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Stephan Reinhardt

Robert Parker/Wine Advocate

The Pinot Noir from Martha and Daniel Gantenbein is one of the iconic Pinot Noirs from Switzerland but often shows its true class only after a couple of years of bottle age. The 2012 displays the typical fresh, leafy and smoky/oaky notes on the nose when this wine is young. The red and dark berry and cherry aromas are always fresh, more 'hinted than printed' and intermixed with herbal aromas. The palate of this full-bodied and well-concentrated wine is quite round and sweet but the finish is piquant, grippy and slightly crisp as always. Though the finish of the 2012 is a little bit stringent at the moment the juicy fruit and intensity gives it an excellent aging potential. I would not touch the 2012 in between the next 4 years.The charismatic couple Martha and Daniel Gantenbein started cultivating Pinot Noir in the village of Fläsch, canton Graubünden, in 1982. Surrounded by the alps and benefiting from the foehn winds they soon changed their Swiss Blauburgunder clones into Pinot clones and cuttings from Burgundy. From the today's 5 hectares of Pinot the couple produces just one single wine: the blue labeled Gantenbein Pinot Noir. It is one of the rare Swiss Pinots that is available world wide. Always smoky on the nose but precise, fresh, firm and persistent on the palate, this complex yet refined red is surely one of the finest Pinots from German speaking countries and one of the real "Burgundian" Swiss Pinots which can often be quite rich, sweet and jammy. The unfiltered Gantenbein Pinot Noir reaches it full potential only 3 or 4 years after the harvest but keeps this form over several years.