Tasted for you: Unfiltered: First wine of the year confirmed: 2023 vintage will be amazing!

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When the winemakers asked Blick for the first grading of their freshly pressed juices at the end of October 2023, the winemakers did not compromise on the superlatives. “Simply magnificent,” said Francisca and Christian Obrecht of Jenins GR, for example. “Despite a difficult, wet and labor-intensive year, we are completely satisfied with the quality,” said Anna Barbara of Crone and Paolo Visini of Barbengo TI. Three-time winemaker of the year Diego Mathier from Salgesch VS said the unique concentrates had been created: “An absolute vintage of the century!”

It all starts with a wine emergency!

The first wines of this vintage are now on the market. So the moment of truth! These are unfiltered Chasselas from the canton of Neuchâtel. Releasing a wine this early has been a tradition for almost 50 years. In 1975, it was Henri-Alexandre Godet who created virtue out of necessity. There was a shortage of wine in Neuchâtel due to a low harvest, and a friend of Godet urgently needed wine for a wedding. After seeing that the juice was good, he delivered it as quickly as possible. Without filtering the wine! Filtration is a process used on most wines to clarify the wine. You can’t imagine a cloudy wine from the 1970s.

But the wedding guests really liked the cloudy thing. The fine yeast suspended in the wine makes it creamy and gives it a hint of pastry notes. Godet decided to add this emergency wine to its product range. Many followed his example. Today, twenty percent of the Chasselas harvest in Neuchâtel is bottled unfiltered.

The grotesque race for the first wine

The success of the blurry stuff meant that winemakers started a literal race to see who could get the wine to market the earliest. Yves Dothaux, oenologist for the canton of Neuchâtel, recalls: “In the 1990s, winemakers outdid each other by releasing wines early. In fact, the first one is before Christmas, on December 22.” This grotesque race ended with the decision of the Council of State, which set the publication date as the third Wednesday of January.

dirty thing

And people actually long for the cloudy wine whose label has been stuck upside down on the bottle since last year, so consumers have to turn the bottle upside down to read the label. This is the only way to release the yeast particles that cloud the wine. Comme il faut, as it should be. “It has been really well received abroad,” says Mireille Bühler, director of the winegrowers’ promotion association “Neuchâtel Vins et Terroir”. The wine is now even offered in Bordeaux.

In any case, the Fachinetti car dealership in Neuchâtel, where the wine was served, was nearly packed that Wednesday. 1,100 non-filtré fans, including a significant number of young people, came to taste the wines of the 32 Neuchâtel wineries on display.

Unfiltered now available all year round

While wines used to be designed to be consumed only in the first few weeks of the year, today the situation is different. “We have been selling Unfiltered products all year round for several years now,” says Patrick Sandoz of the namesake family space. «People want to enjoy wine on the terrace even in summer. “We have tripled production in the last few years because demand is so high.”

Clearly higher ratings for 2023 than 2022

Back to the topic of quality: My average score for the top ten unfiltered wines of the 2022 vintage was 16.5, while for the wines of the 2023 vintage this value was 17.1. This is a dramatic increase that cannot be explained by anything other than the size of the vintage. There is (anticipatory) excitement for the later wines!

Note: It also made sense to taste older vintages, as the non filtré could no longer be viewed simply as a pure young wine like its famous sibling Beaujolais Nouveau, but quite simply a “true” Chasselas in its “clouded” version. . Neuchâtel Vins et Terroir did this with the support of Marylin and Patrick Sandoz. You can find out the result in the second box.

Something completely different from Unfiltered! At the end of February, 16 Ticino winemakers set out to attack Switzerland north of the Alps. Because Ticino is the only wine region located south of the Alps. Who exactly is coming and the dates are a little further down. Vinattieri Ticinesi is also there. The famous winery of Ligornetto, now under the umbrella of Casa del Vino. This company belongs to Transgourmet and this one belongs to Coop.

That’s all it takes to explain what hands Vinattieri fell into after Luigi Zanini sold part of his life’s work in 2020. Today, Ticino wine icon Michele Conceprio is responsible for Vinattieri’s wines as director. An area of ​​approximately 100 hectares has been allocated as a playground in Mendrisiotto. And this best Merlot is still one of the best created in Ticino! But Vinattieri doesn’t just have a flagship to offer. Ligornetto, a sort of historic second wine of the estate, is always at the forefront when it comes to major awards. He recently won two of the most important ones. 19er was named the best Merlot at the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse. And it was one of three Ticino wines to be awarded the coveted Tre Bicchieri award in Gambero Rosso’s Italian wine guide Vini d’Italia, this time for the 20th award. Andiamo with Vinattieri wines. For the first time with the extremely exciting vertical model of the flagship, the first model of which was the 85.

Source : Blick