Derenoncourt, Stéphane (1963– ), influential, self-taught, now international winemaking consultant based on Bordeaux’s right bank. Originally from the far north of France, he first picked grapes in Fronsac in 1982 and continued as a lowly vineyard worker. He did not make wine until 1990, at Ch Pavie Macquin, and claims that his winemaking philosophy is informed by his experiences in the vineyard and by Burgundian sensibilities. A great believer in the virtues of tasting, he states perhaps even more explicitly than Bordeaux’s other famous international consultant oenologist Michel rolland, the importance of expressing terroir.
