Martha and Daniel Gantenbein started making wine in the village of Fläsch, in the Bündner Herrschaft of eastern Switzerland, in 1982. They were autodidacts who decided early that the only way to learn was to apprentice themselves to the best, planting Burgundian clones in their vineyards and rebuilding their cellar around gravity flow so the fruit would never have to be pumped. Over four decades they have become arguably the most coveted address in Switzerland, producing one of the great pinots outside Burgundy from a tiny estate of roughly six hectares. Production sits at around 1,200 cases of pinot noir a year. The wines are sold worldwide through a small network of merchants — almost nothing reaches the open market.

The estate sits on schist and limestone soils in the Rhine Valley, where steep south-facing slopes catch full sun and warm Föhn winds blow down from the Alps. Diurnal swings between hot days and cold nights give the fruit slow, even ripening and unusual aromatic complexity, and yields are kept severely low at around 1.5 tons per acre. The pinot noir is hand-harvested, fermented with roughly twenty percent whole cluster in custom-built open-top wood fermenters, and goes through malolactic in barrique. The wine is aged twelve to fourteen months in French oak, a meaningful share of it new, and bottled without fining or filtration.

The 2022 is layered and ethereal: morello cherry, wild strawberry, black raspberry, violet, and a slight edge of flinty smoke that runs through the wine. The palate is dense and lush but somehow airy, with fine tannin, vibrant acidity, and a bittersweet, faintly herbal grip on the long finish. Stephan Reinhardt at Wine Advocate scored it 97 points.