Domaine des Champs-Lingot

Since 1990, between vine and cellar

Grass grows under the rows before Claude-Alain Chollet, winemaker at Domaine des Champs-Lingot in Anieres, takes the work back toward the cellar. His title here is vigneron encaveur indépendant, a phrase that matters because it refuses to split the vineyard from the wine. Since 1990, Chollet has held that double responsibility at the domaine in Anières, on the south shore of Lake Geneva, with the same estate setting the terms of his practice season after season.

The family connection reaches back to the 1920s, and the work still reads as a holding of place rather than a sequence of posts. Chollet manages a small estate of about 5 hectares, making its own wines and brandies rather than treating the vineyard as a mere source of fruit. The lineage published by the house is familial, not a catalogue of named mentors, and that is the scale on which the practice should be read: one family, one commune, one cellar, one long association with the Coteau de Chevrens.

Thirteen plots, one estate hand

The method at Domaine des Champs-Lingot begins with the ground. The estate cultivates its vines organically, with no chemical pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilizers used since 2013. It also keeps grass under the vines, a decision that gives the vineyard floor a visible role in the discipline of the place: cover, restraint, soil life, less bare earth between the rows. The estate names this as an early regional practice, and it sits naturally beside a broader sustainable program that includes solar electricity on the property.

The 5 hectares are divided into 13 grape plots, with a range that moves through Chasselas, Gamay, Gamaret, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Chardonnay, Auxerrois, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Kerner, Riesling-Sylvaner, Divico, Galotta and Carminoir, alongside sparkling and sweet wine work. The fruit is estate-grown, which keeps the decision-making close to the bench-side of the vineyard: pruning, cover, picking and cellar choices all stay within the same hands. Brandy adds another register to the cellar, extending the domaine’s work beyond still and sparkling wine into distillation.

The cellar below the lake light

The place carries two tempos. In the vineyard and cellar, the day belongs to rows, tanks, bottles and the slow return of tasks that do not reward haste. Outside, the estate opens into a green park and a 200 m² marquee, with Lake Geneva held in view beyond the vines. The room is not a tasting salon sealed away from the farm; it sits in the same rural fabric as the cellar, close enough that the hospitality reads as an extension of the agricultural site rather than a separate performance.

That matters to the feel of the estate. Background music, conversation, grass, water, tent canvas, rows of vines: the setting keeps its volume low. Even when the domaine receives gatherings, the craft remains legible in the landscape. The wine does not arrive from elsewhere. It comes from the plots around the house, then returns to the glass with Chollet’s name and Domaine des Champs-Lingot behind it.