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 […]
Benoît Dorsaz
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 […]
The strange world of rare grapes
Why would you drink wine from grapes you’ve never heard of unless you’re on your honeymoon or an exotic vacation? Just when you thought you were starting to understand wine because you could rattle off the names of a few grape varieties and even briefly describe the kind of wines they give, someone gets excited […]
Ski slopes and Petite Arvine
Note: At the end here you’ll find an interview done with me by Tony Johnston at WRS radio in Geneva, about Petite Arvine, one of Switzerland’s most interesting “native” specialty grapes. Tony and I have agreed to talk about a Swiss wine pick of mine every three weeks. This is not a commercial agreement and […]