The Merlot from the "House of Bally" is not really a joy (anymore). It is overlaid, shows hardly any fruit (remains) and has lost the balance - acidity, fruit, tannins, alcohol. Actually a reason not to write about it. And yet - a few questions arise: how long can a Merlot (from Ticino) be stored? What can a traditional Merlot from Ticino offer? It is not a matter of survival exercises, because the wine is certainly not one that gets better over many years of storage. It reaches drinking maturity after two or three years, lasts maybe another five years and is probably finally over as a ten year old. Lager fetishists - please keep your hands off it. There is no phoenix rising from the ashes.
Far more interesting, however, is the Tenuta Bally&vonTeufenstein winery. Who does not know the Bally leather goods, in the meantime luxury product of the former Swiss industry pioneer time. The company has long since been incorporated into the international investment system and is no longer Swiss. But the grandson of the company's founder, Ernst Otto Bally, bought a huge plot of land in the Vedeggio plain (near Lugano) as early as 1917, where a large agricultural enterprise gradually developed on the former alluvial plain: arable fields, meadows, orchards, cattle breeding, potatoes and - also vineyards, on the hills above the plain. The estate, which still belongs to the Bally-von Teufenstein family, will therefore soon be a hundred years old and is still managed by the great-grandchildren of the founding family.
The question is: where is the winery today? In the recently published "Schweizerische Weinzeitung" (Swiss Wine Magazine) with the "100 most beautiful wines of Switzerland", the Tenuta also appears, however, with its "Topazio", an assemblage à la Bordeaux, which, by the way, has a life and enjoyment time of twenty years. It is typical for the development of Swiss wines as well. Internationality is in demand. But the traditional Ticino Merlot is still (or more and more) in demand among wine connoisseurs. Geny Hess, a Swiss wine connoisseur and chef, says: "The Tenuta Bally &von Teufenstein winery is one of the Ticino wineries that have been scoring with their wines for years. The 2009 Cresperino is recommended to wine drinkers who attach importance to straightness, fruitiness and tradition. A pure Merlot, which emphasizes the characteristics of its origin...". I have nothing to add to this, even though "my" Merlot is 13 years older and has only a fraction of these characteristics left.