Alpine Grand Journey
Switzerland
Chapter 2 of the Alpine Grand Journey, Swiss Alps: 12 wine trails and 108 stops.
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Chapter 2: Swiss Alps
- Valais Glacier Wine Trail 9 stops · 1–2 weeks · challenging
- Lavaux & Vaud Heights Wine Trail Lavaux's vineyard terraces climb above Lake Geneva: a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2007, with about 450 km of walls and more than 10,000 terraces. This trail takes two days, east to west, by train, bus and on foot. Day one starts in Vevey, 5–8 minutes by train from Montreux, in the free museum of the Fête des Vignerons, the festival that comes about once a generation. The lakeside train then stops at Saint-Saphorin, where a Roman milestone of AD 47 is built into the church, and at Rivaz, where the Forestay stream marks the eastern border of the Dézaley Grand Cru and the Lavaux Vinorama pours three Chasselas for CHF 17. From there a stair climbs into the Dézaley, gate by gate, and the growers' paths lead down to Epesses, where they pour their own wine from April to October. On day two, the Bovard family in Cully sells Médinette, whose label shows the Bacchus Albert Bovard played in 1905. In summer a tractor-drawn train climbs from the Cully pier into the vines, and the trail ends at Domaine Croix Duplex in Grandvaux, by the cellar fire, where from November to January the sun sets before the 18:00 close. 6 stops · 2 days · moderate
- Graubünden Alpine Wine Trail 10 stops · 1–2 weeks · challenging
- Zermatt & Matterhorn Wine Trail 14 stops · 1–2 weeks · challenging
- Grindelwald: Where the Eiger Meets the Vine Three days in Grindelwald, with a glass at every stop. Day one stays in the village: the Cork Club, one of GaultMillau's ten best Swiss wine bars in March 2026; Hotel Glacier, whose sommelier pours three wines on Sundays at 16:00 in a cellar that was once a barn, and whose own Pinot Blanc comes from vines near Sion; and, for dinner, a pizzeria with about 350 wines. Day two rides up to the Jungfraujoch at 3,454 m, where name plates on the tunnel wall remember the 30 Italian workers who died building the railway, and where a Valais Humagne Blanche has matured in the glacier's ice since 2022. On the way down, the mountain restaurant at Kleine Scheidegg pours a Pinot Noir from the same Salgesch cellar, CHF 7 a decilitre, on a terrace facing the north face; in 1935 and 1936 onlookers on this pass followed fatal climbs on it through telescopes and binoculars. Day three takes the gondola to Männlichen, with a bar on board when booked 48 hours ahead, climbs the Royal Walk to its crown at 2,343 m, and ends in the village with fondue in a cabin that rode up to Männlichen from 1978 to 2019. 7 stops · 3 days · moderate
- St. Moritz: Engadin Wine & Champagne In 1864, hotelier Johannes Badrutt bet his British summer guests they'd love St. Moritz in winter. They stayed until spring. That bet invented the winter holiday. --- Badrutt's Palace holds 30,000 bottles and the Krug Stübli serves rare champagne in a room where monarchs once dined — the kind of place where you order by vintage, not by glass. White Turf brings horse racing to the frozen lake every February — champagne corks pop at -15°C while thoroughbreds thunder across ice that the Swiss Army tests for thickness each morning. At Piz Nair (3,057m), you drink wine above the clouds. Schloss Salenegg in nearby Maienfeld is Europe's oldest winery, documented since 1068 — nearly a thousand years of unbroken winemaking. The Herrschäftler festival turns the Bündner Herrschaft wine region into Switzerland's most exclusive open cellar event, where producers who normally sell everything by allocation pour freely for one weekend. And on the Weinwanderweg, you hike 6km through vineyards that produce cult Pinot Noir selling for 200+ CHF per bottle — the trail is free, but every step walks you past wine you can't buy without a waiting list. Gantenbein. Fromm. Donatsch. Names that Swiss wine collectors whisper. 15 stops · 1 week · moderate
- Verbier: Festival & Fondue Wine The freeride capital of Europe meets the wine heartland of Switzerland. Verbier sits above the Rhône Valley, where Valais — Switzerland's largest wine region — grows grapes on impossibly steep terraces below. --- Le Rouge's terrace explodes at 3pm with DJs, ski boots, and hedge fund managers toasting with local Petite Arvine. The Mont Fort summit (3,330m) offers four-country panoramas with Fendant in hand — France, Italy, Switzerland, and on clear days, a sliver of Austria. Farinet bar is named after Joseph-Samuel Farinet, a counterfeiter hanged in 1880 who became a folk hero — the Robin Hood of the Valais. The Xtreme Verbier freeride competition on the Bec des Rosses face is visible from every wine terrace in the village — athletes drop 500m of near-vertical couloir while you hold your glass steady. In summer, the Fully wine day trip drops 2,000m into the valley's most acclaimed vineyards. Marie-Thérèse Chappaz — the 'Queen of Valais,' whose Petite Arvine and Ermitage wines score 95+ from Jancis Robinson — pours just 15 minutes away. Cornalin, Humagne Rouge, Amigne: these are grapes that exist almost nowhere else on earth, growing on granite terraces that the Romans first planted and the Valais farmers have maintained for 2,000 years. The freeride crowd comes for the adrenaline. They stay for the wine nobody back home has ever heard of. 10 stops · 4 days · challenging
- Gstaad: Palace Hotel & Alpine Wine The Gstaad Palace, open since December 1913 and given Two MICHELIN Keys in 2026, opens only in season: 15 December 2026 to 7 March 2027 and 20 June to 5 September 2027. Outside guests book a table for dinner. On the Promenade below, Posthotel Rössli, an inn since 1845, serves fondue moitié-moitié at CHF 28 with Swiss wines from Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Graubünden and Ticino. Saanen, three minutes away by train, keeps a farmhouse dated 1555 and the church where the Menuhin Festival began in 1957. In winter the Wasserngrat chairlift runs daily to a mountain restaurant, and at Glacier 3000, 29 minutes away by PostBus, the summit restaurant pours Yvorne from the Chablais next to the Peak Walk bridge. Two wine regions are a train ride away: the cooperative below Spiez Castle on Lake Thun, about 1 h 22 via Zweisimmen, and the Lavaux terraces above Lake Geneva, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2007, reached from Montreux, about 1 h 26 away by GoldenPass Express. 8 stops · 3 to 4 days · moderate
- Crans-Montana: Terroir at Altitude Crans-Montana sits at 1,500m on a sun-drenched plateau directly above Sierre — Switzerland's driest city and the self-proclaimed wine capital of Valais. The Piste des Vignes is the only ski run in the world that ends in a vineyard. --- That's not marketing — you literally ski through the vines on the last 200 metres. The Omega European Masters golf tournament brings global attention every September, but the wine scene operates year-round. Cave du Chevalier stocks 500+ Swiss wines in a cellar carved into the hillside. Pas de l'Ours holds a Michelin star, and the sommelier will walk you through vertical Cornalin tastings that prove Swiss reds can age. The Bisse du Ro is one of the Valais' ancient irrigation canals — a walking trail carved into cliff faces centuries ago to channel glacial meltwater to the vineyards below. Following it connects Alpine wilderness to vine terraces in a single afternoon. The Plaine Morte glacier at 2,927m is the largest glacial plateau in the western Alps — and the meltwater from this glacier feeds the vineyards 1,400 metres below. South-facing slopes, 300 days of sunshine, and the driest climate in Switzerland grow Petite Arvine and Cornalin in conditions more Mediterranean than Alpine. Every bottle from Sierre carries this paradox: Swiss precision, southern soul. 10 stops · 4 days · moderate
- Saas-Fee: Pearl of the Alps Wine The Pearl of the Alps is car-free, glacier-fed, and surrounded by 13 peaks above 4,000m — more than any other resort in Switzerland. Saas-Fee's isolation preserves something rare: a mountain village where wine culture means hiking to it. --- The Mittelallalin ice pavilion at 3,500m is the world's highest revolving restaurant — every 60 minutes, the entire dining room completes a rotation while you eat raclette and drink Fendant with a view that encompasses 30 glaciers. The gorge trail winds through the Fee Gorge with waterfalls thundering beside you through ice-carved chambers. Petite Arvine is Valais' most exciting grape — aromatic, mineral, with a grapefruit-and-saline finish that Jancis Robinson calls 'one of the great Swiss originals.' It grows nowhere else in the world at this quality, and the village wine bars pour it alongside fondue made with cheese from the dairy 200 metres away. Summer glacier skiing means you can drink wine at altitude year-round. The Saaser Museum tells the story of a community that has survived at 1,800m for centuries — avalanches, isolation, and a dialect so specific that neighbouring valleys struggle to understand it. Thirteen 4,000m peaks create a natural amphitheatre that blocks weather systems, giving Saas-Fee its own microclimate. The village feels like it exists outside of time. The wine confirms it. 9 stops · 3 days · moderate
- Wengen: Car-Free Alpine Wine Village No cars. No roads. Just a cog railway climbing 400m from Lauterbrunnen to a village frozen in time beneath the Eiger North Face. Wengen hosted the first Lauberhorn downhill in 1930 — still the longest race on the World Cup circuit. --- At 4.5km, the Lauberhorn is a test of endurance more than speed — racers hit 160km/h on the Hundschopf jump while the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau loom overhead. The Hotel Regina wine cellar has been pouring since the Victorian era, when British climbers made Wengen their base camp for Eiger attempts. The Jungfraujoch summit (3,454m) is Europe's highest railway station — wine at the top tastes genuinely different because lower air pressure changes how aromatics reach your palate. It's not imagination; it's physics. The Männlichen Royal Walk offers panoramic views of the entire Bernese Oberland trinity. Lauterbrunnen valley below holds 72 waterfalls, including Trümmelbach — a series of cascades thundering inside the mountain itself, accessible through tunnels carved into the rock. This is the Alps before the automobile — and the wine culture matches. No delivery trucks, no chain restaurants, no shortcuts. Everything arrives by train, including the bottles, including you. 8 stops · 3 days · moderate
- Davos: Where the World Meets Wine Every January, the World Economic Forum transforms Davos into the planet's most powerful wine bar — heads of state and CEOs negotiate over Swiss wines at private chalets. But Davos was famous long before WEF. --- Thomas Mann set 'The Magic Mountain' at the Schatzalp sanatorium in 1924, turning a tuberculosis clinic into one of literature's most enduring settings. The Schatzalp is now a hotel — you can sleep where Hans Castorp philosophised, and the restaurant serves local wine in the dining room Mann described. The Kirchner Museum holds the largest collection of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's expressionist paintings — he lived in Davos from 1918 until his death in 1938, painting the mountains that healed and haunted him. The Parsenn ski area offers the longest descent in the region at 12km. Maienfeld — Heidi's village and home to cult Pinot Noir producer Gantenbein (200+ CHF per bottle, allocation only) — is a 30-minute drive for a day trip. The Jakobshorn après-ski scene is younger and wilder than St. Moritz, while the Sertig Valley walk offers solitude that the WEF crowd will never find. Wine and power have shared these streets since the 1970s. The rest of the year, Davos remembers it was a place of healing before it was a place of dealing. 8 stops · 3 days · moderate