Caves Ouvertes Vaudoises
The Caves Ouvertes Vaudoises is a yearly event in which the wine cellars of Vaud open their doors to the public. For 2013 it was on this last weekend. In an awesome deal with the CFF we paid CHF 16 each for return train tickets and an "open wine cellars passport", which turned out to be a wine glass that you take with you. This is the best kind of passport ever: when you present it, people give you wine!
Best. Passport. Ever.
Our boozy sojourn started in the uber-pretty village of Chexbres, which sits high on the terraced hill-side of Lavaux. It was here we tried our first wines. In French - a language of wine, for sure - I would say "je suis au debut de mes études du vin", which is an infinitely more classy way of saying I'm a total wine idiot. I am attempting to get better at it, so I will summarise here what will be error-filled learnings from yesterday.
The view from Chexbres.
What a nice door!
Just when you thought it was safe to go wine tasting...
This region is almost too pretty.
Unlike in Australia where wine makers often have their cellar door in the middle of their own vineyards, it seems that wine makers here tend to have a cellar door in a little town, and own various plots of vines in different appellations around the region. Thus each town holds various cellar doors, and each cellar makes wines that are sorted by grape variety and appellation. The most popular and famous white variety from Vaud is chasselas, which produces a fruity, dry white (don't miss this truly enormous list of synonyms for chasselas on its wikipedia page).
Vespa amongst the vines.
A lightbulb moment.
Mostly, we were tasting chasselas wines from two appellations - Saint Saphorin and Dézaley. They were both lovely. Dézaley is an appellation on the steepest of the slopes coming up from the lake, which has clay soils. While Saint-Saphorin wines are wonderfully delicate, and I preferred Dézaley for its richer, warmer, sweeter taste.
Vineyards, lake, mountains.
Wine-making hose connectors.
Where the magic happens. A cellar in Rivaz.
Not a bad backdrop for some wine tasting!
We wandered from Chexbres down through the vines to the little town of Rivaz, where there were many more open cellars and many more wines to taste. All the while the mountains across the lake came and went under constantly swirling clouds, and the lake changed colours from blue to aqua green as the sunlight moved across it in bands.
Wine-making paraphernalia in a cellar in Rivaz.
No screw-top wine bottles here.
By the time we were done, we had walked from Chexbres right down to the lake, sampling many, many wines along the way. As the afternoon wore on the people around us grew more and more jolly under the influence of the wine; in Rivaz there was singing going on in one cellar and the streets were full of smiling people. My only complaint about the Caves Ouvertes Vaudoises is that it is only on once per year - what a pity!
