It’s Wednesday, 2nd January, early morning, and the outside temperature gauge registers -5°C as we arrive at Luton airport. This is the start of a week when I am going to forget all about Food Production, and concentrate on Wine Production, and of course it’s consumption.
We are leaving for the Valais region of Switzerland, our annual get-together with our skiing group of friends. Eleven of us in total, family groups with a challenging age-span of 35 years. But this year we are also going to learn about wine production in the Valais, and to get to know many of the local businessmen.
The Easyjet flight lives up to it’s name – straightforward, practical, efficient, and inexpensive. The boarding card is re-usable, and the booking confirmation even spells out that £5.50 of the ticket cost is the ‘Barclays Fat Cat Charge’ – a reference to Stelios’ continuing battle with the ‘authorities’.
The Valais region of Switzerland is the area in and around the fertile valley of the Rhone as it approaches Lake Geneva near Montreux. We drive along the lake, passing the famous Chateaux of Chillon, where Lord Byron was imprisoned. Then into the glaciated expanse of the valley itself. To the south is the road to the St Bernard tunnel and through to Italy, or around the lake to the famous waters of Evian. To the north, mile after mile of vineyards on the sunny south-facing mountain slopes. With my love of the mountains, it comes close to being one of my favourite places on earth. And it’s not only the geography that attracts. The region contains the beautiful Roman town of Martigny guarding one of the major crossroads of the Alps, the thermal springs at the Bains de Saillon, and the highest vineyard in Europe, 4,000 feet up from sea level at Vispertermine.
Sunday, 6th January, and we are being lavishly entertained by local businessmen at a village hotel close to the well-know ski resort of Crans Montana. Vincent, a local wine producer is our host. He’s a wine expert, a skilled Swiss viticulturist of the highest order. He has taken great pride in selecting a different wine for each of the five delicious courses of the meal. Wines made from grapes with names rarely heard outside Switzerland: Fendant, Johannisberger, Ermitage, and Dole. Vincent insists each one is served at the correct temperature. The general bonhomie of the evening is briefly interrupted when the hotel owner serves the champagne at a degree or two outside Vincent’s tolerance. Vincent recognises immediately that the champagne is bubbling a little too much. He and the owner spar for a while and a replacement bottle is sent for. Vincent describes to us the effort that goes in to producing the perfect bottle of wine, and it is clear how exasperating it is for him when he finds his efforts thwarted by incorrect preparation for consumption.
Until recently, Swiss wine producers were protected. The wine merchants were only allowed to import wine once the total Swiss production for the year had been bought up. Now this protection has gone, and they have to live with tough competition. There are 800 wine producers in the Valais region alone. Automation in Swiss vineyards is minimal because of the steep and irregular terrain, and costs are high. So the producers are now concentrating on quality to maintain their market levels.
Monday, 7th January, and we have been invited on a tour of the wine factory, followed by raclette (with wine of course) at Vincent’s beautiful house on the vineyard slopes. I am fascinated by the raclette machine which has centre-stage in front of the roaring fire in the dining room. It looks to me like it should be in the garage with the Black and Deckers. Raclette is made from cheese manufactured for the purpose and bought in large, circular rounds. A round is cut diagonally into two half-rounds. These are clamped into position on two vice-like fittings on either side of a central, vertical screw. A rectangular horizontal grill is positioned over one of the cheeses. This melts the surface of the cheese. The raclette operator rotates the screw, so the other half of the cheese moves under the grill, and the half with the melted surface moves out. This then tilts so that the melted cheese pours off onto the plate. Then the process is repeated, the screw moving the cheese higher on every rotation to maintain the distance of the cheese from the grill, compensating for the thickness of the cheese just poured off. The melted cheese is eaten with boiled potato, pickled gherkins, and whole cloves of garlic. It’s tasty and enjoyable, but the host doesn’t get a chance to eat – he’s too busy operating the machine and delivering the portions of melted cheese to the guests.
Tuesday 8th January. I overhear a story on a ski lift. There is a church with a gabled roof in a remote Swiss village. If a raindrop falls on one side of the roof, it trickles down the roof and into a mountain stream. It flows down the stream, joins the great Rhine river, travels through Germany, into Holland and arrives in the North Sea at Rotterdam. If however the drop falls a centimetre to the south and lands on the other side of the church roof, it falls into a different stream that eventually becomes the Rhone, passes through Lake Geneva and south eastern France, flows under the bridge at Avignon, and discovers the Mediterranean Sea.
Does anyone know the name of the village?
Wednesday 9th January and our last day skiing. The sun has shone continuously for the last seven days, melting the snow on the lower slopes and making skiing back to the village difficult. Our final run down the mountain and three of us hit a combination of grass and ice at speed and end up in a heap on the ground. We can’t extract skis, legs, arms and poles, and following confirmation that all limbs are still intact, we give in to uncontrolled laughter. An elderly fur-coated Swiss and her dog watch us suspiciously from a safe distance, and I feel a glow of pride that at my age I can still be thought of as a skiing hooligan!
I am always amazed at the way the human body can adjust to the punishment it gets in a week’s skiing each year, using muscles that have long laid dormant. I say this to my stern-looking white coated Swiss masseuse before flying home, and comment that my muscles must be in pretty reasonable condition. She peers at me over her glasses, raises the towel covering the lower part of my body, pokes critically at the flesh around my waist and tells me that she will be the judge of that.