Blush
Where’s Wallace
About three months ago I said you’d receive this newsletter every 15 days or so. And then I went silent, I blush to say. Here’s the answer, part one: I’ve been hiding in crowds! I’ve been traveling far more than expected, to Basel, Bern, Lucerne, Geneva, Rolle and Zurich, and also Alto Adige and Veneto in Italy, Andalusia in Spain, New Mexico and Colorado and Missouri and Iowa in the US.
But the real reason is that an old friend arrived from the US and promptly developed Long Covid, two months after thinking he was over Covid. I have played nursemaid, intensely, since mid-August, between trips; I just delivered him back home to the US. This is no joke, folks, so please, please, get vaccinated. Three months of daunting brain fog, 12-16 hours a day of sleep, impossible to walk more than 50 metres for two months, weight loss where it wasn’t needed, inability to do much for himself. I’m worn out. He’s worn down, which is far worse. And yes, he was vaccinated, so I shudder to think of the shape he’d be in without that. His brother, 11 months younger, unvaccinated, died in July. Sorrow was surely a blow that weakened.
Now back to writing - I have so much to share with you in the coming weeks, with more on wine and the many landscapes of wine (and less on my book than you’re getting today).
Books
Two book-signings coming right up!
My new book, Wine Hiking Switzerland, available also in French and German, has reached the publisher’s bestseller list, very nice for the author. You’ll find it on several media Christmas gift lists, such as this one on Trinkmag.com, and happy, positive reviews continue to arrive. You can check out the book for yourself, as well as two of the wines mentioned in the book (Jean-Michel Novelle, Geneva and Philippe Bovet, Gingins), at Payot Rive Gauche in Geneva Saturday 10 December, 11-12:30. Come at the start and you’ll have a fun little surprise. And in case you don’t know who I am, here’s some background, just published by the Circle of Wine Writers.
I’ll also be signing books and sampling wine at the Baobab bookstore in Martigny Saturday morning 17 December, with Jean-Paul Schwindt. Next week in this newsletter I will be reviewing his book on the current and likely future states of Swiss wine, as well as a thought-provoking book by a French doctor who is not a fan of the no-alcohol trend.
Boots and Bourbon
Boots. Let’s double up to keep this newsletter short. Trinkmag.com is one of the places where my writing appears. The editors are keen on a “boots on the ground” approach to writing about German-speaking wines, and I’m one of their more literally boots on the ground writers, a hiker-taster. The November issue carries my article on an area I’ll return to over and over, I think: Alto Adige, aka South Tyrol, the German-speaking area in northern Italy’s Dolomites. My visit to Kaltern-Caldaro was an immersion course in sustainability, especially the day I spent at the Manincor biodynamic winery of great repute, justified.
Bourbon. I’m a wine writer who loves Armagnac, but few other hardlikkers as we called them in Iowa when I was a kid. It’s taken me decades to come around to sipping whisk(e)y appreciatively, but I’m getting there. And then in November I went to Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa and suddenly had a crash course in bourbon, whiskey and rye. More on this as soon as I open the bottle posted here, now recovering from jet-lag in my cellar. In the meantime, can you work out what song this is from? “Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye…” (scroll to the end for the answer …)
Here and there
Glacier distress. A detailed update on Swiss glaciers and how much they are shrinking came out in August. Swissinfo and the Smithsonian have summaries of the original report, which reviewed a massive number of Swisstopo maps and sophisticated recent data. From Swissinfo: “They found that Swiss glaciers lost half their volume between 1931 and 2016 - and a further 12% between 2016 and 2021.”
Rinsing, peeling. Should you rinse your dishes before running the dishwasher? Peel or rub that October apple on your grungy sweatshirt before eating it? Thank you, Migros, for the answers! Also: no, I didn’t know we can eat watermelon seeds. Article in French.
Why European budget carriers are cheaper. Start an argument with this one, from Simple Flying.
Oddest thing I read this week, death masks and bank robbers. Surprisingly informative, from Literary Hub.
… and the answer is: American Pie by Don McLean, great sipping time music.