Swiss wine collection looking for UK listings

Swiss wine is a rarity on the UK’s shelves but one company is hoping to entice buyers with a limited edition range of native Alpine varieties.

Swiss wine author Chandra Kurt lends her name to the collection produced by her friend Madeleine Gay at the Provins Winery in the Valais, Switzerland’s largest wine region.

The Chandra Kurt collection comprises four varietal wines, three of which are white from the Heida, Amigne and Humagne Blanche grapes, and one red, using Humagne Rouge.

Plantings of all four varietals are tiny: Humagne Blanche covers a meagre 30 hectares in the whole of the country and Humagne Rouge is the most widely planted at around 120ha.

Due to their small plantings and the lack of any large-scale Swiss wine export market they remain almost completely unknown to many consumers.

Heida alone may be familiar as it is a local name for the Savagnin Blanc varietal used in the production of Vin Jaune from the Jura.

However, Kurt was adamant that the collection should show the “real” Switzerland, despite its growing reputation for more commercial varieties such as Chasselas, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and even Syrah.

“We thought, ‘why don’t we show what we have?’” explained Kurt.

“Why don’t we show something no one else has and present a new style of Swiss wine? We have taken something that can be an ambassador for Switzerland.”

Kurt was keen that the collection should have a strong export focus.

Helpfully Provins has the capacity to produce viable volumes of each variety with up to 12,000 bottles for the Amigne and 30,000 bottles for the other three.

However, the wines are expensive, with recommended retail prices between £32 and £35 a bottle. This is far from unusual though from a country that only has 15,000ha under vine, 5,000ha of which lie in the Valais.

Clemens Tamegger, UK manager at TXB Fine Wines, who represents the collection, explained the reasoning behind adding the eclectic collection to TXB’s portfolio: “We needed a new wine. Grüner Veltliner has emerged and German Riesling we already cover, so these wines were perfect.”

Tamegger believes that consumers are looking for new and interesting wines and the sheer rarity and novelty of the Chandra Kurt Collection along with their quality will win people over.

The stories behind the grape varieties alone are entertaining. Heida is routinely described as the “pearl of alpine wines”; Humagne Rouge was supposedly carried over the Alps to the Valais by Julius Caesar’s legionaries; while Amigne was grown by the Celts before the Romans even arrived; and Humagne Blanche, which is apparently rich in iron, was given by the litre to women, to help them recover from childbirth.

Rupert Millar, 15.07.2010