Meet The Winemaker

Philippe Coquard

For Philippe, making wine is a way of life, passed down to him through generations of tradition, skill and hard work. Born and raised in the Beaujolais region of France, Philippe comes from a family of winemakers that has a long lineage of viticulture and enology. He began to understand winemaking and viticulture at a young age, growing up helping on his family’s farms and tasting wine with his dad and uncles. Eventually, Philippe attended ECVS (Macon-Davay winemaking and wine marketing school in Macon and Paris), earning degrees in winemaking, viticulture, and wine marketing. Throughout his college years, he began to take on a more scientific understanding of all the wine knowledge he developed growing up.

Philippe came to our sister winery, Wollersheim Winery, in 1984 as part of an agricultural exchange program. Within his first year at Wollersheim Winery, founder Bob Wollersheim asked Philippe to take over the production side of the winery, and he officially became the winemaker in 1985. Philippe married the Wollersheim’s oldest daughter, Julie, and the legacy of family lives on as he and Julie now run the Wollersheim and Cedar Creek Wineries.

As a winemaker, Philippe’s philosophy has always been to keep wine approachable in its style and price, while providing a Cedar Creek wine for every palate to enjoy, whether it’s for a novice wine drinker or the ultimate wine connoisseur. Philippe is a purist in his winemaking approach never blending, changing or averaging any of his wines. He treats his wines with care, and does what it takes to make the wine right and good in every possible way. Philippe combines his tremendous respect for old world tradition in grape growing/winemaking with experimenting with state-of-the-art concepts to create new and interesting wines, like our Port Rosé wine.