Domaine de la Roche 1859

Return to the family cellar

The 2018 harvest brought Sandrine Bersier, winemaker at Domaine de la Roche 1859 in Mandement, back to the cellar in Dardagny. After further training in viticulture, she returned to a family estate whose winegrowing activity dates back to 1859, taking up the joined work of vine and bottle rather than treating either as a separate craft. Her station is practical: she works the viticultural line and vinifies the estate range, carrying the fruit from parcel to cellar with the repeat pressure of each vintage. The estate’s current chapter began with that 2018 harvest, when the grapes were again vinified by the domain for its own production after a long interval. That decision matters because it puts responsibility back inside the house. The name comes from La Roche, the parcel that gives the domain its identity, but Bersier’s role is not to preserve a family label under glass. It is to remake continuity through pruning choices, harvest timing, fermentation, élevage and the finished bottles poured in Dardagny.

Thirteen hectares in the Mandement

The estate works 13 hectares of vines across Dardagny, Russin and Satigny, inside the Mandement appellation of the Canton de Genève. Chasselas, Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc sit beside Gamay, Pinot noir, Gamaret and Merlot, giving Bersier a cellar range that moves between still white, red and rosé. The production philosophy is sustainable and tied to Integrated Production, the Swiss agricultural frame that asks the grower to balance yield, soil, biodiversity and environmental restraint. In the cellar, the choices stay specific to the wine. Chardonnay 2019 fermented in stainless steel and aged on fine lees, a method that keeps acidity in view while adding texture. Gamaret 2019 followed a half-and-half élevage, part in cuve and part in barrique, so fruit and structure arrive together rather than one covering the other. Pinot Noir 2019 is presented without so-called improving varieties, leaving the La Roche parcel to carry the wine’s line. These are not large-house gestures. They are small estate decisions, repeated tank by tank, barrel by barrel.

Sun outside, tanks inside

The cellar keeps the register low. Tastings happen either inside, near the working space, or outdoors in the sun, close to the vines that make the conversation tangible. The room is not built around spectacle; it is built around proximity to the method. In Dardagny, the estate sits in Geneva countryside rather than city theater, with the right bank of Lake Geneva behind the Mandement’s older wine villages. The atmosphere is conversational, the scale intimate, the discovery led by bottles rather than décor. A visitor meets the range in the same place where Bersier’s joined discipline of viticulture and vinification takes shape. The bench here is the cellar itself, and the hand shows most clearly in Frutti Bulles and the Pinot Noir from La Roche.