The Donatschs were never conformists. Starting in the 1970s, Thomas Donatsch of Graubünden turned the Swiss wine landscape on its head with his illegal Chardonnay plantings and barrique experiments. In 2019, his son Martin broke the price record for Swiss wine with his Réserve Privée. Yet it hasn’t always been easy. A conversation with Martin reveals a few of the reasons why Swiss wines remain an insider secret. When it comes to wine, what makes Switzerland so unique? Switzerland is an extremely multifaceted country. Two radically different regions can exist within mere kilometers of each other. Ticino for example embodies…
Journalist and wine expert Britta Wiegelmann reenvisioned the editorial departments of wine magazines "Vinum" and the Gault&Millau "Weinguide Deutschland." Today, the native Rhinelander divides her time between Zurich and Bordeaux. She writes for "Marmite" and the "Coopzeitung," and is a regular lecturer at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, as well as a moderator, wine taster, and consultant.
It’s hard to believe now, but Germany was once a divided country, and the East was a strange microcosm of icons of that era: Sandmännchen, Jungpioniere, and FKK-Kultur. Not to forget its sparkling ambassador, Rotkäppchensekt. Also hard to believe: a destination for wine fans has now arisen in the area between Chemnitz and Cottbus, Magdeburg and Dresden. And yet, from Berlin, the trip takes you almost 200 kilometers to the south, past Dessau and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, to a place whose name sounds to German ears disturbingly close to “Lauch” (leek). Laucha an der Unstrut has roughly 3,200 inhabitants, a bell museum, and one…...
For the longest time, Sekt was a dirty word. It stood for bottles of inexpensive, easy fizz with obnoxious plastic corks to be found on the street, next to the debris of spent fireworks, on New Year’s Day. Leftovers from high jinks and cheap thrills the night before. But that was then. Today, Sekt’s star is once again on the rise. We cannot even say that it is returning to its former glory because the story of German Sekt today is unprecedented and, quite literally, effervescent. It was the 20th century that destroyed with consummate efficiency what was once so promising, so frivolous,…...
It would be easy to dismiss what happens in the tiny winegrowing country of Switzerland as an inconsequential alpine eddy, an iridescent surge in the great river of wine. After all, the nation boasts a mere 15,000 hectares of vines, ranking it only 132nd worldwide in terms of area. But do so at your own peril. After all, the Rhine itself begins in this country, high in the hills of Graubünden some 120 km due south of Switzerland’s capital city. In that spot, it is little more than a spring-fed stream off Lake Toma. “To me, the Rhine looks very…...
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,…...
