A Fendant at 11.1 percent. Spontaneously fermented, unfiltered, sulphured once, at bottling. Oscar and Tom make wine in Savièse above Sion that has little in common with the Valais standard. Cave Kaléidoscope is our first Swiss producer.
Savièse lies on the south-facing slope above the Rhône valley, up beyond Sion. Oscar and Tom's parcels climb the terraces. From below you see the town lying on the valley floor, from above the vines look across at the mountains on the other side. The cave has been going since 2024, the company behind it is Carl Hauser Sàrl, and the wines are AOC Valais. Think wine in Valais and you think Fendant and Pinot Noir, and those are exactly what the two of them make. Just differently.
Oscar Hauser and Thomas Carl work one hectare of vines, and you can see it in the numbers. There are a good thousand bottles of the 2024 Fendant, and a hundred and fifty each of the Pinot Noir and the Merlot. That is not a quantity you serve a market with. That is a quantity you carry through the cellar by hand. We have been talking to the two of them since the beginning of the year. So far we have tasted at a distance, we have not yet stood in their cellar. The invitation is open, and we are taking it.
What strikes you first in the photos from their vines is what grows between the rows. No neatly tilled soil, but hip-high grass, sainfoin, cranesbill, everything that comes up on its own. In that tangle, one picture has a green lizard sitting among old vine wood, another has a praying mantis climbing over a freshly picked bunch. That is not decoration, that is the method. The bottle puts it in one sentence: «Respect de l'écosystème des vignes.» Let the soil live and you have more work and less control. You can taste it in the wine.
Location & Soils
Site and soils. Savièse sits on the sunny side of the Rhône valley above Sion, and the parcels are steep and terraced. The upper part of the vines stands on slopes that have to be worked by hand, because no machine gets up there. Between the rows the cover crop stays, mown rather than turned over.
Grapes
Vines. Currently in the range: Fendant, which is Chasselas under its Valais name, plus Pinot Noir and Merlot, all from 2024. Some of the stocks are old and gnarled, and in the photos from the white parcels you see trunks considerably older than the two winemakers. For 2025 an orange-fermented Fendant is coming, a Viognier, an orange blend of Pinot Gris, Johannisberg and Viognier, and a Syrah. The rest is in barrel.
Climate
Climate. Valais is the driest wine region in Switzerland, with plenty of sun, little rain, and cool nights coming down from the side valleys. Those nights are the reason a Fendant can stop at 11.1 percent here and still taste ripe: the acidity holds while the sugar does not run away.
All three wines ferment spontaneously, with the yeasts that sit on the grapes and in the cellar. The Fendant goes in as whole bunches in its own juice. Pinot Noir and Merlot spend three weeks on the skins, part whole bunches, part destemmed. Then there is what does not happen: no oenological additives, no filtration, and sulphur goes in once, at bottling. Total sulphites are below 30 mg per litre in the Fendant and below 25 in the two reds. That is a fraction of what would be permitted, and well below most wines that call themselves natural. In the Fendant the result is 11.1 percent alcohol. A wine that carries little weight and still has something to say.
Every bottle carries its own painted picture. On the Fendant, yellow birds fly over blue and pink fields, on one of the reds a beetle sits on a pastel ground, on the next a red figure stands in yellow light. Hence the name: Kaléidoscope, a different pattern with every turn. On the back, instead of a tasting note, there is a small scene. On the Fendant this one: «After a hard day in cold and wind, your survival instinct leads you to the fridge.» That gets closer to the wine than any list of aromas.
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