Gstaad: Palace Hotel & Alpine Wine
The Palace in season, fondue on the mountain, and Swiss wine by train.
Two MICHELIN Keys at the Palace, a CHF 28 fondue at the Rössli, and Lavaux's UNESCO terraces by train
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.
A Wine Memories curated trail · winememories.fi
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Stops
Curated by Wine Memories
- 1
Posthotel Rössli: Gstaad's 1845 Inn Below the Palace
Posthotel Rössli stands on Gstaad's car-free Promenade. The house dates the building to about 1823 and the inn to 1845, and says it came through the July 1898 fire that destroyed half the village. The Gstaad Palace opened 68 years after the inn, in December 1913. In the Stübli, hung with deer and chamois antlers, fondue moitié-moitié costs CHF 28. The wine list is Swiss by canton, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Graubünden and Ticino, with no bottle from Bern, the canton Gstaad belongs to. You can read the dates at the door, find a house the fire made, order the half-and-half and pick a bottle by canton.
Tasting Price: moderate - 2
Saanen: The Church on the Rock and the Houses After the Fire
Saanen is the old market village of its valley, three minutes by train from Gstaad. A fire struck it in 1575, and its main street of wooden houses was rebuilt after it, largely in the late 16th to the 18th century. Above it, on a rock, stands the Mauritius church. Its paintings were whitewashed in 1604 and uncovered in 1927. When lightning set the tower on fire on 11 June 1940, only the paintings, pulpit, font and wooden columns were saved. Yehudi Menuhin's festival gave its first two concerts here in August 1957. You can find a farmhouse dated 1555 a few steps away, and end at the one village wine list with a Bernese bottle on it.
Tour Price: low - 3
Gstaad Palace: Dinner in Season, Fondue in a Gold Vault
The Gstaad Palace opens twice a year: from 15 December 2026 to 7 March 2027, and from 20 June to 5 September 2027. The house says a local teacher, Robert Steffen, bought the first land, and the hotel opened on 8 December 1913; the Scherz family has owned it since 1947. There is no cellar tour or wine tasting. Someone not staying gets in by booking dinner, and men wear a jacket from 7 pm. You can walk up from the station in about 12 minutes, eat fondue in a wartime gold vault or by Le Grill's open kitchen, and end in the GreenGo club, which opened in 1971 and admits the public.
Adventure Price: very high - 4
Wasserngrat: chairlift up, moitié-moitié fondue at the top
Above Gstaad, a 4-seat chairlift climbs 663 m from Bissen in about 6 minutes to the Bergrestaurant Wasserngrat, run by the brothers Nik and Simon Buchs. Plattform J once put their lunches at zero or four hundred a day, depending on the weather. In winter the lift runs daily from 18 December 2026 to mid-March 2027. Up top, order the moitié-moitié, equal parts Gruyère AOP and Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP, with a 10 cl glass of white or an apple juice, then find the one Fendant on the wine list. You can also walk up the groomed winter trail, or in late summer end the roped ridge hike from Leiterli at the restaurant.
Adventure Price: moderate - 5
Glacier 3000: Cross the Peak Walk, Then Taste Yvorne
Glacier 3000's cable cars lift you from the Col du Pillon, Les Diablerets, in Vaud, to Scex Rouge in 15 minutes. At the top, the Peak Walk by Tissot, opened in October 2014, runs 107 metres from View Point to the Scex Rouge summit, 5 metres higher; the operator says no other suspension bridge in the world links two summits. Beside it stands Mario Botta's summit building, burned in September 2022 and reopened in November 2024. You can cross the bridge, find the Matterhorn from the rooftop terrace, and order a 10 cl glass of Yvorne, from the Chablais vineyards of the same district, for CHF 6.
Adventure Price: high - 6
Gstaad to Gruyères: Watch the Cheese, Climb to the Castle
The cheese story starts on your train line: the Gruyère AOP file cites the 1115 charter of the priory at Rougemont, one stop after Saanen, for its mention of pressed cooked cheese. Change at Montbovon, and La Maison du Gruyère stands beside Gruyères station. Between 9:00 and 12:30 its cheesemakers turn milk from 22 farmers into Gruyère AOP in open copper vats, as the AOP rules require; the house says up to 48 wheels a day. Its exhibition counted 191,363 visitors in 2024. And you can taste the cheese at 6, 8 and 10 months, then walk 20 minutes up to the car-free town and the counts' castle, open every day, winter included.
Adventure Price: low - 7
Menuhin Festival Gstaad: A Summer Concert Evening
In August 1957 Yehudi Menuhin, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Maurice Gendron gave two concerts in the Mauritius church in Saanen. That was the start of the Menuhin Festival Gstaad: about seven weeks of concerts each summer, in village churches and a 1,816-seat tent in Gstaad. It is a music festival, not a wine festival. The tent has a bar, and the festival's catering partners include Champagne Laurent-Perrier, the Gstaad wine merchant Le Caveau de Bacchus and Mosterei Möhl, which says it makes apple juices and cider. You can walk Menuhin's words along the Saane to the founding church, then book a seat for 16 July to 4 September 2027.
Festival Price: high Optional - 8
Spiez: Taste the Cooperative's Wine Below the Castle
There is no "Spiez Castle Winery". The wine below Schloss Spiez is made by a cooperative, Rebbau Spiez Genossenschaft, which local enthusiasts started in 1927 to bring back vineyards first mentioned in 1338 and lost to vine disease around 1900. The house says its cellar sits inside the castle walls; visitors go to its shop at Schlossstrasse 8. From Gstaad the train takes about 1 h 22 min, with a change at Zweisimmen. You can walk the free 958 m vineyard trail, taste at the door on Friday evenings and Saturday middays from May to October, find the last Spiez wine press, and finish with a photo below the castle.
Tour Price: moderate
Plan the trip
Insider tip. Check the season before you go: the Palace is closed from early March to late June and from early September to mid-December, and in summer the Wasserngrat lift runs only Thursday to Sunday. From 7 pm, men need a jacket in the Palace's Le Grill and Le Grand.
Getting there and around
- Car required
- No
- Drinking and driving
- Every stop is reached by train, bus, lift or on foot, so nobody needs to drive after a tasting.
- Without a car
- Gstaad is on the Montreux–Zweisimmen railway. PostBus 180 runs to Glacier 3000; trains run to Saanen, to Spiez via Zweisimmen, to Montreux, and to Montbovon for Gruyères.
If your time is short
- Do not miss
- If you only have one day
- If it rains
- La Maison du Gruyère's exhibition and show dairy are indoors.