Hammel – Terres de Vins

A house brief carried through the cellar

The cellar work sits close to the tasting room, and Charles Rolaz, winemaker at Hammel – Terres de Vins in Rolle, keeps the house language tied to Swiss wine memory rather than spectacle. His public work has moved through governance as much as through the cellar: president of the commission of the 1ers Grands Crus, chair of the board at Hammel SA, and president of Mémoire des vins suisses in Lausanne. Those roles matter here because they place him inside the structures that decide how Swiss wine is classified, preserved, and spoken for. At Hammel – Terres de Vins, that institutional fluency meets the practical discipline of a large house, where continuity has to survive contact with volume, visitors, and a range that moves across sparkling and still formats. The title attached to his current work is CEO, but the role reads through the wine program: production identity, release language, and commercial judgment kept under one roof. His signature names, Ligne Prestige Brut, Ligne Prestige Rosé Brut NV, Cuvée Charles Auguste, Exelsis Rouge, and Exelsis Blanc, give the range its grammar. They are not presented as isolated bottles. They form a house vocabulary.

Still wines, sparkling cues, Swiss order

The method at Rolle is best understood through range and stewardship, because the house does not publish the kind of cellar sheet that would let a reader trace fermentations, vessel choices, or élevage in detail. What can be said is more useful than a borrowed technical romance: Hammel – Terres de Vins works as a Swiss producer with a broad program, known for still white and still red wines, with sparkling releases also present in Rolaz’s signature line. The discipline is one of arrangement. Ligne Prestige Brut and Ligne Prestige Rosé Brut NV sit beside Cuvée Charles Auguste plus the Exelsis Rouge and Blanc bottlings, so the program asks the same house to carry freshness, color, structure, and named cuvée work without breaking its voice. Rolaz’s earlier proximity to the 1ers Grands Crus commission gives that arrangement a particular cast. Classification teaches restraint. It also teaches consequence: a label, a cuvée name, or a place claim has to bear weight beyond the tasting pour. In Rolle, the cellar is therefore not only a production space. It is where a Swiss house decides how much of its inheritance to keep visible.

Antique cellars near Lake Geneva

The room at Hammel – Terres de Vins is quiet by design, set in the countryside of Rolle, near Lake Geneva, with antique cellars giving the visit its grain. The setting belongs to Vaud, on the Swiss side of the lake, close enough to the motorway to be reachable, yet shaped more by cellar pace than road pace once inside. This is a tasting venue as well as a wine estate, so the work meets the public at the table: guided tastings, food-and-wine pairings, bottles moving from back room to glass. The pleasure is not in theatrical access to production. It is in the way an old cellar steadies the house, while the tasting room turns that steadiness into sequence, comparison, and conversation. Rolle gives the frame, Lake Geneva gives the light, and the cellar gives the temperature of the place.

Continuity as the next release

Rolaz’s next move here is not announced as a break. The work points instead toward continued house direction, with heritage, preservation, and release structure held together across the Hammel range. For a producer of this scale, the quiet test is repetition without flattening: another Brut, another Rouge, another Blanc, each still carrying enough of the house to be recognized. At Rolle, that continuity has a concrete name on the bench, Cuvée Charles Auguste.