Domaine du Signolet

Horse work above Lake Biel

The horse still enters the vineyard work at Domaine du Signolet in La Neuveville, where Jean-Daniel Giauque is the winemaker. That choice says much about the scale of the place before a glass is poured. On 4.5 hectares above the medieval town, Giauque works as a fourth-generation vigneron and ampélographer, carrying a family line through a cellar that has chosen variety over simplification. His title is plain, but the work is not narrow: he tends vines, guides fermentations, receives guests, and keeps an eye on a collection of cépages that would be excessive in a larger, more standardized house. Here, excess has a discipline of its own.

Giauque is known for attention to grape identity, not as a decorative idea but as the basis of the domaine. More than 100 grape varieties have been planted at Signolet, though only about a quarter are used for wine production. He has acknowledged that 100 varieties is too much, and that admission gives the experiment its weight. The point is not abundance for display. It is the slow sorting of what belongs in this soil, this light, this Lac de Bienne air.

More than 30 wines from a small estate

The program turns a small holding into a wide bench of bottles. Domaine du Signolet produces over 30 different wines annually, across still white, red, rosé, and sweet styles. Pinot Gris, Muscat, Viognier, Savagnin Rose, Roussette, and Pinot Noir sit within that range, alongside rarer and more experimental cuvées shaped by Giauque’s ampelographic work. The cellar does not appear to organize itself around one master recipe. Fermentation and élevage follow the variety, the intended texture, and the patience each wine asks for.

Some bottles make the method easier to read. Roussette, also known as Altesse, is treated as a wine for further aging, with pomelo in the aromatic line and a palate built on tension and structure. Cuvée Mathilde, named for Giauque’s daughter, belongs to the white blends and carries the family register into the bottle. Carré blanc is named among the reds as a preferred cuvée, while the Pinot Noir is made in a lighter register, a vin de plaisir rather than a wine constructed for weight. The range is large, but the measure remains bench-side: what each cépage can give, and what should be left alone.

A cellar built for conversation

The cellar at Signolet has the feeling of a working room, not a staged one. Giauque is often present himself, moving between cellar work and visitors, letting a tasting become a conversation about varieties, soil, animals, and the choices that sit behind a bottle. The atmosphere is relaxed and close to the work. Glasses are not separated from the labor that made them.

Outside, the slopes above La Neuveville pull the eye toward Lake Biel and the hillside vineyards around Gléresse and Schafis. The town below carries its 14th-century frame, but the more immediate texture is agricultural: vineyard rows, cellar thresholds, the physical quiet of a small estate. Even Giauque’s language with his animals has its own craft, a private blend of Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, and Swiss dialect chosen for sound. At Signolet, the next sentence often begins in the vineyard, with the horse.