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 — priest, medieval scholar, professional clown, and director of his own traveling circus. He spent most of each year wandering from one Catholic university to another, plying his gift for persuasion. But he always made time for cards when he was in town. When not lobbying for Christ, he was partial to Texas Hold ’em,…
After a career in the restaurant business, including several detours into wine, I came to Switzerland to marry the love of my life, my wife Veronica. Little did I know the local wine scene would grab my attention as well. The diversity of grapes and styles in Switzerland is amazing and with the new youth movement firmly in place, the Swiss are riding a wave of innovation and self-discovery. My blog artisanswiss.com is a sketch pad, of sorts, for the reference book I'm writing and the impetus to travel to every corner of the country in search of the story. So far, it's been a most rewarding journey.
Räuschling isn’t just wonderfully umlauted, it’s also one of the most exciting autochthonous white wine varieties in German-speaking Switzerland. This became clear to me on a March afternoon in 2015. I had accepted an invitation from Mémoire des Vins Suisses to come to Zürich and take part in a Räuschling vertical tasting — featuring vintages that stretched back to 1935 — at Weingut Schwarzenbach in Meilen on Lake Zürich. Since then, I taste every Räuschling I can get my hands on. The lively acidity, fine citrus aromatics, and aging potential of this rare variety fascinate me over and over. Native…...
In most wine regions, it’s common to think of harvest as the season’s grand finale, giving way to a quieter period spent in the winery and cellar. For Switzerland’s premier winemaking cantons of Wallis and Graubünden, however, the wine is barely in barrels before these regions face an even busier time: ski season. In Switzerland, skiing and tourism are intertwined, notwithstanding a strong domestic affinity for the sport. The practice in its modern form was imported from Norway in the 1890s. It was initially embraced by members of the British upper class taking winter holidays in resort areas such as…...
It was biodynamic wine that helped me to find my footing in Europe. Yet, as a Black American woman living in Europe, Rudolf Steiner's interests and views present a complicated and troubling legacy.
My socials fill up with harvest photos at this time of year. It’s joyful and a bit primal. Nature controls the parameters of how and when, no matter how hard we try to predict and plan. The act of picking grapes initiates an even more fundamental process. Fermentation is to wine what oxygen is to humans. It’s both essential and deadly at the same time. There is no wine without it, yet fermentation’s transformative effects can destroy as readily as they create. It’s a kind of magic. Smoke, Stinks and Magic It’s magic because you start with fresh fruit, then…...
