Provins Valais, Humagne Blanche, "Collection Chandra Kurt", 2009

torsten — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:04:12 +0000

How do you start the year on a wine blog mostly dedicated to German wine? Writing about German wine, of course, I hear you say. This would seem like the sensible thing to do, and yet today we are not sensible and look for Switzerland instead. For some, at least the German speaking part of Switzerland is more German than Germany itself (but please don't let any Swiss hear this), yet the wine I am writing about today is a truly Swiss thing.

Made by the Swiss and in Switzerland of course, this explosion of herbal aromas and flavours is vinified of Humagne Blanche grapes, an old indigenous variety that now is a rarity even in Switzerland.

Wine News: wine and sex, Canada, iPhone, Riesling, Austrian red wine

torsten — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:13:23 +0000

Welcome to a new category of Wine Rambling: Wine News. Wine News is not really news in the sense that it brings you all the most important events and news from the day, it is much rather a quite random summary of bits of news, blog posts and other randomia I come across. The useful, the interesting, the weird. So let's jump right into it...

Canada seems to have a minority complex with regards to wine. Or why else would you think that the country would have to turn to a men's web portal to demonstrate it does good wine? Canada.com featured an AskMen.com article on the top 7 emerging wine regions, Canada being no. 5. This means that Canadians take pride in having beaten the English (#7) and Brazilians (#6), but being beaten by the Greeks, Romanians, Ukrainians and Swiss (#1)! For a German with Alemannic roots such as me being beaten by the Swiss is like the worst possible nightmare. Why the Canadians would be proud of this, I don't know. It is true, however, that Canadian ice wine does get more interest these days.