I’ve tasted, when he speaks of Rèze, a wine that has been around […]