Men Who Like to Travel - David Latt

Which Swiss wines do you love? Hands? Anybody? Nobody? Know why? Only 2% of Switzerland’s wine production is exported. All the rest, 98%, is consumed domestically. The best way -- actually, the only way -- to sample Swiss wines is to visit Switzerland. That’s what I did. The Valais’ Microclimate Having grown up with images of Switzerland as a land of snow-covered mountains, when I visited the Valais, a wine-growing, French-speaking canton east of Geneva, I expected cold weather. But the climate was better suited to shorts and T-shirts than to parkas.  Neatly trellised vineyards climb up steep hills taking advantage of a hot, dry microclimate. With 300 days of sun a year, the Valais feels like Napa and  Sonoma  except for the Matterhorn looming in the distance.  In Switzerland, family-owned vineyards and wineries (called   vignerons-encaveurs)  are the rule. Even if unprofitable, they stay in the family.  During a hosted trip w e met one wine maker whose family was reg