Lucas Madonia comes from Dijon and cut his teeth in Burgundy and the Jura before bringing those instincts to the steep slopes of the Swiss Valais at the end of 2021.
Backstory
Madonia started small and grew deliberately. He worked one hectare in 2022, expanded to 1.7 hectares in 2023, then to 2 hectares in 2024, and reached 2.5 hectares in 2025. The project carries his Burgundian and Jura training, two of France's most terroir-obsessed white-wine cultures, into an Alpine region better known for its own long-standing traditions.
The Region
The Valais is Switzerland's largest wine region, a sun-drenched Alpine valley where terraced vineyards climb the mountainsides above the Rhone. Madonia's parcels cluster around Ayent, near Sion, at elevations between roughly 680 and 820 meters, high ground that keeps the wines fresh.
Vineyards & Farming
The soils are varied, taking in schist and limestone, loess, glacial moraines, quartz, and a little clay. The terraced terrain rules out machines, so all the work is done by hand, including grass management with a backpack brush cutter. Farming is organic, with copper use kept below one kilogram per hectare and applied by backpack sprayer. In the dry 2025 season Madonia treated his vines not at all, a vintage he labels Wine 0,0,0.
Winemaking
Grapes are destemmed by hand. Reds macerate for around 30 days and age in old Burgundian barrels of 228 to 500 liters; whites are pressed at harvest into 400-liter barrels. The wines are made without any additives or sulfites and bottled by gravity in August, a hands-off regime that reflects his natural-wine convictions.
The Wines
The range is built on Chasselas, the signature white of French-speaking Switzerland, alongside Savagnin Blanc and Pinot Noir, with smaller amounts of Gamay, Diolinoir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. They are released across a set of village and single-parcel cuvees that read like a Burgundian's map of his adopted valley.
