Cork Club

In March 2026 GaultMillau put the Cork Club among the ten best wine bars in Switzerland, counting 160 wines by the glass with the focus on Swiss wine. Its list includes a magnum of Reine des Glaces, a Humagne Blanche from Gregor Kuonen that matured in oak barrels in an ice vault on the Jungfraujoch, at CHF 127 at the table. It is a stop on the Grindelwald wine trail.

Walk in for a glass, an apéro or a coffee and sit at the club table, which seats up to twelve, or on the terrace in fine weather. Members' personal corkscrews hang on the club wall. Every bottle can be drunk there or bought to go, and the take-away price is the lower one. The pour runs, in GaultMillau's examples, from a Cüpli of Louis Roederer Cristal to a decilitre of Pinot Noir from the Gantenbeins.

Go Wednesday to Sunday between 12:00 and 21:00; on Mondays and Tuesdays it is shut. No seasonal closure is published, so from December to March it works as a winter evening stop after a day on the slopes, 316 m from Grindelwald station. The terrace opens only when the weather allows. In the quiet weeks between seasons, in November and April, check the hours on the house page before going.

The bar is walk-in during opening hours. The guided Swiss Wine Tasting is booked online on the house page, and groups of 2 to 26 can ask for a sommelier or the whole room. Every bottle has two prices, at the table or to take away: Petite Arvine from Rouvinez costs CHF 42 or 30, Louis Bovard's Médinette CHF 65 or 53. Espresso is CHF 4.00. Cheese boards include vegan ones, and homemade iced tea and coffee make a zero-proof stop.

The Cork Club is at Dorfstrasse 119 on Grindelwald's village street, 316 m east of the station where the Berner Oberland-Bahn from Interlaken Ost ends. Grindelwald Terminal, the Eiger Express base, is about 1.2 km west. Some map apps still show the door under its older name, Grindel Lounge. The owners' Hotel Glacier is a separate address, Endweg 55.

The Cork Club is a wine bar, wine shop and coffee lounge at Dorfstrasse 119 in Grindelwald, run by the Boutique Hotel Glacier since summer 2025. The house says it focuses on Swiss wines from independent Mémoire Suisse winemakers, served by the glass or bottle with cheese boards and small plates. A bottle not on its list can be preordered from the Glacier Cellar selection of rare and aged Swiss wines.

The Cork Club opened in summer 2025 as the latest idea of the Glacier's owner Jan Pyott, a former triathlete who runs the hotel with Justine Pyott and plans tastings and events with sommeliers and producers. The Glacier's restaurant list won the Fine Dining category of VINUM's Swiss Wine List Award 2026, and the bar can draw on that cellar of over 750 wines. Before it, the house at Dorfstrasse 119 held the Grindellounge, a café opened in December 2012.

Reine des Glaces is a Humagne Blanche from the Gregor Kuonen cellar in Salgesch, a grape Jungfraubahnen call one of the oldest native to Valais. From March 2022 it matured in five oak barrels in an ice vault in the Ice Palace on the Jungfraujoch, at 3,454 metres. The cellar's managing director Patrick Revey credits constant temperatures around freezing point and 90 percent humidity. The Cork Club lists the 2022 vintage in magnum.

Look for the Mémoire symbol on the menu: it marks wines of the Mémoire des Vins Suisses, an association founded in 2002 by four wine journalists and the Ticino winemaker Christian Zündel to keep sixty bottles of each vintage of the best Swiss wines and follow how they age. Bilanz counted 59 member estates and 29,000 stored bottles in 2026. On the list: Chasselas, Petite Arvine and Cornalin.