WillaKenzie Biographies: Ronni Lacroute
Bernard and Ronni Lacroute are the co-owners of WillaKenzie Estate. They met as graduate students at the University of Michigan, and after many years of living on the East Coast and in California, they bought the property that became WillaKenzie Estate in 1991. They have since divorced, but continue their collaborative business partnership actively guiding all aspects of grape growing and winemaking at WillaKenzie Estate.
Ronni Lacroute grew up in the suburbs of New York City and Washington, D.C., and then finished high school in Switzerland, which is how she first learned to drink wine and to think in French. After earning a BA in French at Cornell University, she completed a Master’s degree in Romance Languages at the University of Michigan. Several subsequent years of life in France included graduate degrees at the Sorbonne, much thinking in French, and a better selection of wines. The next stage of her life began with a return to the U.S., 14 years of French teaching in Massachusetts, much thinking in French, occasional wine drinking, and then a momentous move to the West Coast. Next there were 14 years in Silicon Valley, California, with occasional teaching, much organic gardening and thinking in French, and a strong focus on tasting fine wines. After visiting many vineyards in California and in France, Ronni dreamed of creating a high quality family wine estate. It was also in California that Ronni became devoted to yoga and the growing of fruit trees (while sometimes thinking in French). In 1997, Ronni became an Oregonian and is proud to reveal that she now can think in Oregonian as well as in French.