Zurich Wineport is 2014 theme
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The city of Zurich is host Monday 25 August to a popular urban wine-tasting fair, the Memoire & Friends event. The fair has been organized for the past five years at the end of summer by the Mémoire des Vins Suisses group.
This year’s theme is Zurich Wineport, a play on the controversial maritime crane installed as artwork for several months on the riverfront – the zürich transit maritim – and the notion that while the eastern part of the country produces most of Switzerland’s wine, a very large part of it lands in the greater Zurich area, where it is consumed, and an old canal project would have made Zurich a major port for wine, had it been carried out.
Dreaming of canals and wine ports
A Rhine-Rhone trans-Swiss canal was a hot political idea at the end of the 19th century and it was only recently given a final burial, but had it gone through, Geneva’s wine might have been landing at docks in Zurich today! A canal built in the 17th century, the Entreroches, carried wines as far as Solothurn, and the Geneva-Zurich project would have extended this.
Mémoire invites 100 friends, Swiss cellars from abroad
The organization’s members are top wineries that are invited to contribute one wine to a bank of Swiss wines that are aged, with regular vertical (several vintages) tastings to better understand how they evolve.
The fair features the wines of the 54 cellars that are members of the group, plus a number of other top wineries (100 “friends”) invited to join them for the day. The Fifth Switzerland, or the Swiss abroad, are represented, with good quality Swiss wineries that are established in other countries taking part.
The Memoire & Friends event is open to the public at the Kongresshaus Zurich, Clariden Strasse 5 on the lakefront, from 11:00 to 19:00 Monday – expect crowds late in the day.
Tickets are CHF15 if purchased online in advance and CHF30 at the door. The programme and list of wineries can be downloaded free of charge; it is CHF10 for the printed version at the door.
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