VE - Viticulture and Enology

The Viticulture and Enology Major is offered as a joint diploma between Changins – Haute école de viticulture et œnologie and the Vinifera EuroMaster. Students following this 120 ECTS programme will spend the first year in HES-SO. Their second year will be spent in one of Universities from the Vinifera EuroMaster Consortium.

The Major VE provides students with the tools to analyze and resolve complex problems in Viticulture and Enology, from grape to wine, from management to market, on a strategic and operational level.

Successful candidates are awarded the Graduate Degree “Master of Science HES-SO in Life Sciences, Major Viticulture and Enology” based on 120 credits ECTS as well as The Vinifera EuroMaster diploma.

Watch the presentation of the major:

• In French.
• In English.
• In Italian.
• In Chinese.

The Journée des formation de Changins (15 March 2025) will give you the opportunity to meet students, alumni, teachers, during presentations, visits, workshops, conferences and forums.

The Viticulture and Enology specialization aims to provide students with the following skills:

• Understand, analyze and judge geological, pedological, and climatic components of the terroir of a vineyard
• Evaluate the genetic variability within vineyard blocks, the plant’s state of health, and the match of the rootstock- grape variety combination as a function of agronomic and enological aptitude
• Understand the chemistry and analysis of key wine molecules and macromolecules and their importance for winemaking techniques, wine stability, color and aroma
• Direct and coordinate the design of a winery
• Evaluate environmental risks linked to the grapevine production and a company’s vineyard structure
• Acquire competences for the restructuring of a company related to viticulture or enology
• Develop valorization techniques through sensory analysis and learn innovative sensory evaluation techniques

The schedule is available here and the modules with their descriptions can all be found here.

Modules are organized according the following structure:

First year

Second year

From the academic year 2024-2025, the MLS offers the module "Interdisciplinary project". Its goal is to bring together the students from all three majors to work on a shared project. Each group is supervised by a teacher from each major. The projects will take place in part in presential in Lausanne (mainy for the kick-off meeting and the final presentations, see schedule). For the rest of the project, each group can organise its tasks, and the work can be done individually, in sub-groups or in groups, online or in presential if needed.

Students take this compulsory module during the Autumn Semester, during the first year for full-time studies, during the second year for part-time studies. Each student needs to mention a first and a second choice, and a repartition will be done to ensure a balanced distribution in terms of numbers and of majors.

The description of the module and of the three projects offered in Autumn 2024 are available below:

• Interdisciplinary Project (PI01)
• Project 1: Diagnostic tools for Brettanomyces detection
• Project 2: Transformation of a process step to continuous operation
• Project 3: Valorization of wine by-product wastes

• HES-SO Master student information
• MLS Flyer
• Student Mobility HES-SO Master