GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Visiting the open day for Geneva’s wineries will probably involve less suncream than in previous years, but here are a few basic suggestions if you’re joining the thousands who stream out to the canton’s wine villages tomorrow, 25 May.
You’ll get the most out of the visits if a) you spit out the wine after you’ve tasted it, in the small buckets provided for this and b) you ask questions, without worrying that you sound like you know nothing.
Select the village(s) you want to visit, based on how you’re planning to get around. The advantage of having a car is that you can buy and pack bottles in the car as you go, but maybe save this for a later return visit. The disadvantage is that even if you spit out the wine most of the time, strongly recommended, you have to be careful about the amount you consume: Switzerland’s legal limit is 0.5, the equivalent of one small glass of wine. Read my article on public transport options.
Most wineries will ship to you, with next-day service via the post office. This means that if you’re using one of the shuttle options you can carry home that one bottle you think you must have for dinner and leave the rest to show up later in the post.
Wineries’ policies vary, but the shipping cost is not high and if you buy more than 6 or 12 the postage is often free or discounted.
The tasting process, from white to red as a general rule
A good general rule is to start with whites and move on to reds. So how do you do this when you’re visiting several wineries? My approach is to select, for example, three wineries whose white wines I particularly want to try, then six whose reds interest me. I allow 30-45 minutes per winery, which gives me a chance to taste the wines, ask other visitors what they like and why, talk to the owners – and relax a bit. This means that I can realistically fit in three in a morning, take time out for lunch and do another three in the afternoon. Or two, lunch and four post-lunch.
Village restaurants are one option for lunch, with several offering special Open days menus, and several of the wineries offer meals. Keep in mind that many of the wineries also offer excellent snacks, so some people simply snack their way through the day!
The fun of these open days lies in exploring and visiting new places, so be adventurous. You won’t always find wines that are magical, but you’ll learn while looking for them and there are enough world-class wines from Switzerland for you to easily find some real treasures.
And with wine, no rules are hard and fast. A winemaker I admire admonished me last weekend, during Vaud’s open days, to have the reds first because they are heavier, and then enjoy the refreshing side of the whites. It worked.