Icircle Grand Resort Bad Ragaz on foot, its Baroque architecture blotted out by an umbrella braced against a gusty spring rain. Passing giant California sequoias, ponds afloat with phantasmagorical Mandarin ducks and an eclectic bricolage of abstract statuary, it’s hard to reconcile the Dalí-esque dreamscape with the grounds of Switzerland’s most historic thermal baths. Yet, this odd miscellany, along with the resort’s aquatic comforts and Michelin-starred restaurants, are my base to close the circle on a ski story 30 years in the making.
Crossing a bridge over the Rhine River into Maienfeld, I follow neat public paths past 800-year-old vineyards, as much history twisted into their gnarled motherwood as into the handbuilt stone wall enclosing the town’s medieval streets. Above the last house, understated signs point the way upward to Heidialp and Heidihof.
While one might not attribute fermentation of both a children’s classic and pinot noir to the same terroir, Maienfeld is where frequent Bad Ragaz-patron Johanna Spyri set the tale of a young orphan sent to live with her goatherd grandfather. Translated into 50 languages, Heidi created the romantic, nature-oriented image of Switzerland that the country still trades on. But I’m not among the 150,000 Heidi pilgrims who arrive here each year to pay homage; instead, because my ski story is also a wine story, I forge on through a gate into the Bündner Herrschaft, a viticulture micro-region known as “Switzerland’s Burgundy.”
Generally good and in many cases spectacular, Swiss wine remains a mystery to outsiders for a singular reason: for every 100 bottles produced, less than two escape the country. Hosting 250 grape varieties, most endemic to its vertiginous vineyards, the inscrutable Swiss imbibe almost every drop. Although pinot noir and chardonnay grapes dominate the Bündner Herrschaft, no less than 42 varieties are spread among 70 wineries packed into this single 10-kilometer bench. Here you’ll find some of the country’s most-celebrated wines—indeed, some of the best I’ve tasted anywhere. Fortuitously, such advents have always come on ski trips, and, equally fortuitously, courtesy of a friend— sommelier, chef and legendary freeskier, Geny Hess.
In the mid-1990s, few outside Europe knew of the now-heralded terrain and big snows of Engelberg, in Switzerland’s central Alps. But there were rumors, and in those pre-internet days that was as good as Instagram. When our rag-tag magazine crew of athletes and photographer followed a storm to arrive unannounced in February 1995, the only place willing to handle our mob was venerable Hotel Hess, a ramshackle century structure slowly succumbing to age and entropy. Hearing American voices in his creaking foyer, proprietor Geny emerged from the kitchen in a food-stained uniform, looking for all the world like The Muppet Show’s Swedish chef and immediately assuming both ambassadorial and guide duties. Randomly being adopted by someone who knew the ropes in a place the size of Engelberg was kismet—getting a package deal with the guy who cooked your food a major bonus.
A bear of a man with a lumberjack’s beard and a shock of dark hair (he never wore a hat), Geny diligently guided us in classic, locked-leg wedeln fashion. With a carpet of knee-deep powder to cushion our jet-lag, he began on the resort’s signature Titlis Glacier, casually steering us around sneering blue crevasses. After two mind-altering Titlis runs, Geny insisted on a break for tea-and-schnapps; with the crew impatient to finish their photo work lest the sun disappear, Geny and I soon found ourselves alone at the table. Putting his nose to the wind as if to measure everything from ski traffic to temperature, Geny announced: “It’s time to make the Laub.”
In Engelberg, the Laub is as legendary as Geny himself. Indeed, at a sustained 35-40 degrees over its 1,195 verticalmeter drop, many ski cognoscenti labelled it the perfect slope. Having studied a photo of it in an old ski book, I now found myself atop this dream run with 40 centimeters of untracked snow.
Many gratifying turns later, Geny pulled up at a rock where the slope steepened. Digging a pit for emphasis, he confessed to a long-ago ignominious ride down the face. Skiing alone (foolishly, he admitted), the slope had broken loose after three turns. In seconds he was travelling 100kph in a billowing powder cloud that ran 1,000 meters to the bottom. Geny popped up buried to the chest, minus his rucksack and skis, fortunate to be alive. He’d had a guardian that day, he mused, as Engelberg— Angel Mountain—lived up to its name. There was a certain symmetry to his story, as Geny had selflessly appointed himself my own guardian.
Later, in a celebratory mood, Geny led several of us into his renowned 300-vintage wine cellar, a labyrinth hacked into limestone beneath the hotel. Many bottles and much laughter later, we staggered up from the cobwebbed catacombs hung with hunting trophies and photos of Swiss ski phenom, Erica Hess (no relation), for whom Geny was a personal mentor. A sloppy evening in the dining hall ensued, Geny’s nouvelle game dishes shattering our fondue illusions about Swiss cooking. It seemed we’d been embraced by the town’s renaissance man.
Decades earlier, Geny had left Engelberg to attend hotel school in Lausanne, followed by a chef apprenticeship in Zermatt and years running the cellars for Bürgenstock Hotels, scouring his homeland for oenological treasures—the varietal, terroir-oriented wines that became his passion and trademark. In 1974 he returned to Engelberg to run Hotel Hess with wife Trudi (he’d declared his desire to marry her at age six; at 22 they made it a reality), an enterprise they enjoyed until 2001 when a heartbreaking decision was taken to sell to developers in the face of a mandated structural re-fit that would have been economically untenable.
The closing of the hotel’s doors, however, threw open new ones. Geny was in demand as a wine consultant and magazine columnist, and, with his daughter-in-law scion to a winegrowing family from Valais, wine soon became the family business. In 2017 they opened a storefront—Hess Selection—on Engelberg’s Dorfstrasse, selling to the public and supplying hotels with rare wines. Though the operation is now in the hands of equally knowledgeable Geny Jr., whenever I visit, Geny insists on meeting at the shop, as if his old wine cellar has simply been moved above ground.
As the resort’s de facto off-piste pioneer and unfailing champion, Geny both witnessed and participated in Engelberg’s development into a global freeride mecca. Today, Engelberg is almost inconceivably changed from my first visit. Significant enterprise by ski pilgrimsettlers over the intervening years transformed the ageing town to one of the brightest global stars of alpine skiing, with boutique hotels and new condo complexes, high-end restaurants, craft coffee roasters, a monk-run deli, papeterie and book shop. Though the mountain bristles with new infrastructure and scads of tourists, there’s still a bit of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose for Geny—his wine collection.
We’d last met at the shop in early March 2020, sipping a few favored vintages and chatting old times, Geny’s beard and shock of hair now as white as the snows crowning Titlis. We clashed goodnaturedly over a new lift whose construction was delayed because a rare snake had been found in the alp below (I was on the snake’s side) and talked about the crazy new virus that had just chased my frequent photographic collaborator Mattias Fredriksson and me from Italy. It’ll burn itself out, we all thought, expressing little worry. A week later the world shut down and we didn’t see each other for three years.
When Mattias and I return in 2023, multifarious changes are front and center in the form of Kempinski Palace Engelberg, the town’s first five-star hotel. First opened in 1905, its languid spiral staircases, marble Corinthian columns and glass-encased winter garden highlight the iconography of the glamorous belleépoque era. Shuttered in 2016 for renovation under the Kempinski brand, I’d watched it come together over several prior visits. With the original building envelope preserved, a new wing was grafted on to increase rooms and add a spa and restaurant. A replica Swiss cabin, Chalet Ruinart, was constructed on the grounds as a dedicated fondue restaurant—smart thinking, says Geny, given that most international visitors would otherwise leave the property in search of this quintessential Swiss icon. Reopened in 2021, the Kempinski’s marquee space is the Palace Bar, with its large, wood-framed bay windows and tiled hearth discovered behind a wall during renovation. Originally a breakfast space, the room has been reconceived as a place for the public to enjoy a bustling après scene. It’s here I enjoy the trip’s first glass of Swiss wine—Blanc Palace Engelberg, a house white conceived and bottled exclusively for the hotel. It’s excellent, but the wine catalogue here runs much deeper, courtesy of Hess Selection rare vintages.
While the Kempinksi represents an apogee of sorts, we dine instead that evening where the arc of change began—boutique Ski Lodge Engelberg, the Swedish skibums-turned-financiers’ dream that kicked off the town’s makeover in 2008. The three-course “skier’s dinner” with wine pairings at the Lodge’s Brasserie Konrad is not only the best deal in town, but a logical warm-up to the next evening’s dining plan—a more-serious-than-usual attempt to inculcate Geny’s Swiss-wine gospel, beginning at Hess Selection and leading high into an alp and newly opened Villa Hundert, three-way brainchild of a Canadian and two Nordic mavericks, one of whom, Christian Brangenfeldt, cut his teeth at the Konrad. If the Kempinksi is the new acme for accommodation in Engelberg, Villa Hundert is its dining equivalent.
When we meet at Geny’s shop he’s already sipping. After hugs all around, talk turns to the bulletproof conditions of a current snow drought and Geny’s story of being hit on the piste that day by a World Cup racer; he was OK but broke his poles. Apologetic and concerned, the fellow offered to buy him new ones—and a helmet. Geny happily accepted the sticks but declined the brain-bucket; after 72 years skiing hatless he couldn’t fathom the adjustment.
As always, we start with Féchy Mon Pichet 2021, a light, fruity wine that wakes up the palate—the reason Geny unveils a wood-fired pizza of tomato, cheese and basil. “These flavors work with the tastings we’re doing,” he intones, insisting that the counterpoint of food is the only way for the average person to understand wine. “Without food,” he says, “it’s all academic.”
Of course, for wine rubes it’s academic regardless, since we’re now sitting lesson in a one-roomed schoolhouse with professor Geny. The grape, he notes, is Chasselas, the most popular in Switzerland with some 19 varieties employed only in the making of white wine. Despite such orthodoxy, the grape’s history, distribution, cultivation and use is a national affair complex enough to warrant an entire book: Chasselas—Von Féchy Bis Dézaley.
We dive into another white made with French Savagnin Blanc (locally, Paiën or Heida) grapes, the highest planted in Switzerland. Full-bodied with exotic overtones, it easily enjoins with the cheese, demonstrating, says Geny, the high fidelity of Swiss wine to Swiss cuisine. Then comes Les Perches, Petite Arvine de Fully 2018 from the biodynamic viticulturalist Benoit Dorsaz, an early maturing wine with a salty undercurrent. Last, a distinct Swiss red: Humagne Rouge AOC Valais 2016, Cave Ardévaz, Famille Bovin. As far as anyone can discern, this grape has been in the country almost a millennium and tastes it—rich, fullbodied and complex. Geny’s lesson lands well.
rudi picks us up to drive to Villa Hundert, high on the Brunni side of the valley, where south-facing ski slopes and off-season alps are drenched by sun. In all my trips to Engelberg, I’ve never been up Brunni, though I well remember a dizzying overlook.
After introducing us to the Titlis Glacier and Laub on that 1995 trip, Geny had led us down the Galtiberg—a backcountry geologic wonder of shelves and cliffs he’d pioneered with friends. At every juncture in the hourlong descent he smiled broadly, happy to share a cherished accomplishment with guests. Two-thirds of the way down Galtiberg’s 1,800 vertical meters, Geny had stopped and grown reflective, looking out toward distant Brunni. “I remember the day—June 5th, 1965. We started in powder at the top and ended in corn right here,” he said. “Then we had to walk a fair way.”
That exit would have involved the hundreds of convoluted vertical meters we’d continued down, some of which would have benefitted from the safety of a rope. More than anything on that trip, the Galtiberg descent made it clear that “Sager Geny”—a local nickname vibing wisdom and experience—was indeed Engelberg’s original freerider.
Trudi locates Villa Hundert in a scatter of nondescript buildings that might have been a village in days of yore, and we immediately know we’re in for something special. Christian ushers us to a spacious wood table in a small room with a soundabsorbing ceiling that ensures his 27 nightly diners can hear each other. An amuse-bouche signals how the multicourse oeuvre will unfold: in stone bowls filled with river gravel sit a duck croquette, onion with smoked potato and elderberries, and cucumber-horseradish-spelt cracker—food both from, and served upon, elements of Swiss terroir, artistically rendered with the flair of rarified Nordic dining.
Geny takes control of the wine, settling on a 2020 Sprecher Von Bernegg, Completer, a white from Jan Domenic Luzi in the Bündner Herrschaft—the first I hear of this fabled terroir. Geny finds it ‘young’ (we think it’s great but what do we know?) so he decants what’s left and we slosh what we’ve already poured between glasses to aerate; the change in taste is noticeable, and pairs perfectly with the first four courses. When I ask Geny how he’d describe the wine, he holds hands apart and moves them forward and back, a gesture I recognize from earlier to mean straightforward, not outside the lines. And so the evening goes, eye-opening dish after eye-opening dish, incomparable wine after incomparable wine, my grin reflecting the one etched all those years ago beneath Hotel Hess and resonating with a Villa Hundert credo: “No pleasure is temporary, because the impression it leaves behind is permanent.”
On our final evening, Mattias and I arrive at Geny and Trudi’s apartment for an early dinner. The building is located on property once occupied by Hotel Hess, and Trudi confides how hard it was when it all ended, how Geny kept making trips to ferret as much as possible from the old structure—wine, furniture, décor—and how she’d secretly rifle through his rummagings to dispose of things she was sure he wouldn’t notice. But they saved some key mementos, like the Hess Hotel hat a concierge wore to meet guests at the train station, and the guest register, in which we find a page of pasted photos and riotous commentary from the watershed 1995 visit.
Trudi is cooking Älplermagronen (Alpine macaroni) a traditional classic that also contains potato, onion and outrageous amounts of butter and cream. For starters, she serves leek tarts as light as mini-soufflés, followed by curried squash soup with chopped fresh cilantro. Geny’s wine choice—a Pellegrin Grand’Cour Blanc 2019—bolsters both perfectly. For the main course he’s decanted a rare Frölich Pinot Noir 2019, which, in addition to perfectly matching the Älplermagronen, delivers the heartwarming backstory of Sven Frölich’s defection from East Germany to work in Swiss vineyards, eventually to become a winemaker himself. Frölich’s first go-round on the Bündner Herrschaft produced wine considered some of the best ever made in Switzerland. Without voicing it, Sager Geny—an honorific held to this day at age 77—has inspired me to visit this storied region.
On a chairlift the day before, Geny told me his main interest these days was simply “to feel good,” and he believes the combination of wine, food, and skiing remains the best vehicle for doing so. He would know, and can reminisce with pride of the halcyon days in unknown Engelberg when he could cut new tracks on the Laub for a week, plucking wide-eyed acolytes from his hotel for the run of a lifetime—followed by a glass of good wine.
words by LESLIE ANTHONY
photos by MATTIAS FREDRIKSSON
