OLYMPIA – They are among the south Puget Sound area’s best-kept secrets.
A handful of boutique wineries in Thurston, Mason and Lewis counties that have cropped up since the late 1980s are challenging the conventional wisdom that the only good wines come from Eastern Washington, Oregon, California and Europe.
As wine sales peak during the holiday season, small family wineries from Rainier to Tenino and from Olympia to Shelton are increasingly appealing to palates nationally and internationally, even though shoppers might not have heard of them.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to pour wine someplace and somebody will go, ‘God, there’s a winery in Chehalis?’” said Rhett Mills, owner of Widgeon Hill Winery, founded 10 years ago. “The business was my father’s labor of love and it’s becoming mine.”
Washington state is the nation’s second-biggest wine producer with 450 wineries; only California produces more wine.
Fewer than a dozen wineries call Thurston, Lewis and Mason counties home, vintners say. They typically import grapes by truck from Eastern Washington’s arid fields, then press and ferment the grapes in or near their homes.
A few offer tasting rooms. Most do not, preferring instead to sell to restaurants and wine shops through distributors or directly to private customers.
And they’re comfortable with the fact that customers in urban areas far from Washington state might know more about them than wine drinkers just down the road.
“I’m better known in Chicago and Seattle than I am in Olympia,” said Bob Andrake of Boston Harbor, who specializes in merlot and cabernet sauvignon. He markets under the name Andrake Cellars and Hurricane Ridge.
Andrake sells his wine in 17 states.
According to the Washington Wine Commission:
* The number of wineries statewide grew from 88 in 1995 to at least 450 this year.
* The annual harvest of grapes has grown from 62,000 tons in 1995 to more than 123,000 tons this year.
The soils of Eastern Washington and the state’s climate, with long, warm summer days and cool evenings, combine to provide ideal growing conditions for wine grapes.
“The arid climate and volcanic soil of Eastern Washington are good for grapes, and the longer hours of sun help to build up sugar content,” said Deborah Daoust, spokeswoman for the wine commission. “And the cool nighttime temperatures have a beneficial effect on acidity.”
Harmful bugs that can kill grape roots also dislike Washington soil, Daoust said.
There’s a certain romance to bottling wine, vintners say. But it’s not automatically profitable.
“There’s an old joke about winemaking that goes, ‘Do you know how to make a million dollars running a winery? You need to start with $2 million,’” Mills said.
Rick Hoonan, president of the Olympia Wine League, agrees that profit is not the motive that lures most smaller vintners.
“If somebody wants to get rich, they do not want to get into this business,” he said.
Lloyd Anderson, a former forester, founded Walter Dacon Wines, named for his grandfather, three years ago in Shelton. He couldn’t predict when he would be profitable.
“My wife and I took all of our personal funds and invested in it ourselves,” Anderson said. “I still have a whole bunch of equipment to buy.”
Anderson offers tastings on his property and said they are an effective way to spread the word about his wines.
Though restaurants carry his wine, they favor California wines.
“They’re enamored with California wines because they have huge followings and do a lot of marketing,” Anderson said. “There’s a saying that if you’re in the restaurant business, your wine list has to have a certain number of California wines on it.”
Anderson is undeterred.
“It’s very, very hard work making wine, but it’s fabulous,” he said.
Although they have low profiles locally, south Puget Sound-area wines do sell and have a small following, said Patrick Hub, owner of the Olympic Wine Merchant, a downtown Olympia wine shop. He thinks competition from hundreds of other wineries statewide makes it hard for local wines to stand out.
“They’re in this huge group of wines that are available,” he said. “You’ll be doing well to get a little piece of the action and to sustain the operation.”
Price, too, is important, Hub said.
He said most customers tend to pay from $10 to $20 for a bottle of wine. But vintners say they must charge from $25 to $50 to cover their costs and make the businesses worth the effort.
“Grocery stores aren’t going to stack up wine selling for $30 a bottle,” Hub said. In Hub’s shop, he said, about eight of his 75 wine stacks sell for more than $20.
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