Chexbres, Switzerland

Napa, Tuscany, Bordeaux, Mendoza, Willamette Valley are all the popular places to go wine tasting, so why isn’t Lavaux region on that list? The views itself are incredible and the wine was up to par to the top producing wine regions around the world. Lavaux consists of 830 hectares of terraced vineyards that stretch for about 30 km along the south-facing shores of Lake Geneva. Since July 2007, the region is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. And since 2016, the vineyards of Lavaux are not treated with synthetic pesticides any more. Clean wine…clean drinking! The main wine grape variety grown here is the Chasselas.

The Lavaux wine-producing region is located between Lausanne and Vevey on the northern shores of Lake Geneva in western Switzerland. There are many hiking trails through the vineyards and we decided to take a day trip there and see they beauty for ourselves. To get to Lavaux region from Geneva, we took a train from Geneva central to Vevey. From Vevey we cabbed it to Domaine Bovy. You could take the slow train from Lausanne or Vevey to Chexbres Village gare (station) instead of a cab, but we just wanted to get there. Our winery of choice – Domaine Bovy.

Video Highlights

Domaine Bovy

Domaine Bovy was a lovely place to spend our afternoon. The Bovy family are an old Vaud family, natives of Chexbres. The cellars date from the 16th century and the first wines were acquired in 1779. Since then the family has passed down the estate/winemaking business directly to family. Now in the 4th generation, Bertrand and Eric run the whole operation. Bertrand and Eric were the perfect hosts – they told us about the wine and poured us extra big tasting portions! Who doesn’t love tasting wine with the winemakers?! We tasted wines outside in the shade overlooking Lake Geneva. It was the most lovely day…blue skies, rows and rows of vines, birds chirping and crisp cold white wine and rosé were being poured. (They also serve tasty apero food) The Bovy brothers told us that the reason why Lavaux wine doesn’t make it to the States or other parts of the world is because there is such a small about produced that 95% of the wine is consumed locally. That’s the reason why we don’t really know about it. SOOOO that being said, we bought wine to take home with us!

We had planned to go to other wineries, but since we had an incredible time and were enjoying the wine) we didn’t make it to any other wineries other than strolling down the road through the vineyards to the train station. We had to make it back to Geneva for a party that night!