Katell Griaud

Work in Michel Rolland’s laboratory at Bordeaux, France placed Katell Griaud in a setting where winemaking is measured through exacting, hands-on labor rather than theory. The pace there is the practical one behind finished bottles, with harvest and cellar work carrying the weight. From there, harvests in France and New Zealand added the comparative discipline that comes from working across hemispheres and seeing how the same crop asks for different calls in different places.

That international range carried her into Slater Run Vineyards in Upperville, Virginia, USA, where she became winemaker, and later into Gabriele Rausse Winery in Virginia, USA. Today, Katell is winemaker of Chateau Kalian, with a background shaped by both transatlantic work and the day-to-day accountability of named estates.

On Virginia wine, Griaud has said: "With my husband, we are sometimes calling Virginia wine industry the \"Wild West.\"" That line reads less as metaphor than as working shorthand. In Griaud’s career, the inheritance is French, the training is technical, and the practice is anchored in specific wineries and harvests. The result is a body of work built through repeated cellar responsibility, not through abstraction.

Katell's signature wines include Roots, Cabernet Franc Reserve, No Sulfites added Merlot, and orange Viognier fermented on skins. The range points to a winemaker working across structure and texture, with attention to both restraint and variation in style.

Recognition for Griaud is formal and technical. She holds the Diplôme National d’Oenologue and a Master’s in Oenologie et Environnement Viti-Vinicole, credentials that connect cellar work, vineyard environment, and oenological science. Those qualifications sit alongside experience in Michel Rolland’s laboratory, harvests in France and New Zealand, and winemaking posts in Virginia and Monbazillac. The through-line is not a single place, but a career built across family land, study, and hands-on production.