It’s well under an hour’s drive from the tumultuous vineyards of Lavaux, skirting westwards around the city of Lausanne and along the lake to Morges, which is where the La Côte region begins. From here round to Geneva, this is a gentler landscape of improbably beautiful winegrowing villages and grand manor houses set in the midst of sloping vineyards, which sweep – rather than tumble precariously – down towards the lake. It’s about as distinct from Lavaux as it’s possible to imagine.
In the small winegrowing village of Echichens above Morges, a convivial atmosphere reigns on Saturday mornings at the Cruchon family winery. Cars draw up outside the white-painted house with its indigo-blue shutters. From their Vaud and Geneva number plates it’s clear that local customers predominate, drawn by the Cruchons’ famously hospitable Saturday wine tastings and brunch. Judging by the people assembled around our table, there are also faithful clients from German-speaking Switzerland and even from Alsace, where the Cruchons have many friends and winegrowing colleagues.
People make their way through the archway inscribed with the date of the original construction – 1696 – and into the various tasting spaces distributed around the ground floor. Henri, the patriarch who founded this all-family business in 1976 in the heart of the La Côte vineyards, wanders in to salute visitors and tasters, joined at moments by either of his two sons Raoul and Michel and each of their respective wives. The youngest member of the team is Raoul’s irrepressible daughter, Catherine, who joined her father in 2010 as winemaker on completion of her oenological studies. It’s the very definition of a family winery, with all hands to the pump.
For some years the estate combined conventional farming methods with organics, always with increasing biodynamic input. The lightbulb moment (le déclic) for Raoul Cruchon came in 1992 when he met Lalou Bize-Leroy, the grande dame of Burgundy and one of the most fervent and convincing exponents of biodynamics, the system of agriculture founded by Rudolf Steiner whose chief objective is to maximise soil health and fertility without chemical intervention. Raoul subsequently devoured Steiner’s works on the subject, which set him and Domaine Cruchon at full tilt on their own path towards biodynamics. His daughter Catherine, a recent graduate from Changins and one of Switzerland’s young, highly dynamic winemakers, talks with infectious passion about the transformation of their soils since working in this way, not to mention significant developments in the complexity of their wines.
In 2018 they called upon the services of the famous couple, Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, known in wine circles as the soil doctors, whose client list reads like a Who’s Who of top estates around the world. Their modus operandi is to dig a number of deep soil pits at various spots in the vineyards of their clients with a view to examining in minute detail the composition of the topsoil, to establish the microbial health of the soils and advise on which variety may do best in which precise spot. “We’d already been working biodynamically for eighteen years”, observes Catherine, “but there’s always something new to learn”. What the Cruchons learnt above all was that they had an enormously rich variety of soils at their disposal, within quite a small space.
The family works with around 20 different varieties on a number of plots scattered around La Côte across 40 hectares. This is the place to conduct a compare-and-contrast exercise with both Chasselas and Pinot Noir. Start by working your way through their various Chasselas and see if – ideally guided by one of the family members in attendance – you can distinguish among the elegance of Clos des Abbesses from well-drained glacial moraine slopes, the fruitiness of Champanel from the deeper, predominantly clay soils of the eponymous Grand Cru vineyard which slopes gently down from the village towards the lake, and the structure of Mont-de-Vaux, whose stony soils they have patiently nursed back to microbial health after many years of agricultural (ab)use.
The other unmissable wine here is Pinot Noir, which represents a quarter of their production. They make four different ones, plus Servagnin, an ancient Pinot Noir clone from the Morges region that has been respectfully resurrected, rather in the same way as Plant Robert in Lavaux. You can perform the same exercise as with Chasselas starting with Les Lugrines, moving to Champanel and working your way up to the jewel in their crown that is Raissenaz, their wine in the Mémoire des Vins Suisses, and widely regarded as one of Switzerland’s finest and most elegant Pinots.
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ADDRESS: Route du Village 32 1112 Echichens CONTACT: Tel. 021 801 17 92 |
WINES TO LOOK OUT FOR: Chasselas Clos des Abbesses Chasselas Champanel Chasselas Mont-de-Vaux Pinot Noir Les Lugrines Pinot Noir Champanel Pinot Noir Raissenaz |
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contact@henricruchon.com |
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henricruchon.com |
Price range 6 to 54 SFr. |
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HIGHLIGHTS: Visits welcomed weekdays during office hours and Saturday mornings, when a light brunch is also offered. Wines may be ordered from their online shop. Vineyard walk in the Morges region |
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