Marie-Thérèse Chappaz (born 1960) is a
Swiss winemaker
A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes:
*Cooperating with viticulturists
*Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to dete ...
best known for her dessert wines.
Her
vineyard
A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineya ...
s are located in
Fully
Fully () is a municipality in the district of Martigny in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
History
Fully is first mentioned in the 11th Century as ''Fuliacum''.
Geography
Fully has an area, , of . Of this area, 30.5% is used for agricultur ...
(
Valais
Valais ( , , ; frp, Valês; german: Wallis ), more formally the Canton of Valais,; german: Kanton Wallis; in other official Swiss languages outside Valais: it, (Canton) Vallese ; rm, (Chantun) Vallais. is one of the 26 cantons forming the S ...
) and cover an area 8
ha which are
organically farmed. She is a member and founder of Les Artisanes de la Vigne et du Vin.
In 2015,
Gault Millau declared Chappaz an "icon of Swiss wine" and she was shortly after named "Lady of Wine" at the
Villa d’Este Wine Symposium.
Early life
Born in 1960, as the daughter of a poet and writer,
Chappaz initially considered a career as a midwife.
In 1977, however, she received a vineyard parcel from her father. This led her to study winemaking at the
École d'ingénieurs de Changins (Engineering School of Changins) and work as an apprentice.
In 1987, she took over her father's vineyards and produced her first ''millésime'' in 1988.
Wine making
Marie-Thérèse Chappaz is said to have a dedication to making "honest, sincere yet complex wines.". A wine critique ranked one of her sweet wines with 99 Points out of 100.
Today she grows wines on 11 hectares with biodynamic methods.
She has a webpage where she explains her wines and grapes.
References
External links
*
Les Artisanes de la Vigne et du VinTEDx talk of Marie-Thérèse Chappaz
1960 births
Living people
Swiss winemakers
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