Published on November 3, 2024 at 10:40.
“Le Temps” is joining forces with “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” as part of a series of articles devoted to wine and gastronomy. Find this content as we go along in our dedicated folder.
Several large photos adorn the walls of the carnotzet. We see the work of the vines of yesteryear. In one, the crowd surrounds a cart, posing for the occasion. For Benjamin Morel, it is not just a testimony of the past. It’s a part of his own story. In the image, we find with the elegance of a gentleman farmer, his grandfather Alphonse and his father Marc-Antoine, still a child. The strong, blue-eyed 49-year-old is thus the third generation of Morel at the head of the Château de Valeyres estate. The 17th century building recalls a time when the northern Vaudois village was a popular vacation spot for the Bernese aristocracy. The neoclassical facade and the Doric colonnades even give it “a fairy tale air”, if we are to believe the GaultMillau description. In 2018, the guide, in association with Swiss Wine Promotion, named the winemaker “Rookie of the Year”. A great personal reward, but also recognition for the quality of the wines of this Côtes de l’Orbe appellation, which was for a long time the poor relation of the wines of the country of Gilles and Ramuz.
As a child from this foot of the Jura, Benjamin Morel remembers the taunts heard at Changins school. He never listened to them. Like many colleagues of his generation, the man trained extensively in oenology, moving abroad to sharpen his knowledge, in the German Kaiserstuhl or in the Napa Valley, in California. In 2004, he took over the family estate of Valeyres-sous-Rances with a childhood friend, Frédéric Hostettler. Twenty years later, Benjamin Morel is one of the names that are making the growing reputation of Côtes de l’Orbe, which remains the smallest appellation in the canton (with the exception of the intercantonal appellation of Vully). Its 170 hectares (4% of Vaud’s wine-growing area) stretch from the gentle slopes of Mormont to Eclépens – the hill made the news in 2020 by hosting the first ZAD in Switzerland, against the extension of the cement quarry of ‘Holcim – to Yverdon, town where a 200 m mini-vine nestles2and Yvonand on the south shore of Lake Neuchâtel.
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