New wine from cool-climate grapes
Coquard Lenerz studied winemaking at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which is in the Finger Lakes wine-growing region. She recognized the necessity of tourism for the wine industry and wanted to focus on cool-climate grape growing and wine production.
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For her thesis, she put her personal observations and experiences with hybrids to the test and surveyed winemakers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Some of the first hybrids at Wollersheim were planted with Elmer Swenson, an Osceola farmer who bred wine grapes and worked with the University of Minnesota to create several cold-hardy hybrid wine grapes that grow well in Wisconsin today.
One that goes back to Swenson is St. Pepin. For years, it has typically been featured as the winery’s dessert-style ice wine.
Coquard Lenerz saw other possibilities.
She sought to elevate the cold-climate Wisconsin hybrid first planted by her father and grandfather in 1984. So she pushed to create a wine in its name.
St. Pepin was released in September. It's an estate-grown dry white wine made in a chardonnay style and aged in French oak barrels for six months in Wollersheim’s limestone cellars. It's exclusively available at the winery.
Coquard Lenerz is firmly embracing her roots while moving forward the family’s next generation as a woman winemaker and enologist. Although the way wine is made hasn’t much changed, the grape options and viability in Wisconsin have.
Her favorite place on Wollersheim land
In fact, one of Coquard Lenerz’s favorite places on the Wollersheim property is the experimental vineyard. Here she can learn and explore, trying things on a smaller scale.
Hybrids are at the root of the winery’s history, as well.
“In 1972, my father-in-law had a very extensive collection of French-American hybrids,” Philippe Coquard said. “Today there are new grapes like Marquette, Frontenac, Petite Pearl, and it is nice to see. What changed? The viability.”
Coquard Lenerz always loved the vineyard and winery where she grew up with her brothers, Romain and Nicolas. Both also work there, with Romain primarily handling the bistro and baking.
Her husband, Tom Lenerz, is the distiller making products such as brandy with New York grapes. In fact, the canned version of the Wisconsin old fashioned cocktail using the Press House brandy has proved quite popular since being introduced.
But she didn’t expect to go into the family business. Now she can’t imagine being anyplace else.
“Once I realized how much I was interested in flavor development and the sensory perception of winemaking, I wanted to be educated. I didn't want to just come into the family business,” Coquard Lenerz said.
“Learning on the job is great, but I can’t hire the next person behind me without knowing why or what. Grandpa" — Bob Wollersheim — "always said, ‘To measure is to know.’ I wanted a winemaking degree,” she said.
Women and winemaking
What does it mean to have more women working in wineries in Wisconsin?
Philippe Coquard doesn’t hesitate to respond to the question. “I welcome the shift, because of tasting abilities and who buys most of the wine. I absolutely welcome the change. I wish there were more women making wine.”
In fact, Coquard Lenerz grew up watching her father work with assistant winemaker Vicki Orr, who has been at the winery since 1994. While she is the family’s next-generation winemaker, Coquard Lenerz holds the title of enologist, which includes her background in wine science.
“That’s what I went to school for. Papa gave me the title because he is the winemaker, and he has Vic" Orr, the assistant winemaker, Coquard Lenerz said.
In 2016, Orr and Coquard Lenerz together were named best woman winemaker at the International Women’s Wine Competition in California. That competition is also judged by women.
“Here at the winery, we’ve all taken different roles based on interests; it is not forced. My brothers have other interests,” Coquard Lenerz said. “We don’t see as many women in the winemaking, but I think that is changing.”
“Off the top of my head, there’s
Elmaro (in Trempeleau),
Wild Hills (in Muscoda) and
American Wine Project (in Mineral Point),” said Coquard Lenerz, listing Wisconsin wineries with women winemakers. “Really, when it comes to women, there’s just a handful of us in the room at association things and conferences.”
As much as Coquard Lenerz focuses on the vineyard, the vines, the grapes and wines they produce, she is also keenly aware of the role of the consumer, climate and tourism.
Keeping up with consumers want
She studied those issues and focused on them for her thesis at Cornell University, looking at the appeal of wines to the consumer.
“In the last decade, there's been both an embrace of blends" — especially red blends such as Apothic, Josh and Ménage à Trois, all California wines — "and an interest in locally grown beverages from beer and wine to kombucha and cider,” Coquard Lenerz said.
“The experience and enjoyment have overtaken the varietal importance, and that shift seemed accelerated by COVID,” she said.
Her own focus has long been on the growth of the industry, particularly in cool-climate wine regions expanding with increasingly available native and hybrid wine grapes.
While at Cornell, Coquard Lenerz spent time touring the Finger Lakes region, where decades ago Bob Wollersheim sought sample vines and knowledge from winemakers to build the vineyard.
“Finger Lakes, the region is just a little older,” Coquard Lenerz said. “It was really nice to visit the wineries that grandpa had corresponded with,
Konstantin Frankand
Hermann Wiemer, and
Wagner. That was really cool to make that connection, to see what they were growing now and still.”
Ten years into her winemaking career, she’s beginning to think more about her own impact.
“As a winemaker, you maybe have 50 years, if you’re lucky,” she said. “I want to keep growing our Wisconsin focus. I think when people weren’t as educated, or didn’t know the French-American hybrids and the American hybrids, those were weird names. It wasn’t pinot noir or chardonnay. People didn’t want to try something new.”
Philippe Coquard has always been open to trying new things. In fact, knowing his history while being open to new ideas is one of his strengths as a winemaker.
Coquard Lenerz considers herself lucky to have the support system and generations of experience in the winery.
“We joke that Papa will never retire, but I do see my days working with my father are numbered. My grandpa, and my uncle in France, those days are numbered, too. It is always planning for the future, and making some of those decisions together and him allowing me to make some on my own.”
While always looking ahead, Philippe Coquard also doesn’t want the history and decades of work to be overlooked.
“Look at us, over the last 50 years,” Coquard said. “Today, some of the new wineries don’t even grow what they make. We didn’t have those choices back when we started. People have forgotten that part of the history, and where our customers were 50 years ago.”
“Celine is the future of the business,” Coquard said. “I have to be cognizant of that. She will deal with a whole new generation of customer.”
Her go-to wine
She embraces developments in hybrids and sustainable packaging initiatives like putting wines in cans (a four-year process), but when she needs a reminder of where she comes from and what she's trying to achieve, she goes right to Wollersheim’s Domaine du Sac. Always.
“I joke it is my house wine. When I don’t know what I want to drink, that is my drink,” she said.
Not only is it her go-to, it is representative of her heritage and family history.
It is made with 90% French hybrid Maréchal Foch and 10% Léon Millot, a French-American hybrid grape. “We make it like a Beajoulais,” she said, which also happens to be the region of her father’s winemaking roots going back those 13 generations.
“Winemaking is not a short-term thing,” he said, with a look to Celine. “It is a generations thing.”
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