Sue Style, Food, Wine and Travel Writer

A SERIOUS SWISS SAUSAGE FEAST

‘You have to be joking!’ challenged an incredulous friend who telephoned just as we were dashing out of the house one winter’s evening. ‘You’re going to drive two hours from Alsace down to Lake Biel – in Switzerland - to eat a sausage? It must be a helluva Wurst!’

Years previously I’d come across a mention of a Swiss sausage feast known as a Treberwurstfrass when I was researching A Taste of Switzerland, which extols the greatly underestimated and overlooked virtues of Swiss food, not least its superb sausagery.

This marvellous event, I'd learnt, was a speciality of wine-growing villages along the shores of Lake Biel and Lake Neuchâtel. Traditionally put on by the vignerons during the months of January and February, a Treberwurstfrass required three elements: firstly, it had to be down time in the vineyards when the vigneron was at a slightly loose end. Second, it should be the moment when the pips and grape skins (the ‘Treber’) from the previous autumn’s harvest were being brewed up to make the powerful spirit marc. And thirdly, a plentiful supply of sausages had to be on hand. These were traditionally made during the winter months when the family pig met his end.

A wine-grower with time on his hands, a modicum of marc, some handsome (and probably perishable) sausages and a group of like-minded friends and/or family: such, I had learnt, are the necessary ingredients for a Treberwurstfrass. Now, finally, I had a date to sample this famous event.

We battled down through the Jura in driving rain, emerging two hours later in the little village of Twann, at the appointed place. There wasn’t a soul in sight, but we knew it must be the right place: insistent aromas of winey marc inextricably entwined with fuming smoked sausages were sneaking about the courtyard. We poked our heads round the door and caught four burnished copper stills in flagrante. Steam issued from every orifice. The precious clear liquid dripped into waiting buckets.

Monsieur Ruff, our host for the evening, appeared and waved us into the cave. But first he unscrewed the copper top of the still, raised its dome and proudly showed us the sausages reclining in their roasting pan, which in turn was set on a bed of gently seething, powerfully fragrant pips, skins and stalks.

In the cave the party was already well underway. Two large groups of fellow Treberwurst-Fressers were seated on wooden benches at long refectory-type tables, and were doing considerable damage to Monsieur Ruff’s fruity Chasselas.

Huge bowls of potato salad flecked with chives were set on the tables, followed by baskets of rough country bread. In came the patron, holding high his precious trophies, hot from the still. He set them down on a serving table, doused them liberally with marc and proceeded to set the whole thing alight.

Swiss sausages (made of real meat, no rusk to mop things up and bulk things out), have a nasty habit of exploding and showering their juice all over unwary guests when pierced after cooking. Monsieur Ruff – equally well versed in the arts of sausage slicing as in marc distilling - deftly capped each sausage with a slice of bread, then poked a fork down through the bread and into the sausage. Treated this way, the juices seeped gently into the bread and danger was averted.

We bent low over our plates, closed our eyes and inhaled the vapours emerging from the thick, bias-cut slices of sausage. It seemed hardly necessary to eat them, rather like nosing a particularly fine wine. But eat them we did. And what sausages! Succulent, tender, lightly smoky and staggering with marc, they were quite simply the best (and booziest) bangers we’d ever encountered.

All memories of our two-hour drive through lashing rain melted away (along with the prospect of the return journey, conveniently forgotten in the heat of the moment) as we tucked in contentedly. It was indeed, as our friend had surmised, a Wurst worth travelling for.

For more on the Treberwurstfrass on Lake Biel and an address list of places to sample this wondrous Würst during February, go to: http://www.biel-seeland.net/e/excursions/?sub=&id=86&fid=32&cat=43

a Twanner vigneron standing guard over his marc and sausages

© Sue Style 2007