I decide that avoiding Milan is of utmost importance and choose a route around it which works really great until I get to the 25-km stretch on back roads that ends up taking 90 minutes. Along Lake Como, the sun starts peeking out and the mountains emerge. Driving up over the 13 switchbacks of the Maloja Pass, then over the hump into the Engadine, its glacial lakes stretching out in front of me in the evening light. H and I go to a local restaurant for dinner - I have been craving "filletes de perche," filets of the tiny lake perch sauteed in butter. Mmmmmmm.
Friday dawns rainy and cool, scattered sun between showers, but the valley is still insanely gorgeous. I walk through town, past the rail station and into the woods toward St Moritz, the neighboring village, along back paths and around one of the lakes. Lovely.
Saturday was one of those insanely gorgeous fall days - not a frickin' cloud in the sky. C has driven down from Frankfurt with K, who turns out to be really nice. She's just bought a little place for herself and I get a quick tour - lovely retreat for her. We get out for a hike to the Boval hut up the Morteratsch valley – this is the hut where my grandfather, a mountain guide, died 54 years ago at 44 years old – exactly my age now. He left his wife and 5 daughters – how different things have turned out for me. The hut is located along the side of a glacier that I have been scrambling over for 30 years – and it is sad to see how quickly the glacier is dying. Warming is real – the glacier is collapsing on itself. Still, it is hard to be too sad on such a gorgeous day. The sun is shining, there is a dusting of fresh snow on the high peaks already, and the temperature in the light is warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt. At the hut, after a two-hour hike, we order some lunch – R, the hut steward, is still here. I’ve known him for ages, a really nice guy with grizzly beard, sparkling eyes and a great sense of humor. The hike down, though, is freezing- this side of the valley is in shade, and the wind has picked up a bit. Brrrrrr. 
At the base, still sweaty and gross, C and I ham it up for K.
That night, H (pic) and I go to dinner at Johri’s Talvo, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the nearby village of Champfér – it is their end-of-season dinner and they do a special menu, matched with wines, accompanied by members of a local opera company who sing between courses. We’re seated at a big communal table of 10 with both locals and tourists; Swiss, Germans, an Austrian, a Russian and I. We all get along swimmingly once the wine takes effect and by the end of the evening we all best buddies and exchanging cards and emails. I’m seated next to a most interesting Austrian/German woman, E, who is a total wine geek. We have a great time discussing the relative merits and weaknesses of the wines served with the meal, and when we decide that things aren’t quite up to snuff we start ordering more interesting things for the table (more on the wines below). The music is amazing – and one of the singers is an insanely gorgeous Swiss-Italian … dark hair, dark eyes and a nose to die for. No joke. I could write sonnets about this nose. H taps my shoulder and asks if I’ve noticed her – “oh, you mean my future wife over there?” Laughter all around.
Wines 1-4 were served with the meal and went passably well with the menu, which was excellent. Roland Johri is a really talented chef. The last two were ordered by the participants at the table and were a bit more interesting. We decided to keep the theme Swiss – in keeping with the general thrust of the wines and food. The standout was the Cornalin, easy.
nv Louis Roderer Brut Champagne: Classic nose, classic flavors, classic structure … tasty, yes, but boring, boring, boring.
2006 Donatsch, Pinot Gris “Halde,” Malans, Switzerland
Oaky. Buttery. The floral overtones say Pinot Gris, but wrapped up in a very modern style of winemaking. Low acid. On its own, flabby and unexciting in the mouth, but with the first course – variations on foie gras – it is delicious and holds well. Pears, touch of citrus, some pineapple. Decent finish – stays in the mouth. Pretty good. 2.5
2003 Tenuta Redegonda, Merlot del Ticino DOC, Switzerland
Tobacco, anise, plums and green peppercorns. This is a quaffer wine – it is easy to enjoy, needs absolutely no thought to appreciate and is driven by fruit and fat – it has little structure and no hopes for ageing past, say, next Tuesday. About all I can say for this wine is that it drinks well. Very modern, loads of oak and sweetness. Boring. 2.0
2005 Donatsch, “Pinot Dolce”, Malans, Switzerland.
My notes on this are a bit garbled and I am not sure if the wine name is correct, but his was the best of the wines that came with the meal. It had a good richness, enough acidity to balance the sweetness and went well with dessert. Really lovely way to finish. 3.5-
2004 Zufferey, Cornalin du Valais, Switzerland
Cranberries and cassis are the first things out of the nose, along with the particular mineral aspect that I always associate with this varietal. Cornalin is an ancient, little-planted varietal from the upper reaches of the Rhône valley in Switzerland. The remaining plantings are limited and the grapes tend to be blended with other wines (a very personal observation about Swiss wines: the Swiss, in general, like their wines light). There are some earthy plums and flowers on the nose. Lovely structure, good intensity, many at the table think it is a Pinot Noir, with wich it shared earthy characteristics. This is lovely. 3.5-
2002 Gantenbein, Pinot Noir, Fläsch, Switzerland, from Magnum
Lovely nose of red cherries and horsepoop. Pinot Noir from the Grischun (or Graubünden, or Grisons, or Grigioni, whatever) tends to have a very particular nose: really fresh fruit, minerality and floral elements that are all expressed as lightly as a lover’s touch. In blind tastings with other Pinot Noir, Swiss Pinots are forgotten – they are so subtle that most think they can be ignored. I’ve always found the charms of these to be their utter lack of pinotish pretensions – most Pinot Noir strives for some sort of importance, but these are utterly content to be simple country cousins to their more sophisticated counterparts from Burgundy, California and Oregon. Gantenbein is supposedly one of the better producers, and this wine shows the good fruit and easy drinkability of its kin. However, I find this loses itself in the mid-palate; it just disappears fro a second before reappearing at the back of the mouth. Good acid, good fruit, light structure … but missing something. Decent wine. Nice. 2.5-
Sunday dawns cold and cloudy. I leave around 3 and manage to make it back into Monforte just as the sun is setting. As I was finishing up the stretch of the Autostrada between Alessandria and Asti, the sun is a deep orange ball suspended low in the sky – there is so much haze that even driving directly westward into the light, the sun is so weakened that is no more distracting than a 10-watt bulb. As I descend the last hill to Asti, it begins to drop below a line of clouds, and slowly disappears – one of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen this trip.
Read Steve Erickson’s “Zeroville” over the weekend – one of the most amazing books I’ve read, ever. It’s ostensibly about the movies, but I think it’s really about time: how it isn’t straight, but curves, runs back on itself, is discontinuous, starts and stops unexpectedly … the guy is a freakin’ genius. He constructs a character to whom time is not a given – it reminded me of studying Kant, who postulated (roughly) that time was a human construct that simply gave us the ability to order things enough so as not to be made completely insane by them; in this book, the main character, Vikar, exists outside the “normal” conception of time, as if he were seeing things noumenally. Get a copy and read it. Funny, frightening, deeply thoughtful, sad and un-put-downable. Highly recommended.
Off to bed now – I have to be back at the winery before 8am!
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