The world's most transparent grape. Chasselas is so aromatically neutral that its wine becomes almost pure terroir — which is precisely why the Swiss treasure it. On the terraces of Lavaux, built up from the eleventh century by monastic labour and now a UNESCO World Heritage landscape, and in the Valais under the name fendant, it tastes of lake light, granite and hearth smoke; a few kilometres of shoreline can change the wine.
An ancient vine of the Lake Geneva arc, it doubled for centuries as Europe's favourite table grape — Moissac and Thomery grew it for the fruit bowl — and the ampelographers made it their benchmark of ripening. Elsewhere it is mostly eaten; in Switzerland it is an identity, poured wherever the country toasts itself.