You have to mean to visit the Klettgau, an enchanted enclave of limestone-rich vineyards that lies to the west of the city of Schaffhausen. It’s not on the way to anywhere, and the border with Germany has a disconcerting habit of popping up and complicating access where you least expect it. But it’s worth persevering. Here, in what is the largest single contiguous swathe of vines in Switzerland’s German-speaking region – where vineyards are most often widely dispersed – you will find a clutch of interesting estates that are worth the detour.
In the heart of the Klettgau is the village of Hallau, home to the Gysel family, whose winery name, Aagne (pronounced Arg-ner), is Schaffhausen dialect for eigen, meaning “own” (as in “own grapes”). Stefan Gysel, who heads the winery today, explains that in his grandfather’s time, theirs was the typical mixed farm with apples, vines and a few cows. Stefan’s father Erich dispensed with both orchards and dairy and decided to focus fully on the vineyards. Lacking the necessary winemaking facilities, however, he continued to sell his grapes to neighbouring, better-equipped winemakers. Then in the 1990s came the big change when Erich started making and bottling his own wines – the charmingly quaint labels of the day bear the words Aagne vom Schopf, meaning, roughly, “Our own wines from the shed”.
When Stefan completed his studies at Wädenswil – formerly the oenology and viticulture school for German-speaking students on Lake Zurich – and took over from his father, the question arose as to whether to graduate from the “shed” and build a new cellar. As it happened, a fellow student of Stefan’s was a young winegrower named Nadine Saxer, whose family winery was located a little further south in Neftenbach. The two budding winemakers decided to join forces – both romantically and professionally – and to pool their resources and winemaking knowledge by concentrating all the winemaking for both estates at Nadine’s cellar.
Today, Stefan farms according to Ökologischen Leistungsnachweis (ÖLN) rules, a Swiss ecological performance standard similar to organics but with a broader focus on sustainability, and grows the grapes for all his wines on 15 hectares of vineyards spread around the Klettgau. These are transported at harvest time to the cellar in Neftenbach 30 minutes down the road. The grapes can take several different routes, some of which involve crossing from Switzerland into Germany and back into Switzerland again, so close and meandering is the border here. Though Aagne and Nadine Saxer share the same winemaking facilities, the wines are kept quite separate, each with their own distinct labels and each bearing the particular signature conferred by the different terroirs.
While red wines are still in the majority at Aagne, white wines are in the ascendant. His Riesling-Silvaner is aromatic but fully dry, thanks to low yields and lack of malolactic fermentation – he describes it as fresh and crisp (“frisch-knackig”), adding that this is how the wine should be – at its best – rather than flabby and flat as is more common with the Müller-Thurgau grape. The star of the white show (and a regular award-winner in the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse) is his Pinot Blanc-Chardonnay, fermented in stainless steel, aged in used barriques for a few months and judiciously blended to give a finely balanced wine that takes the best from both grapes.
All the house Pinot Noir is labelled as such, rather than using the traditional term Hallauer Blauburgunder, which is burdened with ancient connotations of a thin, deeply unconvincing local red wine. Of the three cuvées, the Spätlese is perfumed, very fine and aged in well-used barriques to keep the oak in check. The real revelation is Merlot, a grape which has made its Swiss reputation in Ticino, but which performs splendidly in Stefan’s hands here in the sunny, dry microclimate of the Klettgau, where the grapes reach full maturity but over a long period, which gives the wines both complexity and elegance.
Aagne wines are frequent award-winners – in 2009 they took away the Winemaker of the Year award in the Grand Prix du Vin Suisse. You can taste at the winery on Saturday mornings, but as Stefan points out, “we can’t just sit about and wait for the customers to come, we have to go out to meet them.” This is why you’ll find him showing his wines at a few top-class wine salons, such as the Wyschiff, which is moored on Lake Zurich during November, and at the Swiss Wine Tasting in Zurich.
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ADDRESS: Atlingerstrasse 27 8212 Hallau CONTACT: |
WINES TO LOOK OUT FOR: Pinot-Chardonnay Pinot Noir Spätlese Pinot Noir Barrique Merlot |
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aagne.ch |
Price range 15 to 47 SFr. |
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HIGHLIGHTS: Visits welcomed Saturdays 10–2 or weekdays by appointment. Check the website for vineyard visits with tasting, for groups from 10 – 25 people. Wines are available online and at Nadine Saxer’s winery in Neftenbach. Blauburgunder (Pinot Noir) Panorama Trail through the vineyards |
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