Everyone loves a good winery story and ours, I am sure, is similar to many of the other small wineries in our state.  However, we feel that we do have some uniqueness to our story, so please read on. 

 

I guess you could say that is started when we bid on a wine-kit at an auction in 2003.  We thought, what great idea to make wine for our wedding that we had planned for Summer 2004.  I was already an avid beer brewer, and skilled fermentation scientist, so why not try out wine.  Making wine from a juice kit was fun, and we did a couple of more, but just like extract beer brewing moving to all grain, I needed more. 

 

When I got the newsletter from my local wine and beer shop that they were taking orders for grape purchases in the Fall of 2005, I jumped on 100 lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon.  The following season we added Syrah and more equipment.  The next season, more, and so on.  We entered some competitions, shared with friends and family, and genuinely were having a great time.  The seed had been sown.

 

I started to scour the web for information, metrics, data, cost analysis, market research, etc.  I wrote down my plans for the business and what our goals would be.  The wheels were in motion and I must say, I hit the brakes a lot!  Yes indeed, I scared myself silly reading horror stories, but then was uplifted on success stories.  Do we go garagiste?  Do we go warehouse?  What to do?  In the end, obviously, we just did it.

 

Our goal is to make Northwest style wine.  What is that you say?  Well, we are a Washington winery using Washington grown grapes.  We do not make Bordeaux blends or Rhone style wine, for we are not located in those regions, nor do we get fruit from those regions.  We are simply processing, fermenting, and maturing Washington grown Vitis vinifera and coercing our regions house flavor out of them.