Gianmarco Ofner enters GaultMillau's top 150 Swiss winemakers
The Eglisau grower who took over Weingut Pircher from his godfather in 2022 is new on the guide's 2027 list, alongside neighbour Mathias Bechtel.
Gianmarco Ofner, who runs Weingut Pircher on the Stadtberg above the Rhine in Eglisau, has entered GaultMillau Switzerland's list of the 150 best Swiss winemakers. The guide published its 2027 selection for German-speaking Switzerland on 11 October and marked the estate as a new entry.
GaultMillau's wine writer Stephan Thomas compares the steep slopes running down to the Rhine with the Mosel or the Middle Rhine, and writes that Ofner knows the different soils and sites of his parcels and brings them to the bottle without detours. The estate keeps the name of Ofner's godfather, Urs Pircher, whom he succeeded in 2022, according to the guide and the regional news site Züriunterland24.
Eglisau now has two names on the list. Mathias Bechtel, already included in earlier years, runs a six-hectare estate with a modern cellar, the guide says, topped by his Bechtus range of single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot. The Tages-Anzeiger's Zürcher Unterland edition reported the news on 12 October.
In Eglisau, a godfather's succession has turned into a place on the national list.
What Gianmarco Ofner changed at Pircher
In an interview with Züriunterland24 published on 13 October, Ofner said he learned of the selection on Sunday morning, after breakfast with his family. He kept the family structure, the team and the labour-intensive vineyard work; in the cellar he wanted no tinkering, but a straight, precise style of dry wines.
The changes he lists are concrete: Bio Suisse certification, a first single-vineyard Pinot Noir from the Sonnenhalde site, a drier sparkling wine and a crisper Riesling. Pinot Noir is the estate's main grape; GaultMillau's 2023 rookie announcement also listed Riesling, Räuschling and Pinot Gris. His hardest moment, he said, was a heavy hailstorm in his first year, which destroyed much of the crop with harvest already in sight.
Asked which single glass he would pour, he chose the Pinot Noir Sélection Stadtberg 2022, a selection from the best parcels and the oldest vines. Prices, he said, will not rise because of the listing.
A wider GaultMillau Switzerland list
The German-speaking section of the 2027 list counts 40 winemakers. The other new entry is the Davaz family in Fläsch, in Graubünden, whose flagship is the Pinot Noir Uris; Tobias Wegelin, a newcomer in Malans who makes only Pinot Noir, is singled out as a candidate for future editions.
The wine list follows the restaurant guide presented on 5 October, when Dominik Hartmann became the first vegetarian GaultMillau chef of the year. For Ofner it is the guide's second nod in three years: in September 2023 it named him one of its five rookies.
