In 2003, my wife Linda and I started up a new venture, making wine.  Winemaking has been a passion of ours much like flying, something I had always wanted to pursue, someday.  We read books, took classes at UC Davis & Walla Walla, and did lots of wine tasting.

Fortunately, we had some very good friends in the wine business who helped us enormously to get started in the right direction, Will Gerrior & Karen Petersen of Vashon Island Winery, Bill Owen & Rob Sullivan of O/S http://www.oswinery.com , and Paul Portteus of the Portteus Vineyards www.portteus.com. We also met new friends along the way.  Critically acclaimed winemakers Barb & Jim Richards of Paloma Winery in Napa http://www.palomavineyard.com/home.asp and Peter Rosback of Sineann winery, shared lots of their "secrets" with us.

In 2004, after exhaustive taste testing, numerous times (very important in winemaking is tasting!) we bottled 4 of our favorite blends to enter in the Puyallup fair.  There were 500 wines entered and we took 4 second places in our divisions.  At one of our wine club meetings we again bottled our cabernet franc and in a blind tasting, it won the best cab franc of the night in a field of 8 wines some valued at over $40 per bottle.
 

So we started out symbolically “Under the Wing” of our friends and quite figuratively “Under the Wing” of Dorothy, our J-3 Piper Cub, in our hanger!

 1 ton of fruit and our first 2 – 60 gallon French oak barrels, with a borrowed home made press (Thanks Doug!)

Most winemakers don’t have access to good high quality fruit, but we were fortunate in knowing Paul & Marty Portteus who had moved to Zillah from Vashon Island 25 years ago and started one of the first wineries in Washington State.  Their vineyards are located high on the Rattlesnake hills at 1400’ elevation.  Their vineyards are some of the oldest and produce the best fruit available in Washington State.

In the 2004, still "under the wing" of our J-3 Piper cub, we doubled our efforts and made 4 barrels of wine (Cab Sauv. Cab Franc, Merlot, and Petite Syrah) Linda & I tried a few new techniques that we had learned from other wine makers we had visited over the years.  Different yeasts, Cold soaking to gently extract color and softer tannins, pressing off early (2-8 brix) and finishing the primary fermentation in the barrel.

2005 We built a new facility at our home.  We call it our "Pocket Winery".  In it we can process 1000-1200 cases a year.  We processed both the 2005 (6 1/2 tons)  which produced 15 barrels.

2006 We made our first white wine wines, Viognier, Riesling and Semillon, As well as the red wines.  We processed 16 tons of grapes which made over 43 barrels of wine.  Both hold a lot of promise for the future.  We'll keep you posted.