A luscious lakeshore

Tumbling down to the blue water's edge, many hillsides in this charming Swiss village are quilted with vineyards like these. Grape growing is a millennium-old tradition here in Spiez, a small town on Lake Thun about 16 kilometres west of Interlaken. Started by the Romans as early as the 10th century, winemaking flourished here through centuries of changing times. That is until a nasty plague of phylloxera wiped out the whole crop around 1900. The vineyards languished for decades, but persevering planters managed a successful harvest in the late 1920s, reviving a local industry that now corks up to 80,000 bottles a year.