While all wine growers currently are in the middle of harvest season, I take my time to write about the St. Gallen Wine Tours. St. Gallen is the canton where I live so I explored a lot in the last year. I limit my story to a great hike along the Walensee, a cycle tour to Lake Constance and the two special biodynamic wine growers I visited during my tours.
Like Graubünden and Appenzell, the canton of St. Gallen is also part of the German Swiss Wine area. Check the intro of the Graubünden tour for the general background information.
St. Gallen PIWI wines:
The picture above shows the wine areas in St. Gallen. Most of them are situated on the hills along the lakes and the Rhine. In St. Gallen the attention for PIWI wines grows fast. PIWI wines are made from “pilzwiderstandsfähige” (fungus-resistant) grape varieties and due to topographical reasons, grapes in the St. Gallen area are easily susceptible to fungus. The PIWI-grapes have a better resistance against fungus and therefore way less pesticide is needed during the ripening season. Currently more than 5% of the wine yards in St. Gallen is planted with PIWI grapes and the traditional grapes have been partly exchanged for these new varieties.
A few wine growers told me that these PIWI grapes offer the opportunity to work biological. For the wine growers that are not yet on the biological or biodynamic tour, it seems to be quite a step to change the whole process and then these PIWI-grapes could make it possible to make a first step in that direction. On the other hand, I see and I talked to other wine growers who "just did it" and made their entire process biological or biodynamic. At the end I guess the Swiss government will stimulate all wine growers to work at least biological (Bio Suisse) and only the once that really what to make a difference, will follow the biodynamic guidelines. Anyway, I hope we will keep on finding a good balance between the traditional and the new grape varieties. Because both are valuable for Swiss wine production.
PIWI-grapes that grow in this area are for example: Johanniter, Seyval Blanc, Souvignier Gris, Cabarnet Jura, Márechal Foch, Léon Millot en Regent.
The hike and the bike tour
The area is great and it’s hard to explore all wine yards in one trip. But there are plenty of opportunities to explore the area by hike of by bike. I will share one hike and one bike trip I both really can recommend.
An introduction in Qvevri wine during the bike tour from Sargans to Lake Constance
Let's start with the bike tour from Sargans along the Rhine to Lake Constance. Between Sargans and the Lake you can take the easy road along the Rhine or an alternative route through some villages and wine yards. Early in the cycling season, I cycled the alternative route with my friend Maarten for a first exploration. Later this year I optimized the less attractive parts of the route and cycled it again with great weather.
Right after leaving Sargans you will soon see the first wine yards around Azmoos and Wartau. In the first part of the tour the density of wine yards is not so high but that makes the tour diversified. Just after Buchs in the small wine village called Sax, you will find the biodynamic winery of Rohner Wein. I met Otto Rohner on my second tour and it really was a pleasure to meet him. He follows the biodynamic vision for years already. And he is unbelievable passionate about his craft and especially about the original Quevri which is buried in his garden. This Weinamphore or Qvevri come from Georgia and Otto uses it to produce wine like it was done thousands of years ago. Clay pots dated from far before Christ were found in Georgia, and it seems to be the oldest known testimony of man’s wine culture.
To become an original Qvevri was Otto’s dream that came true a few years ago. During my visit Otto told me all about that adventure and he invited me to try a few wines together. Of course I wanted to taste his Pinot Noir aged in the Qvevri but I also asked Otto about his favourite wine. He likes the aged wines so we also tried an older non-Qvevri Pinot Noir. Both very tasteful and again, I am very surprised about the diversity of the Pinot Noir, especially if it aged a few years. I took the Quevri Pinot Noir, a bottle of Cabernet Jura (PIWI) and a great experience with me further on the trip.
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The route continues to Lake Constance and the density of wine yards rises. In the area of Thal you will ride through a beautiful wine valley in which you will pass many wine growers. On my tour with Maarten we visited two winegrowers in that area with biological PIWI wines. One (Tom Kobel - Ochsentorkel Weinbau) prepared a special package for us and hid it somewhere behind his shop. The other wine grower (Roman Rutishauser- Weingut am Steinig Tisch) gave us a warm and welcome tour on a cold day.
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From Thal you just have to cross one more hill to get to Lake Constance. After both trips I enjoyed the view at Rorschach for a while and took the train back home to Sargans.
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Fresh PetNat after a hike along the Walensee shore
Another tour I would love the share is the hike from Weesen to Walenstadt along the shore of the Walensee. The complete hike is about 21 km. Because bikes, cars and public transport are not allowed on parts of this trail, you can only do it on foot. In case a hike of 21 km is a bit too far for you, there are a few places where you can take the boat to the other side of the Walensee from where you get access to public transport. The boat trip is a nice experience anyway so you shouldn’t feel bad at all if you hike half of the trail.
I started my tour in Weesen and hiked via the village of Quinten to Walenstadt where the other biodynamic wine grower of St. Gallen grounded his winery and a tasting + tapas bar. The tour starts quite flat along the the shore of Walensee. While you have a great view over the lake on your right, you walk along and sometimes half under the huge rock face of the Churfirsten on you left side.
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After the rocky part, the hike continues in a green scenery and you can see the Seerenbachfälle (a waterfall) from a distance. If you want to see the it up close, you can also walk up and back to get a closer look. As the road to Quinten continues, more and more wine yards appear and by the time you arrive in Quinten, you get the feeling that you are in a small Mediterranean village. It’s a beautiful tiny small village and because it’s only accessible by foot and boat, it feels like a secret place. However, on sunny midsummer days you will not be alone. So if you have the chance, I would advice to go there early or later in the summer season to really enjoy this place in peace.
After Quinten, the route follows the shore for a short while before it goes steep up through the forest to the highest point of the tour. You will arrive at a green platform with some good viewpoints, a few farms and if you are lucky, the farm shop fridges are filled with snacks and drinks. The way down goes mostly over quite an easy and wide gravel path that brings you to the wine yards of Walenstadt, the refreshing Walensee and of course Casanova’s tasting bar (Kaliforni).
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I decided to walk a bit further to the home base of Casanova's winery. I knocked on the door spontaneously, but unfortunately there was nobody around. I had to come back one week later to meet Marco Casanova and taste some of his great wines. I would describe him as an experienced and experimental wine grower. He strives to work as natural as possible, knows how to present the natural wines in an attractive and modern way but he is also very much aware of what his customers want.
Last years he worked on a new type of wine called PetNat or “Pétillant Naturel”. PetNat is a natural (light) sparkling wine that get’s it’s sparkle from fermentation in the bottle. Depending on the must (early wine) that was put in the bottle before of during the fermentation, this type of wines is very diverse. After fermentation, mostly you will find some sediment in the bottle but that doesn’t have to be the case. Casanova developed the white Mars and the red Venus PetNat. We tasted both wines together and I was very surprised and enthusiastic about his fresh, sparkling, natural wines. Especially Venus has a special fresh and still strong taste. I would say, it’s a great surprise for an apéro.
I took home one of each in my backpack on the bike. Since there is quite some pressure on these bottles (not comparable with champagne but still...) and they are closed with just a bottle cap, Marco was a bit concerned if the bottles would last. I told him, worst case I have to drink them on the way home. That was not the case at all and I shared both with some friends.
Although I could write and tell much more about wines and tours in St. Gallen, this blog comes to an end. I mentioned the two (and currently only) bio dynamic wine growers and two tours that cover most of the wine yards in the area of St. Gallen. Still there are very nice small and beautiful other wine yards to explore. The secret tours in our backyard are on my future blog list but if you are around and you want to know more, just ask!
#swisswine, #hikingswitserland, #bikingswitzerland, #biodynamicwines, #casanovapurwein, #rohnerweinsax
Sources:
https://piwi-international.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/160826_Masterarbeit-Lena-Holzwarth.pdf
https://www.rohner-weine.ch/
https://www.casanova-weinpur.ch/
https://www.ochsentorkel.ch/
https://www.rutishauser-weingut.ch/index.php/betrieb.html
https://www.walenseeschiff.ch/
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