Swiss wines

I don't know that I ever remember seeing more than maybe 2 different bottlings in any store, ever. I've seen Fendant/Chasselas at Chambers St, Astor, Rochambeau, Zachys in NYC area, and at MacArthurs/Bassins in DC. No clue re Swiss reds.

I personally have liked some Fendant, but they tend to be nice $10 wines selling for $20 in US.

DaleW wrote in news:a04c42db-bc27-47ff-b664- snipped-for-privacy@v46g2000hsv.googlegroups.com:

The only Swiss wines I can recall in the US were several years ago I saw a few in Minneapolis at the France and 44 store and the Swiss Hotel in Boston serves it (or did about 12 years ago) in their conceirge lounge.

Two sources are below. I have not tasted any of these wines.

Oenoline Chasselas "La Cote" White Wine 2006 (Switzerland)

The rate of exchange between the US and Switzerland has made many Swiss products expensive in the US for many decades. I have seen a few Swiss wines in stores over the years, but seldom their best. They do not produce enough of these for their domestic market and still import a lot of better wines from other countries. A Swiss wine is likely to cost quite a bit more than even a French wine in the US, if you compare wines of roughly equal quality. You will not see many good examples much under US$ 20, and the range of about $20 -50 will get some very good wines, but not the top ones, if you can find them at all.

The reason I am asking is that my wine group picked Lebanon and Switzerland for the next tasting and I only can find two Lebanese wines consistently and was hoping for a better shot with Switzerland. I was pushing for Israel but two of the people in our group can be real clowns and may bring Carmel and Mogen David (I know it's US) if left up to their own devices just to be funny so I was over-ruled.

Larry, In addition to cwdjr's sources, my advice (subject to shipping considerations) is to look to the Usual Suspects. In this case, Sam's in Chicago has 2 Swiss wines listed on their website, Morrell & Co in NYC has 3 and Woodland Hills in SoCal has 4. If Dale or someone else with WS Pro looks into it, there may be a retailer with a bigger selection, but that's what I found with my limited resources.

Mark Lipton

Salut/Hi Lawrence Leichtman,

le/on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:53:20 -0500, tu disais/you said:-

Obviously I can't be aby help over where you can get swiss wines in the States, or how much you would have to pay for them. However, I was hugely impressed with some Merlots from Tessin (Ticino) and if you do some Googling around you might find a delight or two.

Another little known Swiss Grape variety is the Petite Arvine, and there's a splendid botrytised wine made from it - Mike T might have met the lady last week, and be able to help with the names. She's part of Sapros, I think. All the best Ian Suffering from severe electile dysfunction.

Thanks Mark. I will try the two from Sams as the Morrell website came up zero and the Woodland Hills site came up with what should be over the hill wines.

I'd be happy to, but beyond searching for Fendant and Chasselas (and then weeding out the Alsace hits) how would I? WS Pro is great for producers, harder to search broader. :)

Snooth

Also, my local (in Texas) discount liquor store currently carries about 6 Swiss wines, so I'm surprised you haven't been able to find several locally.

Zane

I haven't been there for over a year, but Azar's cafe in Virginia Beach (now also in Ghent) used to carry a selection of Lebanese wines (and Mexican, too, for what that is worth).

They still do. I have Musar from several vintages but decided to being two Swiss wines. There is a Pinot Gris from D'Aventier or something like that they also make a Neuchatel.

I saw that but wasn't sure that Smooth was a retailer.

Snooth doesn't do the selling themselves, being mostly a database resource. You have to go to the "buy now" button which takes you to a page where the retailer is given. You then click on the retailer link to go to their site. Note that the search box has an option to display only wines that somebody has in stock.

Apologies if you already saw that.

Zane

Hi Lawrence,

These were just featured January 29th on tv.winelibrary.com. Gary Vaynerchuk tasted the Pinot Gris, a rosé and the Neuchatel (made from the Chasselas grape in Episode 396, which can be found at this link:

Dave

Marie-Thérèse Chappaz should be the lady:

M.

I will have to watch that.

Thanks, I will go back to that site. All of Mark's links are out of their Swiss wines at the moment.

Sorry 'bout that, Larry. It's very annoying when retailers' websites don't accurately reflect their inventory.

Mark Lipton

Oh well. Not particularly bothered. I will try the smooth site.