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July 23, 2019

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Swiss labels on menus at top restaurants

By Agnès Pedrero | 00:05 UTC+8 July 23, 2019 | Print Edition

When foreigners think of Swiss specialities that might excite their taste buds, world-renowned chocolate and cheese most likely come to mind.

Swiss wine? Not so much.

But the reputation of Switzerland’s winemakers may be set for a boost, backed by a new export promotion strategy that aims to see Swiss labels on menus at the world’s top restaurants.

In some ways, the Swiss Winegrowers’ Festival (Fete des Vignerons), which opened recently, mirrors the country’s appellations.

Both could be considered extraordinary, yet both are hardly known outside Switzerland.

The festival, hosted in the country’s winemaking Lavaux region, is recognized on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.

First held in 1797, the festival has taken place roughly every quarter century since.

The main event, expected to draw 20,000 people per night through August 11, is a theatrical performance dramatizing a year in the life of a vineyard, from pruning to harvest.

Ahead of this year’s edition, industry experts agreed that the time had come for Swiss wine to spread its vines.

Damien Leclerc, sales director of Lavinia, a prominent wine shop in central Geneva, noted that Swiss labels were “little known to the general (international) public.”

But the French national said that “insiders (and) professionals” appreciate that, despite the small output, Switzerland produces unique grapes and wines of extremely high quality.

“We have excellent grape varieties that really only exist here,” Leclerc said, citing, among other examples, the Completer, a grape from the eastern canton of Graubuenden used to produce rich, full-bodied white wines.

Leclerc, also a sommelier, argued that for Swiss wine to thrive abroad it needed to emphasize “exclusivity,” especially because it cannot compete with the production scale of neighboring wine behemoths, France and Italy.

In 2018, the total area in Switzerland devoted to wine production amounted to less than 15,000 hectares, compared with nearly 800,000 hectares in France.

Many of Switzerland’s top vineyards are in Lavaux — also a UNESCO World Heritage Site — and rest on stunning terraced hillsides between Lausanne and Montreux, overlooking the banks of Lake Geneva, with the Alps in view across the water.

Monica Tomba, manager of the Lavaux Vinorama visitors center, said that after absorbing the breathtaking views and sampling the local offerings, foreign tourists — especially from Asia — voice regret that they cannot buy Swiss wines after returning to their home countries.

In fact, only 1 percent of wine produced in Switzerland is exported, according to the Swiss Observatory for the Wine Market (OSMV), a market research group.

Swiss winemakers have historically been reluctant to export in part to avoid price wars with producers from other countries that churn out bottles on far larger scales.

Because many Swiss vineyards are on sloping terrain, much of the labor needs to be done by hand, an added expense in a country with already high labor costs.

Local winemakers — including small, family-run businesses — believed that competing internationally would require them to lower their prices, which is not economically viable, Tomba said.

But a new export strategy spearheaded by Swiss Wine Promotion, an industry lobby group, sees domestic winemakers disregarding the low end of the market and emphasizing premium products for consumption abroad.

“We are no longer going to try to sell a Fendant ... or a cheap wine,” said SWP President Jean-Marc Amez-Droz, referring to a Chasselas that is one of Switzerland’s best-known brands.

Instead, SWP wants to focus on “niche products,” he said.

Amez-Droz noted that Swiss exporters have recently had more success promoting bottles at prices above 30 Swiss francs (US$30), while 5-franc bottles are dismissed as “too expensive” for their quality.

Michael Ganne, director of the Geneva-based Baghera wine auction house, agreed that the export strategy should aim to create buzz around a dozen “flagship winemakers.”

For now, there are still not many Swiss labels present on the menus of top global restaurants.

But Sandrine Caloz, a 30-year-old already considered one of the country’s top organic wine producers, is among those setting a new trend.

Caloz, whose vineyard is in southern Valais canton, said that she had begun exporting to the United States after being approached by the New York-based Rosenthal Wine Merchant group.

“The fact that bottles of our wine can now be found in expensive restaurants in Manhattan gives us credibility, including in the minds of Swiss clients,” the Swiss wine producer said.

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