109 Cheese and Wine Welcomes Winemaker Michele d’Aprix to Bernard’s for Special Dinner on August 25, Reserve Now!

Michele D’Aprix remembers the moment she started to understand wine. She was trailing winemaker Stéphane Derenoncourt around a vineyard in Bordeaux 13 years ago. Derenoncourt—a steel-worker’s son who started working in vineyards at the age of 19—put a grape in her mouth and told her to concentrate on the textures.

“The seeds were crunchy, like a hazelnut. The skin had a snap,” D’Aprix recalls. Even though she had a degree in Viticulture and Enology, D’Aprix quickly realized how much she didn’t know about wine as a product of dirt and bugs and intuition rather than refractometers and prix and pH balances. That bite showed her that she could identify when grapes were ripe and ready to be harvested using nothing but her own senses.

Since then, D’Aprix has become the only American woman making her own wine in Bordeaux. She bottles under her own label, Pentimento, at Château Beauséjour in Montagne-St-Émilion, where she also helps craft the house labels. All are made with organic methods. She also imports Bordeaux wine (her own and others’) to the United States.