BB&T Charleston Food + Wine Festival

Bernard Lacroute grew up in a small village on the eastern edge of Burgundy, France, where he developed an early taste for Pinot Noir. After a classical education of Latin, mathematics, and some Shakespearean English with vast quantities of bad Pinot Noir enjoyed throughout, Bernard graduated with master’s degrees in physics and electrical engineering from the French school system. Committed to more esoteric pursuits and more bad wine, Bernard went on to study plasma physics with a NASA fellowship at the University of Michigan. He then followed a career path focused initially on building computers and then computer companies—all the while developing a taste for progressively better Pinot Noir. In 1991, Bernard decided to take his interests full circle and after a thorough search he purchased the WillaKenzie Estate property in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. WillaKenzie Estate is a small, family-owned winery dedicated to the highest expression of terroir, mak¬ing great wines from the Pinot family of grapes: Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier, and Pinot Noir, as well as Gamay Noir made in the Beaujo¬lais crus style. WillaKenzie Estate is an expression of Bernard’s dream to make great Pinot Noir in an environment relatively unencumbered by bureaucracy, where tradition can be blended with innovation.

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