The winemakers of the Valais produce 40 per cent of all Swiss wine, so it's no surprise that wine and viticulture play a major part in the life of the canton. To help visitors appreciate what goes into putting a bottle of wine on the table they can follow the wine path, which meanders through the Valais from Martigny to Leuk. The most popular section is between Sierre and Salgesch - both have museums and the walk between them is particularly full of interest and variety.
The best place to start is the Château de Villa (chateaudevilla.ch) in Sierre, largely built in 1673-4 and now devoted to the promotion of Valaisian wines. It has a restaurant serving exceptional raclette with a variety of regional cheeses, and a wine cellar allows visitors to try the region's wines. An adjacent museum houses a huge wine press of 1756 and a large collection of viticultural implements.
The wine path is denoted by rectangular signs with blue lettering and arrows, and information boards, although only in French and German. The boards are themed, looking at soil, varieties of grape, diseases and the social history of the vineyards, including the guérites - refuges among the vines where people could shelter, eat their meals and store tools.
Leaving the outskirts of Sierre and weaving between houses and gardens, the buildings soon take on an agrarian purpose. The old granaries, known as raccards and mounted on staddlestones, were also used to store items such as finer clothes for when families went up to their summer homes in the Alpine pastures, taking their cattle to feed on the rich grass. Just off the path near Veyras is the beautiful medieval castle of Muzot, where Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, spent the last four years of his life.
Walking well above the valley floor, there are fine views over the Pfyn-Finges park and its dense forest of rare Silvester pines. Curious eroded rock formations aptly called the Pyramids of Salgesch mark the start of the steep descent through woodland into the gorge of Raspille, the river that marks the linguistic boundary between the French- and German-speaking parts of the canton.
It is a pleasure to walk through Salgesch, one of those small, easily overlooked places with a wealth of wooden buildings lining its narrow streets. One of the finest is the Zumofen House, home to the Wine Museum (see panel). The town's coat of arms bears the Maltese cross of the Knights of St John, who established a lodge for travellers here in the 13th century, partly because of the area's excellent wine, allegedly.
The path to Varen then climbs above the village to reach a higher contour and follow one of the canton's innumerable bisses - small channels taking water to the vines. Many walks in the Valais follow them, in this case through low-growth woods of holm oak and pine. Some bisses were in such precipitous places that only men without wives and children were allowed to maintain them.
