Trail Name: Panoramaweg Spitzer Graben (also advertised as Panoramawanderweg Spitzer Graben)
Trail Type: Long distance hiking trail, well maintained, and rather well-marked.
Length:
Total: 19.7 km/12.25 miles
Segment: @12 km/8 miles
Convenient to: Krems, Austria
Continue reading Panoramaweg Spitzer Graben: Trail in a Nutshell
Focusing on Pinot Noir again, I headed for the hills west of the small Swiss town of Hallau, known as Blauburgunder-land. In Switzerland (and some places in Austria), Pinot Noir is known as Blauburgunder. Here, the hills are covered by these vines, facing the sun for most of the day.
What I Learned:
If you haven’t heard much about Swiss wine – don’t be surprised. Less than 3% of all Swiss wine production is exported!
Trail Name: Blauburgunder Panoramaweg
Trail Type: Long distance hiking trail; either paved or hard-packed gravel, well maintained.
Length: total: 12 km/7.5 miles
Convenient to: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Continue reading Blauburgunder Panoramaweg: Trail in a Nutshell
Hiking Burgundy’s Cote de Nuits taught me to appreciate the important things in life; and in the Cote de Nuits, life does seem to revolve around wine. Certainly wine is not the most important thing in life here: rather producing the greatest quality wine becomes an all-consuming passion on the part of most families who make a living from these hugely famous but surprisingly small appellations and the wines they produce. And hiking through these vineyards gave me a chance to appreciate that.
The Cote de Nuits vineyards, some of the most famous in the world, begin just yards from trailhead in Chenove, with the Marsannay Village appellation. Shortly after, in the village of Fixey/Fixin, I came to the first Premier Cru vineyard: Les Arvelets. (Fixin is also does homage to another great: Napoleon. Fixin’s Noisot Museum, and associated park, were created by Claude Noisot, a former officer in the Imperial Army who actually accompanied Napoleon into exile at Elba.)
Continue reading Burgundy’s Cote de Nuits: Big Names, Small Vineyards
What I Learned:
By way of overall explanation, the term Cote D’Or (Golden Slope) has a couple of meanings: it refers to a department in France, and it refers to a geological phenomenon, a large limestone ridge, that gives its name to a wine region. The wine region is subdivided into two sections: the northern Cote de Nuits, and the southern Cote de Beaune. This post covers the northern, Cote de Nuits, section, which runs from approximately just south of Dijon to just south of Corgoloin in Burgundy.
Continue reading Wine Notes: Burgundy Cote D’Or – Cote de Nuits
