Wine Walk Weinfelden

The concept is simple:

1. You go to Weinfelden train station. This was only about a 40 minute train ride from Zurich HB. 2. You get a rucksack from the SBB office at the Weinfelden station for 25CHF. Inside are: bread, gummy bears, a small glass, a bottle of water, and a map. (We also recommend you bring more water and a lunch for yourself as well.) 3. You start walking!

It’s easy to find the trails as they are marked very clearly. You can choose to tackle the more elevated part of the hike first or the more flat part.

We figured getting the more difficult part out of the way first made the most sense given we weren’t sure what state we’d be in towards the end after all the wine. This was a good decision!

The map marks the trail and the 13 wineries you pass along the way. Each winery has hole punches you can mark the map with, if you collect all of them you allegedly get a small prize from one of the local restaurants in town.

Most importantly the map contains the code for two wine vaults you encounter on the way. When you open them, you can fill the glass you got in the rucksack twice with wine of your choice. It’s a trust-based system, but it works.

The walk to the first wine vault was really pretty with great views of the Swiss countryside. There were signs along the road explaining the wine-making process in this region. They were all in German but luckily Sev’s German is pretty good and he could translate for me.

The wine from the first vault had to be lifted up using a pulley system, which was kind of fun. We tried four different wines. I’m no sommelier but they were really good.

As we continued along the way we passed another winery, Forster Weinbau. The proprietor welcomed us in and had us sample four more wines. He seemed to only speak German but talked to us for a long time, explaining how his winery developed a new kind of pest-resistant grape through natural selection. That was really interesting!

The wine tasting was free but Sev bought a bottle to bring back to his parents.

At this time we were feeling pretty tipsy so we stopped at one of the many picnic spots to eat some of the food we brought—that was a good idea!

There are restaurants and cafes to eat at along the way but we recommend bringing your own food just to save some money and also have it readily available in case you start feeling the alcohol too much.

We continued on our way and eventually made it to the second wine vault, which was a walk-in shed with some picnic benches. We had more wine and were also joined by a local men’s choir also on the tour, who treated us to some nice songs!

We finished up the walk, later stopping at a little shed for local ice cream. No one was working there, but we could pay with Twint.

We collected all of the punch holes from the different wineries and were really curious to see what we would get as our “prize.” We went to one of the designated restaurants but they said we had to order something to eat to get the prize. We weren’t hungry and just got coffee. So we don’t know what you actually get with this punch hole system. The town of Weinfelden is very cute though and it was nice to walk around after the walk!

From beginning to end the hike was about 6 hours, although it was only that long because we took our time at each wine vault/ate lunch/spent time at the extra winery. You could finish it a lot faster, but why would you want to?

Overall this was a really great day trip from Zurich to see some pretty sights and sample and learn about Swiss wine!