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Estate

One slope, one family, since 1874

Ullage is a small estate. Three of us run it, with forty friends at harvest. Everything we know comes from the same eleven hectares.

Vineyards and a farmhouse seen from above

The story

Five generations on the terraces

  1. 1874

    Auguste Varenne buys three terraces and a press house in Epesses with his savings from the railway.

  2. 1921

    The first guest book opens at the cellar door. It is still on the press table.

  3. 1956

    A storm takes down the wall of Le Mur. The family rebuilds it in one winter.

  4. 1999

    Joris stops using herbicide and plants Champ Rouge on the old apricot field.

  5. 2014

    Helene comes home to run the cellar and starts bottling every parcel apart.

  6. 2024

    The estate is certified organic. Sous-Bois gives its first full harvest.

Bare winter vines in rows on a hillside
Small green grape bunches among young leaves
Rows of green vines seen from above
Golden backlit grape bunch on the vine
A picker carrying a crate of grapes through the vineyard
Rows of oak barrels in a dim cellar

03 / The year on the slope

A year in six fills

  1. 01 January

    Pruning

    Two buds per cane. Joris walks every terrace with secateurs and a thermos, and the vines decide next year's yield.

  2. 02 April

    Budburst

    The first leaves open on the warm lower terraces a week before the top ones. Frost nights mean we sleep in the vines.

  3. 03 June

    Flowering

    Ten quiet days that set the size of the harvest. We stay off the slope and let the bees work.

  4. 04 August

    Veraison

    The berries soften and colour. We thin the bunches by hand so the vine feeds fewer, better grapes.

  5. 05 September

    Harvest

    Twenty-two days, forty pickers, every crate carried up the terraces on shoulders. Friends of the estate join us on harvest days.

  6. 06 November

    Cellar

    The new wine rests on its lees in old oak and stone vats. We taste every barrel each Friday until spring.

Rain
64 mm
Sun
72 h
Must
0 °Oe

The family

Who you will meet

  • A winemaker checking bottles on a rack

    Winemaker

    Helene Varenne

    Took over the cellar in 2014 after ten years in Burgundy and Otago. Bottles every parcel apart.

  • A man carrying a crate of grapes in the vineyard

    Vineyard

    Joris Varenne

    Knows each of the 412 terraces by name. Stopped using herbicide in 1999, the year his daughter was born.

  • A long table laid with glasses for a tasting

    Tastings and the house

    Odile Varenne

    Runs the cellar door, the harvest kitchen and the guest book, which goes back to 1921.

A winemaker working between oak barrels in the cellar
My great-great-grandfather built the first terrace wall by hand. We still rebuild one every winter. The wine is just what the slope gives back.
Helene Varenne, Winemaker, fifth generation

04 / The parcels

Five parcels, five wines of place

The slope drops 140 metres in less than a kilometre. Each step changes the soil, the wind and the light, so we bottle the parcels apart.

Lake GenevaForest
01Les Bas46.4902 N 6.7461 E 385 mLake gravel1968 02La Corniche46.4911 N 6.7472 E 420 mLimestone scree1952 03Le Mur46.4917 N 6.7486 E 455 mClay over moraine1931 04Champ Rouge46.4926 N 6.7494 E 485 mRed marl1999 05Sous-Bois46.4934 N 6.7503 E 515 mSandstone2014
Vineyard rows at dusk with warm light over the hills

Come up the slope

Tell us when you would like to visit, which wines you are curious about, or how many bottles to set aside. We answer within two days.

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