The region in Switzerland where I lived my first days of consciousness is not known for its wines. As a matter of fact, other than a few grapes that are lovingly grown in privet arbors and on back porches on the sunny side of the house, there are no grapes. But as I continued to become aware of my wider surroundings, I was gradually introduced into the wide variety of wines produced from a number of generic grapes. There are, of course, the main regions in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, those vast vineyards along the slopes on the north shore of the Lake of Geneva, then the Valais, where the Fandant is coming from and nobody in Switzerland would think of making a pot of Fondue without that specific wine. Then there are the vineyards on the eastern slopes of the Jura over the shores of the lakes of Neuchatel and and Bienne. And then not least of all there on the southern slopes of the Alps, the Tessin. But there are also small varietals not recorded on the big maps, like Maienfeld in the eastern part of Switzerland, on the upper Rhine, just north of where the craggy slopes of the Alps rise up. There are only small vineyards there, but oh what delectable drops are produced here.
Once I read a report on the international Wine exhibition in Boston. The reporters were cruising the exhibits and stopped also at a table where a Swiss delegation had set up their samples. After tasting, one reporter remarked on the excellence of the samples and asked the attendants of the stand why these wines were not available on the American market. Answered the Swiss with a wry smile, "That's because we like to drink them ourselves."
Thus, we had enough to chose from to cover any occasion, but for really festive meals we would branch out to the French wines, and often we had wines from the Alsace and from the Mosel and the Rhine where it flows from Switzerland along the western hills of the Schwarzwald, and if we visited a country we always would stick to the regional wines, bringing home more fond memories and a strengthened knowledge that there is no end to the variety one can find in wines. By leaving out those major wines from Italy, Spain, Southern France, South Eastern France, etc. I do not want to indicate that they were of no importance to us, or that we did not like them. It is simply that this article is not meant to discuss all wines in the world. If you would like an impression of what that task would be like, go look at the list of wines posted by Wikipedia. I simply want to lay the ground work: describing a wine as having tastes of red raspberries, or peach, or apple means nothing, really. Wine is made of grapes, unless it is an apple wine, etc.
