Every guide to Swiss wine begins with the same emphatic but overly 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 19 cantons and covers two-thirds of the nation’s surface area. Meanwhile, four of the other official regions are single cantons — Geneva, Vaud, Valais, and Ticino — each with its own story to tell; a sixth — the Three Lakes region — is geographically contiguous, linguistically mixed and, while quite small, celebrated for its diversity. Why, I ask, is there so little…
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.
For most of us, it would be easier to climb the Matterhorn in flip-flops than to lay hands on a bottle of wine made by Daniel and Martha Gantenbein. The couple painstakingly grow and make minute quantities of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Riesling on 6 hectares of high Alpine valley in German-speaking Switzerland. Before the wines have even been bottled, each and every one is already sold to long-time customers. How has this modest couple, working in unheralded terrain, become the emblem of Swiss wines par excellence? After nearly 40 vintages, Daniel and Martha have fine-tuned every element within their control — from…...
Zeter assesses the natural bounty of his home, the Pfalz, with the eye of a chef. The soils are his mise en place — the basis of his work — the grape varieties are the ingredients he brings to the table and the bottle. His favorite ingredient — Sauvignon Blanc — has become his trademark. This love came early: in South Africa, 1992, at the Buitenverwachting winery in Cape Town. Now, he is celebrating 15 years as a Sauvignon Blanc iconoclast himself. A recent vertical tasting spanning his first vintage in 2007 to the current release, 2021, made clear the value of following palate…...
Trained mason Tom Litwan began crafting elegant yet edgy, biodynamic, low-intervention Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays in Switzerland’s Aargau back in 2006. Today his wines play in the same league as top French and German producers. Normally, the Aargau is better known for its notoriously jammed locations along the A1 highway connecting Zürich with Bern and French-speaking Switzerland. The canton’s sole claim to gustatory fame is a carrot cake, Aargauer Rüeblitorte. Litwan’s decision to make wine here may initially surprise, but looking a bit closer, it actually makes a lot of sense. Before phylloxera bedeviled the old world at the end of…...
Whether you’re dropping into town for the bacchanalia that is Rieslingfeier or you’re a native New Yorker curious to get a taste of the latest and greatest in German and Austrian wines, here’s your hit list of bars and restaurants that make NYC the country’s best (if priciest) city to drink auf Deutsch. Updated November 2025 to remove Koloman, which has closed. G = German focus A = Austrian focus Noreetuh (G) Manager and co-owner Jin Ahn has turned this decade-old Lower East Side Hawaiian spot into the city’s ultimate insider Riesling hangout. Ahn’s exceptionally well-informed list is divided into Rieslings…...
