In my opinion, the canton of Geneva is the most complicated and frustrating wine region in Switzerland. To be sure, many great wines are made here by supremely skilled artisans, but there are still too many sub-standard wines born out of complacency and lack of inspiration. It seems that while the rest of Switzerland is […]
Category: Tastings
Swiss Natural Wine: Not So Fringe Anymore
My latest brush with the natural wine scene was at the end of August in Zürich at the 4th annual Association Suisse Vin Nature (ASVN) tasting. This year’s venue, Kantine, was bohemian enough to reawaken my love for Beat Poetry and aligned perfectly with the ethos of more than 100 zero-zero wines from all over […]
2023: A Summer of Tasting—Episode One
Swiss Natural Wine Festival: Three Years Later As a seasoned taster, you might think the biggest downer to afflict a natural wine event would be the opinions of a few chip-on-the-shoulder wine critics who write for magazines nobody reads anymore. But you would be wrong. The biggest downer, as I recently discovered, is a climate […]
Swiss Grapes: Chasselas—International Grape of Mystery
Several months ago, I made the case there is too much Chasselas in Switzerland. My well-meaning rant was in response to a call from farmers for more government support for those with excess wine to sell—mostly, over-cropped Chasselas. Although I stand by my original thesis—that no one should subsidize inferior wine—I do want to make […]
Les Titans: Wine in the Extreme
Little did I know the term “Heroic Viticulture” is a proprietary trademark of The Center for Research, Environmental Sustainability, and Advancement of Mountain Viticulture (CERVIM). As such, this august designation is reserved for vineyards which meet any of the criteria listed below: Vineyard sites at altitudes over 500 meters (1600 feet); Vines planted on slopes […]
Swiss Grapes: Completer — The Answer to a Prayer
This article first appeared in Trink Magazine — Issue 04-07-2021 By traditional measures, my first year of college was a waste. I spent a lot of it playing cards with a gang of liberal theologians at a Jesuit university in California. Towering above the group was our guru, the truest Renaissance man I’ve ever met […]
Swiss Grapes: Räuschling — The Acid Queen
Despite an encouraging trend toward greater grapevine diversity, two varieties continue to dominate the Swiss wine landscape: Pinot Noir is here to stay, because the Swiss, like their German counterparts, fancy themselves the new masters of this sensitive, climate-threatened variety; and the much-maligned Chasselas because it’s so emblematic of Swiss culture as the workhorse wine […]
Eglisau: Vines of the High Rhine
This article first appeared in Trink Magazine — Issue 2, 14/12/2020 Every guide to Swiss wine begins with the same simple premise: There are six wine regions in Switzerland. That means one of them, Deutschschweiz, is forever miscast as a single entity, even though it encompasses nineteen cantons and covers two-thirds of the nation’s surface area. Meanwhile, […]
Are the Swiss Ready for the Pét-Nat Invasion?
Of all the recent wine trends to arrive in Switzerland, the pét-nat vogue may be the first to fizzle out. It’s not because the Swiss don’t like bubbles — they do, Switzerland is an important market for Champagne — but fads and frivolities are never an easy sell here. To the high-roller banker-types — loyal […]
Swiss Grapes: Sauvignon Soyhières
There’s a slight claustrophobic ends-of-the-earth vibe to the Jurassian village of Soyhières (Pop. 433). It has the plain vanilla look of 1950’s Swiss functionality with a lingering undercurrent of separatism and a patois (Vâdais) all its own. The village itself offers none of the postcard images one expects from rural Switzerland but the seasonal pastures and […]
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