Enter our competition to win a free chopping board, or claim your exclusive 10% discount on all products ordered before 31 March, 2014!
As Christmas approaches, many of you will be racking your brains for original present ideas. If you are looking for something with a Swiss influence, then the PanoramaKnife is surely the perfect gift!
Created by a small family company based in Ermatingen, Switzerland, the PanoramaKnife is a high quality kitchen knife that portrays the major peaks of Switzerland along its blade, and is available in several different versions, representing the most popular mountain ranges in the country. The Lake Geneva knife is an obvious choice for residents of Geneva, Vaud and neighboring France, but others such as Valais will be equally appealing to those who like to travel around Switzerland, especially skiing enthusiasts!
Asked what inspired him to create this novel idea for a kitchen knife, Andy Hostettler told knowitall.ch. “It was on a romantic road trip one misty morning, near Ermatingen, that I looked over at the Säntis and its neighboring mountains and was simply overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it all. The idea of creating a product that could enable others to literally “grasp in their hands” some of the most beautiful natural creations in this world was incredible – and also very practical! Our family company runs a small boutique hotel in Ermatingen, so we need to use kitchen knives every day to slice the bread for our customers and serve them cheese!”
The bread knife version of the PanoramaKnife is made from stainless cutlery steel (a composition of Molybdenum and Vanadium) and has been blue-polished to ensure the surface remains clean and shiny at all times. The handle has a special velvety feel to it and consists of recycled rosewood from India, recovered from left-overs of furniture. Alternatively, the handle can be supplied in polypropylene, and made to look like wood.
In addition to the bread knife, the company offers a unique cheese knife, which features the “best mountains of Switzerland” and includes the Matterhorn peak at the tip of the blade for picking up your cheese after it has been sliced. The handle is made from walnut wood and the blade is made from a special composition of Vanadium and Molybdan, which is hardened, rust-free and easy to clean.
To compliment its series of knives, the PanoramaKnife range also includes chopping boards and knife holders. Andy told us, “Customers kept asking us if we could offer a chopping board and knife holder to go with the knife but we were reluctant to offer anything until we could come up with an original design that had not been marketed before. Whilst the board needed to complement the knives, it also had to look beautiful and of course, be practical in the kitchen!”
He continued, “The result was a board which matches two types of wood, maple and walnut, in detailed marquetry to show the most popular Swiss mountains (Matterhorn, Eiger/Mönch/Jungfrau, Pilatus, Titlis, Säntis and Piz Bernina) as if they were a connected mountain chain. The peaks are purposely not named in order to provoke exciting table talk! Our chopping boards are already proving very popular, and we hope our new magnetic knife holder, launched just this month, will prove equally successful.”
Because of the unique design of the PanormaKnife blade, it can only be reground and resharpened by the manufacturer. So if the PanoramaKnife “loses its bite”, the customer is advised to send the knife back and, for the price of Fr. 30.-, the company will either have it resharpened or will send you a new one from available stock. However, Andy told us, “Given the high quality, hardened material that we are using in our knives, we really don’t think either will be necessary for the next ten years!”
To celebrate the end of their first 12 months in business, in which more than 16,000 bread knives have been sold, Andy has kindly offered to run a small competition for knowitall.ch clients, to give them a chance of winning one of the beautiful PanoramaKnife chopping boards. Just fill in our competition form and let us know in which town the family business is situated. The competition closes at midnight on Sunday, 1 December, and the names of all those with the correct answer will be drawn out of the digital hat shortly afterwards. One entry per person allowed. The winner will be notified by email and his/her name will be added to this article after the competition closes.
To make their knives accessible to everyone, however, Andy is also offering a special 10% discount on all orders placed through their website before 31 March 2014. The offer applies to all products, including gift sets, which are attractively priced to encourage you to buy more than one knife! Just enter the discount code PK-KNOWIT on the site when you place your order. The discount is valid for customers living in both Switzerland and neighboring France.
PanoramaKnife
@ La Belle Epoque GmbH
Hauptstrasse 80/82
8272 Ermatingen
+41 79 209 61 24
www.panoramaknife.ch
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Congratulations to our lucky winner, Darlene Lynch!
