Coming from a family of winemakers going back 400 years, Céline Coquard Lenerz, M.S. ’12, never seriously considered any other career path.
Her family’s vineyard in Prairie du Sac, Wis.—Wollersheim Winery—was founded in the 1840s and passed through several hands before Celine’s maternal grandparents bought the 70-acre property in 1972.
In the 1980s, the man who would become Celine’s father, Philippe Coquard, came to the farm as an agricultural exchange student from the Beaujolais region of France. His family had been making wine for centuries.
“My family was highly influential in my career choice,” Celine said. “From birth, we learned to taste and appreciate not only wine, along with food, spirits and culture, but neither I nor my two younger brothers were made to feel like we have to choose this path.”
Celine began helping at the winery when she was 6 years old. After earning a horticulture degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Celine came to Cornell to earn a master’s degree in food science.
“Truly, the most valuable part of my education was having the opportunity to meet many interesting and skilled winemakers and distillers in New York state. It was the best thing we could have done to gain different perspectives,” Celine said. “I did really love being at Cornell as my adviser matched me to the perfect project so that I could work with hybrid grapes and wines that helped advance the Midwestern and Eastern wine industries.”
Working with family can be challenging but also tremendously rewarding, said Celine, who is now Wollersheim Winery’s enologist and lab manager.
“It’s not just about blood-related family, but a whole culture of family that we’ve built up over the last 41 years here,” she said. “You keep a sense of moving forward, with respect to the past. Know where you came from and where you want to go.”
Read about other CALS alumni who are following in the footsteps of their forebears - and some who have taken the family business down new paths - in the Generations and Innovations feature of the new periodiCALS magazine.
