Coming Up: Open House Day, 28. May 2011
A day in Geneva’s countryside to discover the 2010 vintage
Caves Ouvertes, or
the Open House Day of Geneva’s wineries, takes place canton-wide on
Saturday, May 28 this year. Nearly all of the canton’s wineries will
be open on the day.
The Open House Day known as Caves Ouvertes was first
launched in 1987 by Geneva’s independent winegrowers. The idea was to
invite the general public to come out and visit their wineries. It was
the first event of the kind in Switzerland. Pierre Dupraz, who was
president of the Geneva chapter of the winegrowers’ association at the
time, recalls that ‘’several dozen’’ people showed up for that first
Open House. Going on 25 years later, the number of visitors is in the
thousands and Caves Ouvertes has become one of Geneva’s big annual
events.
On Saturday, May 28, 2011, nearly all (some 80) of the
canton’s wineries will be opening their doors to present the 2010
vintage – and oak-aged wines from the 2009
vintage.
Most of the wineries also sell food and many provide
entertainment. In a new development this year, some wineries will be
selling tasting glasses for 5 Swiss francs. ‘’This will facilitate
organization,’’ says Jacques Bocquet, a winegrower in Sézenove
(Bernex). ‘’The success of Caves Ouvertes, with its thousands of
visitors, has been so huge that managing glasses was becoming an
issue. This way, each customer has his or her own glass and we can
focus our energy on presenting our wines.’’
Geneva’s Right Bank Mandement area (Satigny, Russin and
Dardagny) is traditionally the most-visited region on the day,
although the past few years have seen sizable increases in the number
of visitors to Bernex and surrounding villages like Lully or Sézenove,
in the part of the canton located between the Rhône and the Arve
rivers, and to Left Bank communes like Jussy, Anières and Gy in the
area between the Arve and the lake.
In some areas, there are free TPG shuttle buses that
loop around wine villages. Some villages also have organized parking.
The promotion campaign for the day this year places the
accent on discovering the diversity of Geneva’s wines while respecting
the product. The opportunity to take part in the launch of the new
vintage – fruit of a year’s hard work on the part of winegrowers – in
the company of those same winegrowers remains the central attraction
of the day.
A list of wineries and their addresses can be found on
www.lesvinsdegeneve.ch.
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