Crushing It: Old World Wine Techniques with New World Sensibility

A modern icon blends Old World wine techniques with New World sensibility

To say that Hélène Seillan grew up in the wine world would be an understatement akin to insisting that the French like the occasional glass of dry red. Decades before becoming the assistant winemaker at Vérité Estate in Healdsburg, California, she was shuttled, at just three years old, between vineyards and cellars in her native Bordeaux, where her father, Pierre Seillan, was a sought-after vintner.

“During harvest, my mom would take me on weekends to the different wineries. It was before cell phones, so that was the only way I could still k...