Domaine de la Grille

Chasselas held close to the cellar

Chasselas sets the first decision for Alain Parisod, winemaker at Domaine de la Grille in Grandvaux, before the cellar work begins. He is also the owner, winegrower and cellar master here, a set of responsibilities that keeps the vineyard and the encavage under one hand rather than dividing them between separate houses. The Parisod family has held this Grandvaux estate since 1412, in the Villette sector of Lavaux AOC, where family stewardship is described through father-to-son continuity rather than a sequence of outside appointments. Parisod’s own place in that line is technical as well as inherited: the domaine presents him as an ingénieur oenologue, a formation that gives scientific weight to choices of fermentation, aging and bottling. His work is not framed by a large hospitality machine. It is measured in estate Chasselas, named bottlings from Vaud, and the responsibility of cellaring all production at Domaine de la Grille. The lineage stays local. Grandvaux supplies the family ground, Villette gives the Grand Cru Chasselas and Pinot Noir their appellation name, and Epesses appears through a Chasselas bottled under Domaine de la Maison Blanche. Parisod holds those threads from vineyard to cellar.

Villette in the glass

The program at Domaine de la Grille begins with Chasselas, the white grape most closely attached to Vaud and to Lavaux’s terraces. Here it carries the Villette name, including Domaine de la Grille Villette Grand Cru, a single-varietal Chasselas listed under the Alain Parisod winery. The house also works beyond that one white line: Pinot Noir appears as a light, perfumed red from Vaud, and the range includes still white, still red, rosé and sparkling wine. What matters for this place is that the cellar is not remote from the fruit. Fermentation, aging, bottling and storage happen at the domaine under Parisod’s responsibility, so the cellar remains an extension of the winegrower’s work rather than a separate stage added later. The broader Lavaux conditions shape the method: terraced vineyards facing Lake Geneva, a lake-moderated climate, and soils associated with limestone, clay and glacial deposits. Chasselas rewards restraint in the cellar. Its dry, light-bodied register is carried by acidity, citrus, floral notes, minerality and, in well-made examples, a quiet almond edge.

A small estate on the terraces

The room around the work is rural before it is polished. Domaine de la Grille sits in Grandvaux near Villette, within the Lavaux terraces, and the setting reads as a working family vineyard rather than a built visitor center. The cellar, the vineyard and the tasting room belong to the same small scale. That closeness suits the wines. A bottle can move from parcel to press to storage without leaving the domaine’s orbit, and the atmosphere follows the same line: quiet, functional, focused on growing and production, with the occasional glass feeling secondary to the work that made it. The landscape carries its own discipline. Terraces hold the vines above Lake Geneva, and the cellar answers with still wines that keep the local grammar intact.

A named cuvée, not a broad claim

The public recognition attached most clearly to Parisod’s work is Cuvée Pierre Keller 2022, a Chasselas from Domaine de la Grille that the Office des Vins Vaudois singled out for its tasting promise. That bottle matters because it narrows the attention rather than widening it: one maker, one Grandvaux cellar, one white grape long associated with this part of Lavaux. If the estate’s future is visible anywhere, it is in that continued handling of Chasselas under the Domaine de la Grille name, with Cuvée Pierre Keller 2022 as the concrete marker.