Brice Laffond

Coming Up

Since 2013, Brice Laffond has worked at Château Moulin à Vent in Romanèche-Thorins, France in a role that joins technical oversight to cellar-level decision-making. As Technical Director and Winemaker, he is responsible for both the structure of the operation and the choices that shape the wine as it develops. The work is centered on Moulin-à-Vent, the cru that has become his specialty, and on the practical demands of harvest, élevage, and vintage-by-vintage judgment. The restraint in Laffond’s approach is part of the craft itself. At Château Moulin à Vent, each season turns on a series of decisions that affect texture, balance, and ripeness, and his role since 2013 has required him to read those signals closely. It is a long exercise in attention: knowing when to intervene, when to wait, and when the estate’s work should be left to speak for itself.

Where They Are Now

Today, Brice Laffond is Technical Director and Winemaker of Château Moulin à Vent, and that 2013–present position combines oversight with hands-on making. The job asks for constant movement between observation and action, between guiding the estate and responding to the state of the fruit, the parcels, and the vintage. His specialty remains Moulin-à-Vent, and the focus of that work gives the role its shape. Romanèche-Thorins, France is the setting, but the more important frame is the one he works within each harvest. The discipline here is timing and judgment: knowing the difference between patience and delay, between intervention and trust. The vocabulary around his work is careful and exact, which suits a winemaker whose decisions are measured against what the season permits.

In Their Words “Our early harvests allowed us to capture this optimal phenolic ripeness.” That line gets to the center of Laffond’s method: harvest as a technical decision, not a ceremonial one. It treats picking time as a tool for shaping what comes in from the vineyard, with phenolic ripeness as the marker he is watching. In one sentence, Brice Laffond makes clear that precision at harvest is part of the work of making the wine, not separate from it.