Domaine Louis Bovard

Domaine Louis Bovard is the Cully house behind Médinette, a Dézaley Grand Cru Chasselas, and its Vinothèque on the Place d'Armes sells it for CHF 33. Wine Advocate's Stephan Reinhardt gave the 2019 Médinette 90 points and called it "a subtle yet persistent Chasselas of class and style". In 2022 VINUM listed Louis-Philippe Bovard among the 25 most important wine personalities of Switzerland, for his part in the renaissance of Chasselas in Lavaux.

Expect a wine shop, not a cellar tour. The house calls the Vinothèque on the Place d'Armes its own and says some bottles can be opened to taste on request. The shelves hold the estate's range: Epesses and Saint-Saphorin village wines, Médinette and Grande Cuvée from the Dézaley, Ilex from the Calamin, and the Salix Chenin blanc and Buxus Sauvignon blanc. No tour or tasting fee is published.

Go Tuesday to Sunday, any month: the Vinothèque opens Tuesday to Saturday 9h30–12h and 14h–18h30 and Sunday 12h–17h, with no seasonal closure listed, and it is shut on Mondays. From November to March it is a shop stop on a lakeside day, with several trains an hour to Cully. The Conservatoire above Rivaz is for summer: the house says its 19 Chasselas varieties show their bunches and leaves from July to September.

The shop is the Vinothèque de la Maison Rose, Place d'Armes 6, Cully (+41 21 799 55 66), closed Mondays. The house says some wines can be tasted on request; no tour, tasting fee or booking page is published, so groups should call the estate office first (+41 21 799 21 25, Monday to Friday). Bottles cost CHF 22 for the Terre-à-Boire from Epesses or the Méridien from Saint-Saphorin, CHF 33 for Médinette and CHF 41 for Salix, a Chenin blanc.

Take the train to Cully: on a December Saturday the ride is 10 to 11 minutes from Lausanne and 7 to 11 minutes from Vevey, with several trains an hour. The Vinothèque is about 350 m from Cully station and 60 m from the boat pier. Do not take the Train des Vignes: it climbs from Vevey to Chexbres-Village and does not stop in Cully or the other lakeside villages.

Domaine Louis Bovard is a family wine estate on the Place d'Armes in Cully, on the lakeshore of Lavaux, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape since 2007. Louis-Philippe Bovard, the tenth generation of the name, has led it since 1983. Its wines come from the Dézaley and Calamin grands crus and from Epesses, Saint-Saphorin and Villette. It is a stop on the Lavaux heights trail.

Louis-Philippe Bovard ran the Office des vins vaudois from 1963 to 1973, created the Route du vignoble de Lavaux for Expo 1964 and took over the family estate in 1983, succeeding his father Louis. In 1991 he grafted vines over to Chenin blanc, Sauvignon blanc and Syrah. The Médinette label is older: it shows the Bacchus of the 1905 Fête des Vignerons, played by Albert Bovard, and the brand was registered in 1907.

Médinette grapes grow on four hectares in the south of Puidoux, the commune where Vaud law places the Dézaley: gravelly soil over nagelfluh, with vines trained as free-standing gobelets at more than 10,000 per hectare. The Dézaley covers 54 ha and the Calamin, in the former commune of Epesses, 16 ha. The house describes its slopes as 30 to 50% and facing south-east to south-west.

The Conservatoire Mondial du Chasselas grows on estate land above Rivaz, at the Cortheyses site, and walkers can follow arrows along its rows; SBB sends visitors there by train to Rivaz. Set up in 2010 with Agroscope Changins-Wädenswil and the cantonal viticulture office, it gathers 19 Chasselas varieties. The house says the differences show best from July to September.