Charles Rolaz (La Roche aux Fées SA)

Vaud fruit under one roof

Chasselas sets the first question in the cellar: Charles Rolaz, winemaker at Charles Rolaz (La Roche aux Fées SA) in Rolle, works within Maison Hammel. This Swiss wine house’s range reaches from La Côte toward the Chablais. His public work has long sat close to governance as much as production. Rolaz has presided over the commission of the 1ers Grands Crus in Switzerland, chaired the board at Hammel SA, and served as president of Mémoire des vins suisses in Lausanne. Those roles matter here because they place his bench inside a wider argument about Swiss wine: classification, memory, continuity, and the judgment required to keep a house language intact. At Hammel – Terres de Vins, where he leads as CEO, the responsibility is not only to bottle clean fruit. It is to hold a portfolio together. The signature names around him, Ligne Prestige Brut, Ligne Prestige Rosé Brut NV, Cuvée Charles Auguste, Exelsis Rouge, and Exelsis Blanc, read as a cellar grammar, moving between sparkling and still wines without abandoning the Swiss frame.

Blends beside Chasselas

The method here is not published as a recipe, and the house does not lay out its fermentations step by step. What is clear is the material Rolaz chooses to keep in play. Chasselas remains the Vaud reference point, especially in La Côte, where mineral line, lake light, and limestone-rich ground shape the discipline of the grape. Around it, Rolaz works with a broad register: Malbec, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Galotta, and Gamaret all appear in the range associated with him. The blending instinct is central. It lets the cellar move beyond single-variety habit while still answering to place. The 2017 Malbec “WOW” selection, awarded 90 Falstaff points, gives one measurable edge to that approach, with concentrated aromas described around stewed and dried fruit. It also shows the willingness to bring a less expected variety into a Swiss program without treating novelty as the point. The work is in proportion, cut, and finish.

Lake light in the cellar

Rolle gives the house a Vaud address, while the Mont-sur-Rolle landscape supplies much of the physical logic behind the wines. The vineyards of La Côte sit close enough to Lake Geneva for reflected light to matter; the local account of ripening often turns on the three suns effect, direct sun, lake reflection, and warmth returned from stone. In the cellar, that translates into a quieter kind of pressure. Chasselas does not forgive heavy hands, and blends need a clear line if they are to feel grown rather than assembled. The room, then, is best understood as a place of edits: what to lift, what to leave, when a cuvée has enough voice. Maison Hammel’s name gives scale, but Rolaz’s work keeps returning to selection. The concrete noun at the close is Cuvée Charles Auguste.