Sweet wines
Winegrowers usually harvest all their grapes in the fall. Not so the Mathier winegrowing family in Salgesch (VS). They allow some varieties to remain on the vines until the end of December. By then they have reached a full 180 Öchsle degrees. Ideal for making sweet wines.
Text: Martin Weiss, Photos: Martin Weiss and Mathier family
It’s seven o’clock in the morning and freezing cold in the Lentine vineyard near Sion. But for Diego Mathier and his employees, these are just the right conditions for harvesting the late-ripening grapes. Still freezing cold, they are pressed, then the sweet juice is filled into oak barrels and taken to a wine cellar that is unique in the world: an ice grotto in the Rhone Glacier, high up on the Furka Pass in Valais.
When Diego closes the portal of this 15-metre-high ice cathedral, no one will be able to enter for six months. Because now Mother Nature is at work. And a bit of magic. Diego explains it like this: “Grapes harvested late contain a lot of sugar. However, most of it is broken down during alcoholic fermentation. Storage in the cold helps to slow down and ultimately stop this process. This leaves more residual sweetness in the wine while retaining the acidity. As the grape juice is left on the lees, the result is a harmonious, complex sweet wine.”
In mid-June, the Mathiers bring the barrels back out into the daylight. As the glacier is in motion, they often have to be freed from the ice. “There is no more natural wine cellar,” says Diego, becoming almost poetic: “We are bringing an ancient cultural asset to the source of the Rhone and thus to the source of life. Without this river, our valley would be a barren steppe landscape.” In fact, the ice grotto feels like a belly. No comparison with a mundane wine cellar in the lowlands. “The temperature is constantly around zero degrees and the humidity is high. It also makes ecological sense, because we don’t need electricity for cooling,” says Diego.
The glacier is melting
Since 1998, when Diego’s brother Yvo had the idea of maturing the sweet wines in the glacier, the situation has changed drastically. The Rhone glacier has receded by another 80 meters since then. Back then, the ice tongue was still close to the Furka road, but today there is a lake there that is constantly growing in size. If the ETH glaciologists’ projections are to be believed, the Rhone Glacier will have disappeared by 2100 at the latest. “It may indeed be the case that we will soon have to fall back on our ice cellar in the valley,” says Diego. “But we’ll keep going as long as we can.”
All the more precious are these sweet wines, which remind us that nature needs respect. And the Mathiers have made this their philosophy. Their sustainable production methods (IP) have earned them several awards. In 2016, they were even named Winemaker of the Decade.
For the Christmas season
Only a few bottles of these sweet delicacies go on sale each year. “They are particularly popular at Christmas time,” explains Diego’s wife Nadia, who loves to cook, as her recipes on the family website show. “The sweet wine goes well with Cantucci, Chräbeli or other Christmas cookies. But also with crêpe suzette or mature cheese.” Indeed, the wine, which comes from the cold, is a treat for the palate with its fruity notes reminiscent of pineapple and mango. If this wine wasn’t so precious, you could drink a lot of it.
Sweet wine and Christmas cookies
The Mathiers have named their sweet wines Gemma, derived from the Latin word for gemstone. Depending on the variety – Pinot Noir, Ermitage or an assemblage of Ermitage, Pinot Gris and Silvaner are used – the sweet wines are called Saphir, Rubin or Topas. The prices for a small 37.5 cl bottle of this treasure range from 29 to 36 francs.
www.mathier.com
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