The wine harvest is the excuse for a three-day festival in Neuchâtel at the end of September, whose highpoint is a parade of intricate flower-covered floats.

This is the biggest annual wine festival in Switzerland, but other wine growing centres also hold celebrations.

For those who have the patience to wait, Vevey, on Lake Geneva, holds a wine festival once every 25 years, with processions which include ox-drawn carts and other animals, and where Bacchus, the god of wine, puts in a personal appearance. Needless to say, there is a lot of eating - and drinking. But there is quite a long time to wait before it comes round again: the last was in 1999.