Suuser chilbi

Happy Wednesday everyone! I thought I would share with you the reason behind my hangover on Saturday night... All was done in the name of Swiss culture and tradition so it was all worth it. As I have told you before, Meilen has several vineyards and we have been to wine tasting/events in the past in particular when they involved sampling our favourite winemaker’s products. For those of you who are new to Made in Suisse, you can read about it here and here.

The grapes have been harvested a couple of weeks and the 2011 wine is in the making. However, we don’t have to wait until 2012 to sample this year’s harvest…no no no! Let’s drink it now!

Technically speaking, this isn’t wine but suuser: fermented grape juice.  Depending on the amount of fermentation that has taken place, you obtain suuser of different strengths. The most alcoholic one is on the left (Manne suuser: for the men), followed by Wysser suuser for the ladies and finally Kinder suuser (grape juice with traces of alcohol). The problem with suuser is that it tastes like juice, so you drink it like juice and before you notice we had drunk 2 litres between the 4 of us. And did we feel it later on that day…!

A whole street in Meilen had been closed off for the celebrations which kicked off at 2pm precisely on Saturday with men firing fierce looking heavy guns.

This was followed by what had to be one of the funniest moment of the day, our local brassband rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa. I will spare you the video but credit to them, it was raining hard and they were lively.

The brass band was very clever, blocking the entrance to the heated tent so that we all had to stand and watch before we could get inside to order drinks and food. We had some traditional Swiss fare including some deep-fried sage leaves which taste a lot better than they sound. They tasted like mini Yorkshire puddings with a hint of sage….delicious!

There was the usual bratwurst stand but I decided to try another Swiss delicacy: Hörnli best described as macaroni with mince. The mince and the sauce almost tested of game and the dish was surprisingly different from pasta Bolognese and very good.

We left at around 4pm and spent the rest of the day full and a bit snoozy: suuser happiness!

We’ll be back next year!