Vitali Vitaliev explores some unexpected attractions of the Swiss canton Valais
For someone like me, still recovering after open-heart surgery, the official promotional logo of the Swiss canton of Valais – 'Engraved on Your Heart' – was bound to sound a tad too punchy (if not to say scary) in the beginning. The fact that I had – perhaps rather foolhardily – volunteered to tour the canton and the surrounding Alps on an electric bicycle made my patched-up heart, with a new, bovine, aortal valve sewn on to it, beat even faster. "Do I fancy any more 'engravings' on my ticker?" I was thinking ruefully.
The dilemma was resolved by my cardiologist. "Your main foes are immobility and stress!" he declared sternly, and added: "A bit of e-biking therapy should do you a lot of good." He went on to say that mountain biking had been proved to protect the heart muscle and to lower blood pressure. "Besides, as far as I know, travelling and learning about the places' history and technology makes you happy, so go for it!" he concluded.
To me, the most impressive feature of Valais was a carefully maintained balance of tradition and innovation, with adherence to traditional technologies of cheese- and wine-making, say, going hand-in-hand with cutting-edge robotics, AI, ICT, life sciences and AVs (Europe's first driverless shuttle bus was trialled in the canton's capital, Sion, a couple of years ago).
The first living metaphor of that amazing fusion of old and new was to be found right at my first – rather traditional (if only in its lack of air-conditioning) – hotel in the town of Martigny, which shared the building and the reception area with the Idiap Research Institute, a body whose specialisations include "artificial intelligence for society".
Waiting for my e-bike to be delivered to reception, I had ample time to study Idiap's annual report, highlighting some of its engineering innovations, including SIIP (Speaker Identification Integrated Project), which aims to identify criminals by their voices in "lawfully intercepted phone calls". Interpol is a partner.
Well, if someone tried to identify me by my voice during my first e-bike ride in the streets of Martigny, they would have definitely failed, for my speech consisted of some untranslatable Russian expletives as well as loud squeaks and squeals, emitted while trying to negotiate a roundabout in the wrong direction (I was still getting to grips with the right-hand traffic), or when the automatically adjustable saddle would suddenly pop up and hit me ... you know where, at times making me fall off the bike. The town's rush-hour drivers must have had fun watching my progress that afternoon.
Luckily, my first ride was to the local 120-year-old Morand Distillery, which uses traditional technologies alongside super-modern bottling lines to produce some yummy syrups and liqueurs from locally-grown fruit. It must be due to the intensive tasting of the syrups and (particularly) the liqueurs that my cycling back to the hotel was much more confident, if somewhat less straight-line.
But it is not for the syrups or the liqueurs that Valais is best known. One of the most popular activities offered by the local tourism authority is cycling (or, in my case, e-cycling) through the Valais vineyards in the Rhone valley.
Vineyards? Yes! Unbeknown to many, vines have been cultivated for over 2,000 years on the territory of modern Switzerland. As John C Sloan notes in his rare book 'The Surprising Wines of Switzerland', "fine Swiss wines remain among the country's best and undiscovered secrets". Well, I was in strong mind to discover them for myself, for as my trusted cardiologist assured me, a bit of red wine is almost as good for the ailing heart as cycling.
Valais, bordering on France, has both ideal terrain and perfect climate (with over 300 days of sunshine and just 600mm of rainfall a year) for viticulture, hugely helped by the warm 'foehn' winds blowing from the mountains and drying the grapes, helping them to ripen.
So, off I rode – along the ancient 'bisses' (historic irrigation channels) and across the much-less-ancient hanging bridges, one of which, the Charles Kuonen bridge, is at 494m the longest of its kind in the world – to visit the local vineyards. Due to the testing (and tasting) nature of this endeavour, I cannot clearly recall all of them, though the wines that I drank (sorry, tasted) everywhere were superb, so I will mention just two.
Mathilde Roux – a young viticulturist who greeted me at La Cave de l'Orlaya, took over the 8-hectare vineyard in 2016 and has already achieved prominence in the local wine-making circles. Indeed, her original Petite-Arvine white wine, which she offered me to taste, had the distinctive aroma of citrus fruit and the smell of mountain flowers. Her success is due in part to new technologies, such as temperature control during fermentation with the help of a hot or cold glycol solution circulated around the tanks. With her in-depth knowledge and sheer passion for viticulture, Mathilde could probably make even glycol drinkable, or so I thought as I finished my second glass of Petite-Arvine.
To my deep regret, I was not offered anything to drink, or even to taste, at the second vineyard I want to mention. Why? Because the Farinet vineyard in the medieval village of Saillon consists of only ... three vines! No, it's neither a typo, nor the result of too many tastings – just three (3) vines.
The world's officially smallest vineyard was started in 1980 by the Swiss journalist Pascal Thurre as a joke – a joke that gradually evolved into a serious and important charity to help children. Hundreds of celebrity volunteers, including stars of Hollywood, have been taking turns looking after the three vines, whose humble harvest is mixed with grapes from another vineyard to produce 1,000 bottles of very special wine that get auctioned for about $35,000 every year. All the money goes to charities, with the process being supervised by the vineyard's honorary owner, the Dalai Lama.
Looking at the three fragile young vines, stirred gently by the wind, I couldn't help feeling a touch of warmth and love for this beautiful land being 'engraved' on my slowly but surely recuperating heart.
*******
"Do not cut corners" and "do not overestimate your abilities", advised my 'E-Bikers' Guide', picked up in the Alpine village of Verbier where I ended up on the second day of my recent e-cycling tour across the Swiss canton of Valais. While being OK with the first dictum (cutting corners on narrow high-altitude cycling paths could lead to a hapless cyclist's fall down the precipice – wheels first), I repeatedly breached the second one, which resulted in multiple scratches and bruises all over my body.
Undertaking this trip, only several months after major open-heart surgery, was one of my life's biggest challenges – an attempt to prove to the world (yet primarily to myself) that there was still some gunpowder left in my powder bag – a softer Russian equivalent of "there's life in the old dog yet".
The latter metaphor was perhaps more relevant to Valais – home of the famous St Bernard breed of fluffy and good-natured rescue dogs. Originating from the ancient Great St Bernard Hospice, a sanctuary for wandering monks and pilgrims, the dogs have been used to rescue travellers lost in the snow and fog since 1707. The wellbeing of this endemic-to-Valais breed is now in the hands of the Barry Foundation (named after Barry, the legendary avalanche rescue dog), where about 20 pedigree puppies are born each year.
No St Bernards were needed to rescue me – not because I didn't get lost, for I did, and more than once (albeit mostly in villages and towns), but rather due to the nice summer weather, with no fog or snow, and also because I tried not to deviate too much from the well-beaten mountain paths. Unfortunately, the famous road over the Simplon pass, built by Napoleon to connect France and Italy in 1805 (it was then the best in Europe – a true masterpiece of engineering) was not on my route, which took me higher and higher into the Alps.
At an altitude of 2,000m, I had to stop due to a loud mooing-and-jingling ('moongling'?) , which I initially ascribed to a headache caused by oxygen deficiency, coming seemingly out of nowhere. But I was wrong.
On a vast Alpine meadow, multiple duos of compact black cows of the canton's endemic Hérens breed were engaged in locked-horn embraces. The animals, watched by dozens of excited onlookers, pushed each other with slow and stubborn force, like horned and somewhat slimmed-down Sumo wrestlers in black kimonos. They mooed, or rather 'moongled', for all they were worth, with large copper bells on their necks jingling melodiously.
Since having had my aortal heart valve replaced with a bovine (i.e. taken from a cow) one last year, I regard all cows with affection, not unlike my non-existent second cousins, so my first reaction was outrage. "Why are you tormenting these beautiful animals?" I asked a local farmer among the spectators. "Tormenting? Nothing of the kind!" he smiled. "It is this breed's instinct that prompts such clashes. Our Hérens breed are unique in their strong hierarchic nature – the world's only fighting cows." He told me that each year the canton's dairy farmers organise fights to determine a regional and cantonal 'queen'. It was one such event that I was witnessing.
Allegedly, the cows' pugnacious character has no adverse effect on the quality of their milk and dairy products, particularly cheeses, as I was assured by Carmen Bateson, an Aussie who worked at the nearby 'Alpage de Mille' cheese factory. With her partner Christophe Prodanu, they produce the famous raclette – literally meaning 'scraper'. To make it, they first go through the basic cheese-making process: coagulating the milk, cutting the curds, moulding, pressing, finishing, and then leaving the cheese to ripen while washing and turning it daily. At the final stage, the matured cheese is sliced and placed in front of an open fire. As the cheese melts, it is scraped (that's where the 'scraper' name comes from) onto a dish and gobbled up immediately with potatoes, gherkins and pickled onions.
Savouring the richness of raclette, I couldn't help thinking that cheeses – like wines – have memory. They 'remember' the aromas of fresh grass and alpine flowers, the rough tongues of cows and the caring touch of the cheesemaker's hands. In Valais's Val d'Anniviere valley, that cheese's 'memory' reaches sinister proportions: according to an old custom, when a couple gets married, a large cheese is set aside to be eaten by relatives on the day/s of their funerals, by which time it can get so hard that a chisel ('cheesel'?) may be needed to 'scrape' it! They call it 'death's cheese'.
That gruesome ancient custom was, of course, triggered by practicality and extreme poverty: the newlyweds wanted to make sure that their loved ones had something to eat on the day of their demise. In contrast to that, modern Valais, like the rest of Switzerland, is overabundant with food and food manufacturers, including the country's only producer of saffron – an ancient spice made out of rare crocus sativus flowers, cultivated on a beautiful sunny plateau according to centuries-old traditions – and the makers of the real beluga caviar. This is not a typo – the real Russian-style Kasperskian (the name is a play on 'Caspian Sea') caviar from locally bred sturgeons, which is not just sustainable but also ethical.
In Russia (and elsewhere), the fish are normally killed to retrieve the precious eggs, whereas in Valais they came up with an innovative method whereby the roe is retrieved from female sturgeons without harming them – by gently 'massaging' their tummies until the eggs are released. That is why the Kasperskian caviar has been nicknamed 'caviar with life'.
Indeed, this small Swiss canton seemed to excel in ingenuity, which could be felt in everything it produced – from cutting-edge robots to Hermesetas sweeteners; from Alpine cheeses and locally cultivated bananas (!) to the 'caviar with life'.
And, let me tell you the secret: musing over the canton's official motto, 'Engraved On My Heart', I think that maybe, just maybe, my new heart valve has come from one of the battling cows of the Hérens breed.
Myself a fighter, I would welcome that, for sure.
Useful links
www.myswitzerland.com