Gruyere!

During the week we had a very full schedule to follow. The weekends were free. Since we had a Swiss travel pass, we were able to explore all corners of Switzerland. Cheese is one of the many things that Suisse (Switzerland) is known for, especially Gruyere! After a quick train trip, Mark, Kathe and I visited the Gruyere museum to learn about the process of how Gruyere cheese is made. Turns out that it is very important that the cows eat many aromatic flowers including lavender. Happy cows truly come from Switzerland...and they all wear giant cow bells.

Kathe & Mark in front of the cheese House. The cheese is ageing!

After the museum we visited the actual town of Gruyere! Beautiful!

To our surprise, we discovered an Alien museum (from the movie, Alien), and an Alien Bar!

Alien Kathe Mark

Lauren

Then we visited a Chateau! & the view from the chateau!

Gruyere was beautiful!! Great cheese, lovely cows and a funky Alien museum. It was a wonderful experience.

Highlights of our Travels in Switzerland

Week One -Highlight Day 2

Each day we meet the bus near our rooms and are taken either to the University in Changins or to wherever we might be traveling to for the day. This day we started in Lausanne and traveled by bus to Rolle and into the vineyards in Luin. We stopped at a chapel that had an amazing view of the valley below. We were impressed immediately by the beautiful vineyards in Switzerland.

Fresh water, found everywhere; Church where we stopped to see the vineyards; local winery

Medieval Castle in Yvoire, France as seen from boat; Dr. Wample; another cool water fountain

In Nyon we boarded a boat and spent most of the day traveling on Lake Geneva, called Lac Leman in Switzerland to many different cities and ports: Yvoire, Evian, Rolle, Morges, Lausanne, Vevey, and Montreaux—just to name a few. It was a breathtaking trip.

We disembarked the boat in Montreaux, which is Switzerland’s Mediterranean city and headed into the Lavaux wine region. This is where it really got exciting.

No photo can truly capture how amazing this region is, with its steep slopes and breathtaking views, but we tried our best. The vineyards are steep and dangerous, and everywhere the eye could see. After a short walk we arrived at our first winery, owned by the city of Lausanne, called Clos des Abbayes.

The hosts were gracious, informative (this winery is nearly a 1000 years old!!) and very generous with the wine. We tried three varieties: Chasselas, Chardonnay and a blended red with Pinot noir, Gamay and Merlot.
Rounding out the day we stopped in Cully, visiting with the owner of another old winery, Louis Bovard. This man is 10th generation winemaker, and his wines show the richness of his history. From Cully, we head back to Lausanne.

Closing Ceremony

Friday, July 18th, 2008

After a remarkable four weeks visiting Switzerland, France and Italy, it's hard to imagine that our trip has to come to an end. We've all had amazing experiences, met incredible people, learned a tremendous amount about the viticulture and wine making practices of all the regions we visited and are sad to see it come to an end.

Our last day includes the final exam--luckily we get that out of the way first, an artistic endeavour compliments of Sebastien, powerpoint presentations on each of the four weeks of study done by the students, the closing ceremony, and then a social gathering with wine, light appetizers and music provided by Sebastien and his daughter. There was even a special presentation of the Chasselas Song done by the Changins Singers.

Mark preparing for the final; Week 4 Presentation Team

Kathe saying thank you to Sebastien et al on behalf of the students; Conrad, Krista and Sebastien; Pierre presenting our gift (a case of Chasselas) to Sebastien

The Fresno Team with Sebastien, Krista, Biagio, Conrad and Professor Fugelsang

A great ending to an absolutely wonderful adventure.

Opening Ceremony

The Summer University program coincides with the 60th anniversary of the campus at Changins. This was quite a big event, with several officials from the Canton of Vaud (the “state”) welcoming us to the program. All guests at the school were given the red carpet treatment, and many VIPS were present at the ceremony. After the welcoming speeches, there was a reception hour followed by a very nice dinner, featuring local wines and cheese.

The campus at Changins is beautiful. The buildings are clean, open, airy and spacious. The campus is surrounded by the experimental farmland and vineyards. We took a walk through their small teaching vineyard, which is located under hail netting. Very interesting to see much different clones of common varieties, as they don’t look like the usual plants.

The experimental winery is shared with the federal research station at the campus. It is a huge building, with lots of room to work. They have many types of smaller scale fermenters, presses and filters.

The school also has a wonderful sensory evaluation room. The lighting in the room can be changed to red or green, to eliminate color bias in the panelist evaluations. The picture shows all three lights on for demonstration.

The landscape in this part of Switzerland is breath taking. The valley floor leads to rolling hills, then abrupt mountains. Snow covered peaks can be seen to the south, across Lake Geneva. Interesting fact of the day: the Rhone River flows out of Lake Geneva.