Category: Wine

The Raw Wine Fair: London 2016 — The Swiss Guard

London is on fire. Apart from its wildly popular tourist attractions, London has evolved into a world-wide advert for provenance-based food sourcing as practiced by hundreds of its ardent chef believers. Quality local and regional foodstuffs are flourishing, family farms are reawakening and sustainable farming practices are restoring the health of the land. Just as […]

Wine with Dinner: Randomly Chosen in May

Ready for Summer!! A little house-cleaning in May brought out these samples from the cellar. Don’t hesitate to search for and try the interesting French-American hybrid from Geneva and the stellar Mondeuse from Canton Vaud. Nothing like some juicy reds to finish off the month but first some white wines of note. Aligoté 2014, Domaine […]

MDVS 2016: Part 2 – Red Wine

Part Two of my tasting at the MDVS event staged at Geneva’s newly restored Hôtel Beau-Rivage focuses on red wine. Once again I did not taste everything but can recommend these as being among the best wines of the day. Cabernet and Blends Domaine Grand’Cour (Satigny, Geneva): This ambitious winery draws a lot of inspiration […]

Profile: Luc Massy (Epesses, Lavaux, Vaud)

  Luc Massy is one of the leading lights in the Swiss wine community. He is revered both as an ambassador for chasselas and as the soft-spoken force behind one of its most iconic brands. His tireless efforts have positioned Luc Massy, the enterprise—and its medieval-inspired label Chemin de Fer—as one of the few recognizably […]

MDVS 2016: Part 1 – White Wine

Mémoire des Vins Suisse—Geneva 2016 After 40 years and more than a thousand wine tastings later—after countless wine dinners, winery visits, seminars, panels, junkets and bottles opened at home—I am finally ready to confess that two of my favorite wine events ever are the two most recent MDVS gatherings: Mémoire and Friends in Zürich and […]

Wine with Dinner: Randomly Chosen in April

Thanks! Many of the wines tasted this month were courtesy of François Gauthier, the congenial partner at the excellent wine merchant La Cave de Reverolle, who invited me to their annual spring release tasting in Morges. La Cave de Reverolle is a fantastic source for top-quality French and Italian labels and their Swiss portfolio is […]

A Wine of Note: Blaise Duboux

Plant Robez 2014, Epesses, Blaise Duboux, Lavaux, Vaud (Plant Robert) This relic from another century is actually a local mutation of gamay noir boasting a scant ten hectares extant in a smattering of Lavaux villages. Left for dead as recently as 1966, several prescient growers gathered to plot its resurrection and in 2002 launched the […]

Natural Wine Part 2: Whither go the Swiss?

In Natural Wine Part 1: What Is It?—published in this blog on January 5, 2016 (see Menu)— I explored the current understanding of the term “natural” wine and the confusing lack of defining standards. Even though consensus is elusive—and maybe that’s how it should be—there is one thing everyone agrees on: a “natural” wine is […]

A Wine of Note: Domaine Wannaz

Merlot, “Chante” 2012, Coteaux de Léman, Domaine Wannaz, VdP Suisse The poem/tasting note on the front label, roughly translated, reads: “A flash of sour cherries and the scent of vanilla are the perfumes inhaled from the peace pipe of the all powerful.” I’d like to say that about sums it up, but I can’t, because […]