Yuw, another late comment … I never had a Swiss wine. You know, the only bottles you see here are Fendant de Valais and, I think its merely because of the crappy labels (with a large Swiss flag on it) that every time puts me off when my hands itch to grab it from the store shelves. Yet, I still believe I’m not a label buyer … 😕 . Maybe it’ll change: a good friend of mine has a Swiss boyfriend who every time a meet him goes nuts lyrical about his wines. So … . Let’s hope.
QOTD: confusing? The split up of the wine market between supermarket wine shelves and ‘real’ wine shops. There is quite a big tradition over here of the supermarkets having for about 200-400 different wines on their shelves. Yet, lot of people say that these wines are inferior to the ones you buy in a small shop. Is that true? Some things I already noticed are that they have different labels, the lead caps differ sometimes and cuvées you’ll find in a supermaret are not always mentionned on the winelist of a domaine/producer’s website, … Is it true maybe that the same wine on label is in fact different when found in a supermarket/small shop? Is it true that maybe the supermarket wines come from different and/or inferior casks/cuves? Is it all crap or is it true or half-truth? I never tried to seek that out myself with a blind tasting or something like that …

I think the restaurant idea sounds great… I say “Del Frisco’s”-esk with a solid sommelier and good price wine. I’m there… Book me for every weekend for the rest of eternity… My doctor is going to kill me for the cholesterol though

QOTD – Got to be pricing….so damn realtive.

Hi,

just find out about this interesting episode about swiss wines. Winemaker myself in geneva I was thrilled and quite surprised by the way you spoke about our CHASSELAS (typic swiss grape).

Wines made from this variety are often misjuged and misunderstood from people outside Switzerland because it (almost) always contains CO2 and produces light wines that are not in “the way we make wine today”. But that is the way we drink CHASSELAS in Switzerland.

Thanks anyway for the curiosity and the objectivity you put in your wine tasting, that is the way we should always taste wine..

Do know that aside from CHASSELAS we also produce a lot of different wine types made from Sauvignon blanc, Scheurebe, Kerner, Chardonnay and lots of other stuff.

Hope to discover more about wine around the world soon through The Wine Library TV.

See you. (why not in Switzerland).

Fred who apologise for his poor english.

I never knew that Switzerland even made wine. They have totally been off of my radar. Now I’m going to have to check them out. Thanks for a good start.

Thanks for doing an episode on Swiss wines.

There’s a great wine festival here in Zurich every year in November with wines from all over the world. It’s a great chance to find out what great wines are around AND compare them with the Swiss wines. It’s a fun time, and I learned a lot when I was there last year.

There are some great deals in Swiss wine. The problem is that most of these deals are with wines that get bought directly from the wineries and never make it into a store, even a Swiss store. I’ve found some great Chasselas that go for about $8-$10. Chasselas is a great wine for Asparagus.

What I really like about Swiss wines is that they make very unique wines here. The wines are made for a local market that’s very educated about what they want their wine to taste like, and could care less about what Robert Parker or anyone else thinks.

You should take a trip to Switzerland one of these days and visit a few of the wineries here. You’d love it.

Thanks for answering my question on facebook and giving me this link.
I am from swizerland, and I know they make great wines, I have a friend who his father is in the business.
This episode is more than 1 year old, so maybe I’ll send you some other great swiss wine so that you can try something else.

Keep up the good work!

I’ll have to try and seek out some Swiss wine!

QOTD: Why does wine scoring start at 50 points?

Qotd: Why is wine the 1 and only industry in which the critics are more famous and well known than the actual players involved.

Imagine if the local movie critic was more well known and famous than Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks!

Hey Gary,

I absolutely love your show! Since discovering it a couple of months ago I’ve been going through the entire archive from the beginning. I’m up to #68!

Anyway, I had to leave a comment regarding this episode. You mentioned the price of wines in restaurants and how exorbitant they are. I couldn’t agree more! So what did I do about it? I opened a restaurant/wine store. We sell our wine for people to take with them, but if you come in to eat, we only charge $3 extra to enjoy the bottle at the table. Wine at retail prices in a restaurant! And we’ve been open for almost three years now. I hope to franchise my idea within a couple of years. I’ll look you up when we expand to New Jersey!

Keep up the great work!

Randy

Hey Gary, this was a killer episode. Really happy to see that you did one on Swiss wines. I do know where to find them around me, but I haven’t had one yet. (gotta focus on different varietals/areas right now for my blind tasting technique test coming up.) But I have read about them, and have heard how they are of very high quality, but pretty pricey and rarely exported. I can’t wait to try one soon as I can. So you hit the nail on the head with this one. Love when you do episodes where you turn people on to wines that are more obscure than the avg.
Qotd: now that I’ve FINALLY been making sense of those German and Austrian wine laws and labeling terms, I’m gonna go with Greek wines. Hard to understand language, lots of varietals you’re not seeing anywhere else, not carried by alot of people, and if so, in small amounts, barely talked about, and then there’s that Retsina aromatized wine they do, with all that Aleppo pine resin they throw in the wine, which seems to be such a turn off to western palates, or is at least an acquired taste.
Love it every time you say you wanna see those comments, gives me the opportunity to request that you give us a vin jaune tasting/episode and one on charbono as well. Ty.

Hey Gary

I’m loving watching these early episodes. Love to see the passion bubbling underneath and the excitment setting in.

I’ve visited Switzerland a few times and love and enjoyed their wine. Love the comments about trying differnet things. Just had a quick look and in my house at the moment I have wine from Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentine, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Hungry, Croatia, China, Japan and Korea.

Cheers
Andrew

89

Only 9 more and you have your 100..

Hi, Thanks for tasting this Swiss wine, but to be honnest you didn't taste one of the best Swiss wines. For a next episode, I will recommend that you try an Amigne, Petite Arvine, or an other Chasselas likes a Calamin, Aigle Les Murailles or Domaine de la Treille.

Cheers

Love the restaurant idea, but the 10-15$ corckage fee is not bad either, I know in the States you find that a lot but here in Canada it’s not common. We do have abunch of bring your own wines restaurants in Montreal but most of them suck, so the corckage fee would be a great rule here.
As for the QOTD, I guess I would love for you to expand on what you mentionned today that your score is partially based on price. I’ve always wondered that about critics in general, does it mean that a wine that costs 10$ that you score 88 is not as good as a wine you score 88 and costs 50$ once you take the price out of the equasion? is it the same with other critics?