Abstract
Switzerland’s wine landscape deserves closer academic analysis due to its peculiar structure, production conditions and market. The Alps and differences in altitudes, soil composition, exposures and hygrometry result in a variety of terroirs and, thus, a large number of wine types can be encountered. Generally, two business models are encountered in Switzerland: small family wineries which sell most of their production directly to final consumers and cooperatives/larger wineries which sell mainly through supermarkets. In terms of wine market, Switzerland is saturated by both local and international players. In order to compete, Swiss winemakers therefore need to focus on quality and rely on a differentiation strategy. While producing and consuming locally has worked out for Swiss winemakers thus far, in the future, they will need to evolve and focus on increased visibility and exportation.
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Notes
- 1.
Switzerland hosts more than 50 indigenous grapes in addition to international varieties.
- 2.
Philippe Bovet, quoted in Mathez de Senger (2015).
- 3.
José Vouillamoz, quoted in Laird (2013).
- 4.
Zufferey (2010).
- 5.
Feuille d’Avis du Valais (1966).
- 6.
For instance, Daniel and Martha Gantenbein export about two thirds of their production and have made it into Fallstaff’s list of the 100 best wines in the world.
- 7.
All data in this section is taken from BLW (2015).
- 8.
Association suisse du commerce du vin.
- 9.
This number probably underestimates the true average price as it is solely based on prices from supermarkets which tend to sell at cheaper prices.
- 10.
David Schildknecht, a journalist at TWA, has put four Swiss vintners in his best of 2012 list and, in 2015, Stephan Reinhardt, another journalist of the TWA team, wrote two articles fully devoted to Swiss Chasselas and Pinot Noir, with many scores close to or larger than 90.
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Masset, P., Weisskopf, JP. (2019). Producing and Consuming Locally: Switzerland as a Local Market. In: Alonso Ugaglia, A., Cardebat, JM., Corsi, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Wine Industry Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98633-3_27
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