Hiking Yvorne, Vaud
Home to some of the finest mineral Chasselas wines
A hike you don’t have to plan ahead
Yvorne, in Vaud, is excellent if you’re looking for a hike where you can easily see the ascent/descent and decide as you go how flat or hilly you’d like your walk to be. It’s more compact than Aigle, the larger town next to it on the Rhone. The hillside is open enough that you don’t really need a map. The village is often touted for its charm as well as its wine. The vineyards sit mostly on the site of a massive rockslide that virtually wiped out the village in 1584. It was rebuilt nearby, leaving the vines to benefit from rocky soil that gives their white wines a particular and beautiful character.
One of the consistently best Chasselas wines in Switzerland is from the Château Maison Blanche. Also very good is Pierre Latine, lower down in the village, notably its Chasselas Clos Crosex (Aigle Grand Cru). And Artisans Vignerons d’Yvorne, the local cooperative in the centre of town, has a fine mix of wines for very reasonable prices. Their Chant de Resses (gold medal, Lauriers de Terrevin) Chasselas is a classic for mineralogy, not to be missed. You can see Paolo Basso, 2013 Best Sommelier in the World, present this wine in English via the link here.
The hike 6.1 km with a 371 ascent, 373 descent, 2 hours. This can easily be combined with the hike from Ollon to Yvorne which is in Wine Hiking Switzerland*. That will add 10 km to your hike, and allows you to stop by Bernard Cavé’s winery in Ollon, which recently opened a good restaurant, La Table de Denise. It’s run by Denise Crettol, Bernard’s wife, who famously ran Küsnacht’s hugely popular raclette restaurant Chez Crettol, near Zurich, until they tired of the cross-country marriage and she closed it in 2023. You might want to start in Yvorne to linger over lunch here. Or start from the train station in Aigle and walk to Yvorne, which adds 2 km and 30 minutes, a pretty if not particularly interesting walk.
How to get there
I parked my little electric car in the centre of Yvorne, but there is good bus service from Aigle, which is on the main Geneva-Brig train line. Aigle and Yvorne are part of stage 5 of Swiss hiking trail number 70, if you want to extend your hike to include more of it. Number 70 is the impressive 200 km ViaFrancigena hike, a 2,000 year old pilgrims’ trail.
I then climbed up to the group of homes called Vers Morey, kept climbing up to Vers Cheneaux, and followed the trail which turns west to Vers Cort, 754m asl. From there I headed back down towards the Maison Blanche, the beautiful white castle, crossed the Torrent d’Yvorne and headed back to the centre for a coffee, then on down to the lower end of the village. You can cut out the coffee loop I made by following a small road straight down from Maison Blanche. Be sure to check maps if you’re following your instincts because several of the little vineyard roads are dead-ends that require you to climb back up.
*My book, Wine Hiking Switzerland, is available in most Swiss bookstores (En, Fr, Ge editions)
