Valais

Protected by some of Europe's highest mountains, Valais is the defining Alpine wine region. The Rhône valley, oriented east-west and sheltered by the Pennine and Bernese Alps, creates one of the continent's most extreme mountain wine climates: a semi-continental regime of exceptional dryness — Valais receives less rainfall than almost anywhere else in Switzerland, rivalling the driest parts of the Valais Rhône plain with annual precipitation below 600 mm in some sites — combined with intense sunlight and remarkable diurnal temperature variation. It is this aridity that gave rise to the famous bisses: ancient glacier-fed irrigation channels that follow the contours of the slopes and side valleys, some dating back to at least the 13th century, that rank among the great feats of Alpine agricultural engineering and without which viticulture at this scale would be impossible.