Note to readers: GenevaLunch editor Ellen Wallace, who writes the GL wine blog “Among the vines,” will be appearing on the WRS radio show “Stir it up” Tuesday 21 April at 10:30 to talk about Swiss wine. Cheers! Wallace writes the Among the Vines blog and was responsible for the English version of the authoritative reference guide, Swiss Wine Guide 2009-2010.
Title: Geneve-Saveurs gastronomy workshops
Location: Geneva, route de Lausanne
Link out: Click here
Description: Workshops and tasting sessions: oils, wine, chocolate and more with some of Switzerland’s top experts
Start Date: 28 Feb 2009
Start Time: 10:00
End Date: 01 Mar 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-based luxury products maker Richemont announced Monday that third quarter turnover was down by 7%, some CHF2.31 million. December alone saw a particularly sharp drop in sales, 12% overall, but 24% in the US. The impact of the global financial crisis began to be felt particularly strongly in October, the group says in its press release.
From the editor: the second part of the article on Switzerland’s 66 top wines, adapted from l’Hebdo, will be delayed to Thursday afternoon due to technical problems. If you haven’t yet checked out our most recent features and interviews (always below the international news on the home page), this is a great time to do it – wine and food and sports and business and more.
Merlot wines from Ticino, Switzerland
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The first-ever Mondial du Merlot, a global wine competition organized in southern Switzerland, has just awarded gold medals to the top 19 Merlot wines from the 278 entered, from 24 countries. Merlot is one of the most widely grown grapes in the world. “I discovered wines with profoundly different characters, all of them very interesting,” said Rodrigo Banto of Chile, one of the judges.
Title: Wine tasting at Chateau de Morges
Location: Morges, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: Three day event. Take the train and enjoy.
Start Date: 27 Nov 2008
End Date: 29 Nov 2008
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s top winemaker is oenologue Madeleine Gay, cellarmaster at the country’s largest cooperative, Provins, in Sion. She was awarded the honour of “Swiss winemaker of the year” Friday evening at the annual Swiss Wine Night in Zurich, when the country’s finest wines are named by the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse competition.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s best winemaker will be named Friday night at a gala event, the annual Swiss Wine Night, when the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse awards are handed out. The Grand Prix is the country’s main wine competition and the three top winning wines in 11 categories, from 66 finalists, will be announced.
Title: New wine festival (Fete de la Saint Martin)
Location: Satigny, Canton Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Uncork this season’s wine and dress your kids in Halloween costumes. Starts at 11am.
For more information Tel: +41 22 753 90 00
Date: 08 Nov 2008
“My philosophy is simple: I like the world of music, and there I think global because you have to let yourself think big enough. But I drink “local,” Daniel Rossellat smiles, raising a glass of very good Chasselas from the vineyards near Paleo, the festival he founded more than 35 years ago. “I always taste the local wines. In 30 years I’ve been to pretty much every country that makes it.” He travels internationally year-round to listen to and find music groups.
Daniel Rossellat is still the boss at Paleo, which has grown from its first crowd of 1,800 to an annual sellout of 225,000 tickets for 120 concerts, and his stamp clearly marks it. But he says he is gradually making way for his successor. Or successors, for the team that is in charge has already shown their mettle, he believes, led by Jacques Monnier, who has co-responsibility for the festival’s programme. [Ed.note: see the 23 July Le Temps interview with Monnier on YouTube, about his favourite groups, at the end of this interview - in French]
Rossellat, who is known in local circles as a wine cognoscente, agreed to talk to GenevaLunch about his favourite bottles, at a hotel in Nyon where afterwards he would be glad-handing local business leaders in his role as would-be candidate for the town council in Nyon. While some people have expressed surprise at his shift from music festival man to politician, for Rossellat it’s a logical evolution. “We’re lucky to be a European model. We could be arrogant about our success but we believe we must continue to innovate. And we have to use our authority to encourage our employees and the public – and the region – to assume social responsibility.” Paleo won a Midem Green award in 2008, the latest in a string of awards for its environmental efforts.
Sierre, Valais (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss wine industry is well into a strong revival, shrugging off economic doldrums elsewhere by reinventing the image of one of the country’s favourite beverages after milk. Ninety litres of milk are consumed every year, 57 litres of beer and 41 litres of wine, on average.
In April 2008 the Swiss federal agriculture office published statistics showing that wine consumption rose in 2007 for the first time after several years of falling, then stabilizing. Consumption of Swiss wines rose 5.7% and other wines 2.3%. The number of hectares of vines planted also increased. According to the government, the turnaround is the payoff of 15-plus years of Swiss wine producers replanting and rethinking their offer.
Enter the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse, the country’s main national wine competition, where judging ended Tuesday in Sierre, Valais. The number of entries was up 20% over 2007: a daunting 1,860 wines from 460 producers were sampled. Wines from every wine-producing canton were entered. The results will be announced in November at Swiss Wine Night, a gala event to be held in Zurich.
The enthusiasm for the competition, organized by Vinea and Vinum wine magazine, is the latest in a series of signs that the world of Swiss wines has moved out of its 1980s stupor to become very dynamic.
FEATURE: Variety becomes Geneva winemakers’ popular calling card
Perfumed, crisp and best drunk young – in the next two years – was the general verdict on Geneva’s 2006 white wines, presented to the public Monday at La Colombière in Lully. The reds have plenty of tannin, are well-balanced and can be drunk relatively young but they will also age well. A chorus from the wine industry agreed with remarks made by Geneva counselor Robert Cramer that "we drink our reds too young. Our culture doesn’t yet let them age."
This is changing, as is Geneva’s wine industry, whose specialty is rapidly becoming a panoply of popular, well-regarded wines. Geneva’s wines went through a difficult patch in the 1990s after market protection disappeared. In 1985 the Chasselas grape accounted for 50% of Geneva’s wines. In just 20 years this was halved, to 22% in 2006. Gamay, whose rosé has long been a Geneva
Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a year-long series on the life of a Vaudois winemaker, or vigneron, in the Lake Geneva region. GL follows Raymond Paccot and Domaine La Colombe in Féchy from the 2006 harvest to the next one in 2007. (click on photos to view larger)
Bottling the wine
For three weeks in late March and early April Paccot and his team bottled much of the 2006 harvest. Other wines will sit longer, such as the Réserve Colombe Rouge, bottled in September.
Féchy, Switzerland – April, and the weather is suddenly balmy. The last of the bottles slide into their cartons and move upstairs to the storage space. In three weeks the shelves have gone from being nearly empty to bulging at the seams. "That’s always part of the problem," says Raymond Paccot, studying the space. "Part of the year you don’t know where to put it and then suddenly you have too much space."
He says it with satisfaction, having just overseen wine put into several thousand bottles, part of the total of 150,000 bottles La Colombe produces in a year. Three weeks of hard work have gone into la mise en bouteille, or bottling, where hygiene and business management join oenology. For Paccot and other winemakers, this is the moment
