Swiss wine is often ignored because it’s such a small winegrowing nation compared with its neighbors France and Italy. Even its other neighbors, Germany and Austria, have much larger vineyard areas than Switzerland’s 15,000 hectares. That’s a tenth the size of Bordeaux.
However, this isn’t the main reason Swiss wines receive scant attention from international consumers, sommeliers and the media. The fundamental problem is the widespread perception that Swiss wine is mostly thin and bland dry whites from the chasselas grape, which are often sold under the name Fendant.
This view is probably what lies behind the recent decision by one of our competitors not to cover Switzerland at all. We are moving in the opposite direction because the statistics prove that view to be factually incorrect and outdated. According to Swiss government statistics from 2020, the most widely planted grape variety in Switzerland today is pinot noir, with 3,875 hectares. For us that was a good reason to focus on Swiss pinot noir and to look at the wines from other grape varieties the leading pinot noir producers make.
