EVERETT — Wine aficionados Chris and Linnea Covington dreamed of starting a winery.
Chris Covington, by all accounts an accomplished home wine-maker, wanted to bring his merlot to a wider audience.
In September, the Everett couple got their liquor license for Covington Crest Winery. By mid-October, two flatbed trucks were delivering pallets of wine grapes for a barefoot crush in a giant vat and forklifts were moving supplies.
The only problem: Covington Crest Winery is located at their north Everett home in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
At least three neighbors complained to the city about the winery business. Officials filed a citation against the couple Oct. 19, which has put the winery at least temporarily out of operation.
“It’s very painful,” Linnea Covington said. “When they asked us to shut down, we did everything they asked us to do.”
The couple has both a state liquor license and an Everett city permit that allows them to produce up to 250,000 liters of wine — that’s upward of 300,000 bottles. Linnea Covington said they only made a small amount of wine, about several hundred bottles.
Neighbors living near the Rucker Avenue home reported hearing machinery in the alleyway behind the home and seeing flatbed trucks making deliveries last month.
Neighbor Susie Lopez said she heard forklifts operating in the mornings and often on the weekends in October. On her tree-lined street, the activity puzzled her.
“Most homes don’t have forklifts,” she said.
It’s illegal under city code for an industrial business to operate in a residential neighborhood, but the couple has a special permit that allows a wide range of commercial uses on residential property, Everett spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.
As a condition of the permit, the winery can’t look like a business.
That’s where the Covingtons tripped up. Equipment used for the business was being stored outside the home, according to the violation report.
Linnea Covington said they had stacked some wine barrels in the back yard.
The couple lives in a century-old historic house and the winery is operated out of a separate two-story building that faces a nearby alley. Chris Covington, a structural engineer, designed the space, she said.
The couple just won a coveted award from the city, the Monte Cristo Award, which recognizes homes and businesses for their curb appeal.
On Thursday, a flatbed trailer was parked on a pad behind a fence, but otherwise there was no sign, other than a very faint whiff of fermenting grapes, that a winery was located here.
It’s been tough for the couple to hear that they were doing something they weren’t allowed to do, Linnea Covington said.
They planned to give much of their wine to charity. Both are actively involved in Rotary and other civic organizations.
They recently hosted a National Night Out event at a nearby business that included tastes of their wine.
She said any noise the operation might have caused was short lived and nothing in comparison to construction noise coming from the nearby hospital expansion. After the delivery of two flatbed truckloads of merlot, cabernet and pinot grapes in October, the wine is now in barrels and just needs to age, she said.
She’s not sure if they’ll continue operations in the future.
A city hearing on the matter is scheduled for Dec. 17.
There are no state laws against operating a winery in a residential neighborhood, said Anne Radford of the Washington State Liquor Control Board. She said the board learned Monday the city had placed a stop order on the winery. The board had no plans to rescind the winery’s license, she said.
The Covingtons just want to go back to making wine.
“We could give so much to this economy,” she said.
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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