Petite arvine, humagne, cornalin, amigne. Never heard of them? These are some of the names of the more than 50 indigenous grape varieties from which they have been making wine in the Swiss canton of Valais for centuries. For some years now, all the wine villages in the Rhone Valley have been connected by the 66-km-long Chemin du Vignoble. Travel editor and convinced wine lover Jonathan Vandevoorde put on his walking shoes for a special pilgrimage along the Alps' tastiest cultural heritage. TEXT & PHOTOS JONATHAN VANDEVOORDE
It is a weekend in the middle of October and in Fully, a village a stone's throw from Martigny in the sunny Rhone valley, I can walk over the heads. Stalls are everywhere, most of them selling cheeses, sauces, local wines and artisan products. Thousands of visitors crowd the streets during this two-day Fête de la Châtaigne, the chestnut festival that the Neue Zürcher Zeitung branded an event of "national significance". Everyone feasts on the warm autumn sunshine. And the many delicacies, of course, because in the French-speaking Bas-Valais (Lower Wallis) they seem to have rewritten the definition of burgundy indulgence. For two days in early October, everything revolves around wine and sweet chestnuts. No less than nine tonnes are roasted on such a weekend for the brisolée: roasted chestnuts garnished with dried meat, fresh fruit and a tomme cheese. The fruity white wine here is made from petite arvine, a native grape that thrives on the rubble fans that line the southern slopes above the village.
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