Here is how water shapes the Swiss rhythm of life in summer season

The following day, looking for a stronger drink, I head out to Lavaux, a UNESCO-listed wine area a 20-minute drive west of Montreux, the place the vines run right down to the water in neat strains. In the beautiful village of Epesses, I inform winemaker Blaise Duboux about my hydrating dip and he laughs heartily — pointing over the lake to the spa city of Évian, the place France’s well-known mineral water is bottled. “You could say we’re a ‘luxury’ vineyard,” he jokes, eyes glowing as he adjusts his jaunty cravat. “We have the same rain!” Of Lavaux’s 158 winemakers, he’s one in every of solely 14 working organically. “We have to think about Mother Earth and work with conscience,” says Blaise. “I want to express what my soil is able to express and to work with nature, not against; to be like a surfer catching a wave.” This admirable strategy doesn’t make for a straightforward life, Blaise tells me. “As well as making the wine, we also bottle and label it here. It’s very hard work, but I love it.”

As we stroll a small part of his 135 acres, he waves to a gaggle of seasonal labourers from North Macedonia. They’re right here to assist with the essential job of eradicating additional leaves from the vines, permitting air to flow into to forestall mildew destroying the plant; being so near an enormous lake, situations are misty and humid. The sloped terraces enable additional solar to achieve the vines however, as a result of they’re so steep, all the things have to be accomplished by hand. “We work in much the same way the previous 17 generations of my family did,” says Blaise.

At a shady terrace exterior his home, he gives a clue to his sanguinity, eradicating his jacket to disclose a purple T-shirt printed with the slogan: ‘Keep Calm and Drink Chasselas’. “The soil pumps minerals into the fruit — this grape is a soil revelator,” he says, pouring me a glass of Sursum Corda, a white wine named for his household motto, Latin for ‘high hearts’. Taking a sip, I see what he means — it’s citrussy, virtually salty and exquisitely drinkable. Another wine, a Haut de Pierre Dézaley Grand Cru made solely from previous vine Chasselas, is richer and extra mellow. I ask Blaise why Swiss wine doesn’t have a celebrated popularity overseas and he tells me it’s as a result of, nationally, only one% is exported — the Swiss choose to drink it themselves.