My TasteVin in Switzerland

Well I'm off. After months of knowing about this trip it was time to get ready to go. It really snuck up on me. As I write, I am on the train from home base Luzern, Switzerland and am on my way to Alsace, France for the first part of a three leg journey of wine exploration. The purpose of this trip is really see the differences between vineyard sites using the same grape. In French this would be "terroir". Literally soil, but encompasses all the factors in the vineyard that make the difference from a wine being poor or outstanding. Naturally all this potential can be screwed up in incompetent hands, but that's for another time.

The other two legs will be the Mosel area of Germany followed by the Wachau in Austria. Honestly I can't say which I am looking more forward tooI have not been to any of them and though these smaller regions are mostly white wine specialists, the wines they make are very different. Alsace top grapes or noble ones are Riesling, Gewurtztraimer, Muscat and Pinot Gris. They can have a little residual sugar but the style of late has been changing to a more dryer one. Even in this dryer style there is a richness to the wine, some (I included) would describe the sensation as a lush coating of your mouth. Oily is a term that is used, though I wouldn't describe it as such with people outside of the profession as it could give an incorrect negative impression of the style.

In the Mosel part of Germany, the wines, especially Riesling are crisp and clean with a mouth watering acidity. Again residual sugar styles still exist as well as bone dry. Even though there are a few grapes that overlap between the two countries the styles are very different. A Texan and a Scot both speak English, however they really don't sound the same. Perhaps an extreme example of what terroir is, but the point is there. Where you grow up, you are influence by the place, the people and the culture around you. The same happens with wine.