Visit by Mr. Christian Roguenant - Winemaker for Niven Family Estates

I am looking forward to an exciting workday tomorrow. Mr. Christian Roguenant is here in Indianapolis for a Market visit. So excited to meet him in person and spending a whole day together with him. He is the wine maker for Baileyana, Zocker, Tangent wines, and Trenza.

Here are a few more details about Christian:  

Christian Roguenant was born to wine. A native of the Burgundy region of France who grew up among the vineyards, he decided early on to become a winemaker. His studies at the University of Dijon focused on oenology and wine making and included graduate coursework in wine marketing. This education served him well as he traveled the world to make wine on five continents. Included in his experience were fifteen years with Champagne Deutz, one of the premier Champagne houses in France and service as a consultant to wineries around the world. His travels brought him to wineries in Argentina, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Korea (where he made sparkling wine for the 1988 Olympics) and finally to the Central Coast of California. "Where better to first make Chardonnay and Pinot Noir than Burgundy; or Sauvignon Blanc than New Zealand, or Syrah than the North Rhone?" smiles Roguenant. "I have been very fortunate," he continues, "I have learned so much from so many winemakers and experiences!"

When the Niven family, owners of Baileyana, decided to build a new winery in 1998 they gave a blank slate to Roguenant to design the winery of his dreams. His gracious, light-filled design is state of the art and elegantly functional. Red wines are fermented in the classic Burgundian method in numerous small, open-top fermentors. This compact system allows for gentle punch down of the caps as the wine ferments and enables Roguenant to keep each lot separate by clone, vineyard block, yeast trial, or whatever he chooses. Three individually climate-controlled barrel cellars are available to Roguenant for completing fermentation and for aging. Roguenant is also pleased with the aesthetics of the winery. "The windows let in a lot of natural light," he says. "Although the wine never sees the light, the people do and that makes the winery a very pleasant place to work."

Roguenant delights in selecting among the hand picked fruit from the Firepeak Vineyard. The estate vineyard, adjacent to the Baileyana winery, is planted with carefully chosen clones and root stocks  and is the jewel of the Edna Valley. "This vineyard allows me to achieve my goal: to make the wine as true to the varietal as possible," Roguenant confirms. "My philosophy of wine making is this: give me rough but nice diamonds; my job is to polish without scratching them." He also enjoys the premium varietals selected for the Baileyana wines, including fruit from not only from the Firepeak Vineyard and other estate vineyards. "My passion and desire is to make better wine every year. A winemaker is the greatest critic about his own wine-always striving to get closer to perfection."