The Burgundian on the High Terraces: Lucas Madonia in the Valais
At the end of 2021, Lucas Madonia left Dijon for the precipitous terraces around Ayent, in the central Valais — trading the Côte d'Or for schist and limestone slopes between 600 and 820 meters. A couple of hectares farmed entirely by hand, reds destemmed by hand on a wooden Jura sieve, everything raised in old Burgundian barrels and bottled by gravity: no inputs, no sulfites, ever.
Origin — From Dijon to the High Valais
Lucas Madonia comes from Dijon, and he cut his teeth in Burgundy and the Jura — two of France's most terroir-obsessed wine cultures — before carrying those instincts west-to-east across the Alps. At the end of 2021 he settled in the central Valais and started small: one hectare in 2022, 1.7 in 2023, and deliberate growth since, to roughly two and a half hectares by 2025.
What he brought with him is a philosophy, not a recipe. "I take the side of my Burgundian origins, which is to farm plots," he says — and in the Valais, plots are all there is: the average vineyard parcel here is 0.04 hectares. Madonia turned that fragmentation into the domaine's architecture: each parcel becomes its own cuvée, each cuvée just 800 to 1,200 bottles, each barrel a different lot bottled straight from the wood by gravity.
The toolkit crossed the border with him too. In 2021 he built his own destemming sieve with his uncle — a wooden, Jura-type screen of fir — so that reds could be destemmed by hand, berry by berry, without a machine ever touching the fruit. It is the whole domaine in one object: Burgundian and Jurassian craft, rebuilt by hand, for Swiss mountain terraces.
The Place — Terraces at 800 Meters
The vineyards are so steep that mechanization is not a choice but an impossibility — a terrace vineyard where every task, from grass to harvest, is done on foot and by hand. The reward is a patchwork of high-altitude soils and exposures that reads like a Burgundian's dream of the Alps.
No Machines, Ever
Grass is managed with a backpack brush cutter; organic treatments — under a kilo of copper per hectare — go on with a backpack atomizer; the harvest comes out of the vineyard on the shoulder. On these coteaux, the human back is the only engine that fits.
Certified Organic — and Beyond
The estate is certified organic (BioInspecta / CH-BIO) — and in 2025 and 2026 the vines received no treatments at all: "aucun traitement, rien, niet," as Lucas puts it, arguing that the region's dry, airy conditions make it possible. Certification as the floor, not the ceiling.
One Parcel, One Cuvée
Each parcel of vines represents a cuvée — 800 to 1,200 bottles each, and every barrel bottled as a separate lot, by gravity. In a region where the average holding is a few rows, the parcel is the appellation: Bahian, Molignon, Orcyre, Lépiny, each bottle named for the corner of mountain it comes from.
Old Burgundian Barrels
All the wines are raised in old Burgundian barrels — "from where I come from," he says — 228 to 600 liters for the élevage, 400-liter casks for the whites. Neutral wood, long rests, and an August bottling done by gravity, straight from the barrel itself.
Winemaking — Nothing but Grape Juice
The cellar rule is absolute and simply stated. Reds are destemmed by hand over the fir-wood sieve and macerated long — three to six weeks on the skins; whites are pressed directly for about 24 hours and go straight to barrel on harvest day. Everything ferments on its own yeasts, everything ages in old Burgundian wood, and everything is bottled without fining or filtration.
Nothing is added at any point — no selected yeasts, no enzymes, no corrections, and no sulfites, not even at bottling. "Jamais," he insists: never. In a zero-zero cellar, hygiene and patience do the work that sulfur does elsewhere; the August bottling, by gravity from each barrel, is the only handling the wine gets.
What protects the style is the mountain. Grapes are harvested late — mid-September to mid-October, "at the limit of shriveling" — yet the wines stay low in alcohol and high in freshness, because 800-meter nights keep the acid while the sun does the ripening. Uncompromising, pure wines, as he describes them: the altitude's signature, not the cellar's.
The Wines — One Parcel, One Cuvée
Vin de Pays Suisse by design: a handful of tiny, parcel-true cuvées — 800 to 1,200 bottles each — spanning Humagne Blanche and Savagnin to Gamay, Pinot Noir and the Alpine answer to Bordeaux. Every wine zero-input, zero-sulfite, bottled by gravity from the barrel.
Dix Vers Sion
The white mosaic — "ten verses toward Sion"The estate's white tapestry: Humagne Blanche, Riesling, Petite Arvine, Muscat, Johannisberg, Pinot Gris, Chasselas and more, woven into one alpine field of flavor. A pun for a name and a thesis for a wine — that the Valais' old varieties, pressed together, say more than any one of them alone.
Bahian
The Jura tribute — Savagnin, ouilléSavagnin grown at altitude and kept topped-up — ouillé, in the Jura manner — so the grape shows its orchard fruit and mountain nerve without the veil. The cuvée where the winemaker's Jurassian schooling speaks loudest, in a Swiss accent.
Lépiny
The light red — Diolinoir, Gamay & Pinot NoirA red built for drinking: Diolinoir, Gamay and Pinot Noir destemmed by hand and infused rather than extracted. Low in alcohol, high in altitude freshness — the bottle that proves zero-zero reds can be joyful before they are serious.
Molignon
The Valaisan blend — Merlot, Humagne Rouge, Petit Verdot & Pinot NoirOld Valais meets old Bordeaux: Humagne Rouge — the region's own heritage red — alongside Merlot, Petit Verdot and Pinot Noir. Darker-fruited and more structured than Lépiny, it is the cuvée that tastes most like the place it is named for.
Orcyre
The Alpine Bordeaux — Cabernet Sauvignon & MerlotCabernet Sauvignon and Merlot ripened slowly on high terraces, then raised quietly in old Burgundian wood. Bordeaux varieties, Alpine manners: the most structured bottle in the cellar, and the longest-lived argument for the site.
Legacy — A Burgundian Argument in the Alps
The Madonia legacy, still being written, is that the Valais' fragmentation is a gift and not a defect. Where others see 0.04-hectare parcels as an administrative headache, a Burgundian sees climats — and by bottling each one separately, in lots of a few hundred bottles, he has given the terraces around Ayent the same dignity the Côte d'Or gives its own rows.
The second argument is methodological: that zero-input, zero-sulfite wine is not a lowland luxury. At 800 meters, with cool nights, dry air and organic farming pushed to the point of no treatments at all, the high Valais may be one of the safest places in Europe to make wine with nothing added — and Madonia is assembling the proof, vintage by vintage.
And there is an honesty to the project that extends to price. He is the first to say the wines are "a bit expensive — it's Switzerland, the costs here are twice those in France," and to note that they sit not far from certain Burgundy or Jura prices. À bon entendeur: the terraces decide the cost; the cellar adds nothing — in either sense.