welcome everyone to evergreen state wine adventures i'm cindy lamb us today will be taking you on a journey throughout the puget sound region to visit some of washington state's most exotic boat wineries first stop we had west to the olympic peninsula wind region  dual operating wineries and cider easy to elaborate sustainable farms this region features them both let's go meet the wine makers from the beautiful olympic peninsula wine region and river is a thirty three acre working organic family farm and artisan winery specializing in hard sliders and spirited fruit ones we've been here since two thousand and two my husband keith and i came to the land looking  for a authentic and wholesome life on the land and then my husband keith got interested in fermenting and joined with our partner eric jorgensen to start learning the craft of cider and wine making our wines insiders can be found a variety of different places we welcome people here to the tasting room throughout the season and were featured at some local restaurants around the peninsula also at many markets and farmers markets what makes the river unique are a few  things we have a strong commitment to pursuing sustainable agriculture and sustainable business so we have a working wind generator creating a noble energy we have salmon restoration on our creek we grow all over fruit here again likely and we're working hard highway passing through really big peninsula and we're really committed to building community we want folks to come out to the land walk the land have an experience working farm connect with farmers see the land growing and being able you can also  we everything is based in our apples we started out as a side and as we started making siders we started thinking about what are the things we could do with apples and that led us to distilling and what kinds of products we could make on the wine side of things because we knew that people would be interested in that so we started off exploring ideas for winds that were related more to stronger sipping wines in the coors we made a spirited apple wine which was inspired really by a port so we imitated the process of making a port wine by fermenting our apples and then fermenting more to bring the alcohol level up higher to about a table wine and then fortifying with this custom distilled apple brandy and so done in the same style as a port we've now got a really wonderful sipping late in the evening kind of the wine that we really think people will enjoy once we discovered what we can do with this apple brandy that had been custom distilled for us we started exploring other options and other fruits so along the lines of a look cooler we've taken some of our taken some wines with these black current and we've used pear and blueberry we've got plans for raspberry and black berries so we'll take these wines and fortify them with that same brain and make a really wonderful sweet strong dessert drink for late in the evening that you can sip on so that's where our winds are going we've also been exploring a spirited pear wine which will be similar to the spirited apple wine and in the future we also plan on producing some regular table wines out of apple possibly out of grape and other fruits which i think is one of the things that different fruits it's been it's been a fun process on the production side we really i think as christine mentioned we work to be a sustainable operation and we're really focused on building local economy and so we've it we're very careful about how we source our fruit so the fruit that's produced here on the farm most of it goes to the market but they're expanding their fruit production because of the society in the winery and any fruit that they're not able to sell at the market will go into our products beyond that because we probably don't have the capacity to grow everything that we need here for our products we've really committed to sourcing all of our fruits in the northwest here in washington and sourcing them organically and in building relationships with the people that we get our fruit from so that we the where it's coming from and who's growing it that's something that we feel is really unique about our products and something that we take a lot of pride in we use a traditional very old traditional process and each bottle is handled by hand it's riddled on the rack for six weeks and we d gorge the site or by hand one bottle at a time we've kept them one bottle at a time so we don't use a lot of machinery it takes a little bit of effort and extra work but that hand crafted element of things and we often find ourselves juggling between the labor intensive labor intensive ness of our methods and the cost of hiring people to handle each bottle one at a time burst is trying to find a more efficient way to do something but when we get into those conversations we find ourselves really going back to the root of our mission and that's really to be a part of this local economy carpenter winery was started in two thousand and four in my mind in two thousand and five i actually moved into this space here our logging truck now turned winery shed and we call it sheet metal  actually and it started all with me realizing at a tender young age that i was going to have to work for the next fifty years or so and i thought you know i better do some this confines with my life because i mean i work for the next fifty years and so i had a couple other jobs at the time that were more corporate oriented i had been an entrepreneur before i had an especial stand i knew what it was like to work for myself i had worked for my my grandmother who had several restaurants in the service industry and so i thought you know that something i can do i would i would like to to do something for myself i really appreciated wine at the time and i had made wine since i was nineteen mostly for my family i was a beer drinker at that time and so i decided well why don't i why don't i try and make wine for a living and i thought well the best way to do that is to probably get an apprenticeship and so i approached a few different wineries about that off that option and olympic sellers in port angeles called me back the previous owners dan cow deal he said if you're serious come on down this is for the harvest of two thousand and we'll get you go on and so i worked the harvest of two thousand with him under his tutelage and after the first day of sweeping grapes off the floor i realized that i had found my niche i stayed with olympic cellars through two thousand and four when when i decided that i was actually going to leave and then open my own winery at that time today we produce about three thousand cases of wine and we we get our grapes from oh about eight different vineyards here in washington state most of them from the east side of the cascades quite a bulk comes from sage more farms which is over in the tri cities area we get our surat of their marcab from some of our our cabernet sauvignon another vineyard that we get a lot of fruit out of is in the rattlesnake hills appalachian and there's actually two vineyards there one is called to coyote vineyard we get our  and some of our maul dick out of there and and then also elephant mountain vineyards both wonderful vineyards just doing a great job what we pride ourselves the most on here at harbinger winery is the personal touch that we put into each bottle and we want you to be able to take home something that you're going to be proud to share with your family and that's something that we look forward to when we taste you through our wines each day that's something that we look forward to sharing with you and we want you to have a great experience here personal experience there's several things i think that make harbinger winery unique first and foremost is probably our labels we work with the different artists around not only washington state but also just throughout the u s and we really try in pair our wines with the label if if i if i can say that for example our two thousand and nine vo and the a has artwork from erica shriver i do believe from new york city and it's the picture of punchbowl who is like this really heavy blonde and it's just so reminiscent of what the personality of that one is all about and so we do that with each and every one of our wines and i think it just really makes the really pushes home that fact that whyn is art in a bottle so another unique aspect of harbinger winery is the wines that we produce our small lots you know we don't make anything that's more than a several hundred cases each i really try and showcase the vineyard and the fruit from that vineyard and switches we make a ton of different wines we probably have a dozen that we are tasting at the moment and it really gives the consumer an idea of what is available from that vineyard and what marlowe tastes like for example from this vineyard in this in this region and it's a lot of fun to do it that way it makes the wine so much more unique i do believe and it gives us just  a little a different angle on all the different wines that are out there and if you live out of town you can visit us on the web where all of our wine are available there was winery in port townsend washington was started in one thousand nine hundred ninety three today we make about one thousand cases a solar wind are wineries located just off the highway on the way into town i like to tell you that our story was one of planning that it was it was sort of calls us in the office we didn't know each other and he said you guys were to port angeles and straighten it out we want to federalize a spill so we introduced ourselves each other took off did that was no big deal and the guy said on the way back to a stop in port townsend because the people in port towns are concerned about ships light transfer in fuel out of port townsend bay maybe we can call them down a little bit and spend the night with my brother out of great three bedroom ranch style house and the kid i try circle macaroni and cheese for dinner and say ok fine so we  brother lived in this old victorian houses very nice it was a very pleasant stay in the next morning i'm sitting there you breakfast watching the ships go by and i said to this fellow look at a person doing port townsend would be legal that was necessarily requirement back in those days wouldn't take all your retirement time and money and might be kind of fun and he says i don't know he told me what he was going to do is something i'm still related to the marine industry and i thought and do this for the coast guard for thirty some years and do the same thing that wasn't for me so we're on our way back to seattle on the ferry and we'd known this guy about thirty six hours by this time so i turned and said you know i've got an idea let's start a winery in port townsend he says what a great idea so we're talking about this thing really crazy and we've got our plans made without wait a minute the whites haven't met each other we better take care of that so that night at this  club they had all the strip you can eat and beer for eight bucks but that will take more of their oil levels to bring this on and so we're all sitting around and eat and strength and drinking beer and the women are talking like i've known each other all their lives and finally came down to me it was my turn to do it i said  ladies we've been thinking of that as harry and i thought for we should start a winery in port townsend they said great idea and we thought man we just blew eight bucks and so that's where it started and so we came more to port townsend looking for property we couldn't find anything we liked and one day we drove by this property and of top of the building was completely collapsed and i said to my partners and this there's a guy in financial trouble let's stop and see if we can buy this barn and some property maybe will be enough to get him out of whatever kind of trouble he's in and we'll have this nice little piece of property so we go knock on the door and the guy says i can't sell to i can't divide and i'm in foreclosure you have to buy the whole thing the house and everything and well we had a house and edmunds and one in miami our partners had one in portland one and wouldn't bill we didn't want to houses so they said no we're not interested in our look so we came back the next time that we wanted this property knocked on the door again try one more time and i said no we come in and look at the house you like it's we're not we're not interested so about the third time i said look there's kind of the same way we've got to get this get this equation gone maybe it's looking at that house maybe that's what's going to happen so let's look at the house so we knocked on the door and a guy says come in to look at the house so we looked at scott wouldn't from twenty different countries every single thing including the things around the windows are hand made out of different kinds of woods and it was just beautiful he said that's great we got houses so we're on our way back to seattle my wife's been really quiet and i said what are you being so quiet about and keep in mind we moved every three years for thirty years and we loved it loved going to different places he says i think that's a house i could stay so what so we went back to our house and and sold two weeks one of miami's soul a week later and we moved into that house so today in two thousand and eleven  to do that also we make it a limburger which a lot of people make but it isn't really well known are wines are available at restaurants around port townsend stores also should get online but the best thing to do is come to the tasting room you can taste all over winds here plus we offer discounts what makes fairwinds winery unique are a couple of things one as we source our grapes from some of the best vendors in washington state as a lot of people do but we take very special care to make sure the right hand picked for us and we we get certain blocks that best for us another thing is everything we do this winery is by hand we have no automation when we bottle it we take it takes thirteen people to bottle everything is done by hand from put in the label on to put in the heat shrink on a little t salute by the time we get done every single bottle has been touched by every single person comaraderie cellars is a great winery it's i've been the wine maker owner for the last twenty venti just now and when we started we were only making about four hundred cases and we're up to about four thousand cases now when you started the winery in one thousand nine hundred two we were in the first active fifty wineries of the whole state and the other over seven hundred wineries in the state so we've been a part of the industry for a long time our vineyards are in eastern washington even though the winery is here in the north atlantic peninsula one of the great beautiful parts of all of western america it's a great place to be what people wonder about being out here but actually the reality is that washington state is wine country it's not just where the grapes are grown it's where the wine is made you never ask a french restaurant why they're not in france do it there are there where they are there following their passion so that's what we're about camaraderie sellers really celebrates the philosophy is the best in life are meant to be shared and that goes with not just wind but with good food and good friendship and fellowship and that's what we call camaraderie so when you come here you can see beautiful gardens that i've put in myself every plant and stone i put in myself and that's actually another one of my passions too so it really sort of fits together with good food good good fellowship good friendship we have a wood fired oven here for a wine club we have great events that are that are really focused around good food and wine the you can find our wines really in in bobby flay is in manhattan so we're not just a nice local winery we are a winery that competes with anybody in the country actually there are wineries all over america today it's one of the growth industries and people always wonder will what makes your wineries so unique and i think probably we are one of the only wineries in washington state that make old world wines in a new world style now what i mean by that is that our wines are really food friendly they have good acid and tan and balance they go well with everything from our northwest cuisine a salmon two to osso bucco to name it i mean they are wines really hold up to good food and the other really great thing about that is that when you make a good food wine it also that wines also age beautifully and we've been tasting some of our wines that are nearly ten years old and they're sort of reaching their peak there were wines are really good right out of the chute but i think probably the food friendliness is one of the things that really sets us apart when we think about our wines and when i'm making the wine i like the really to be a frame around the character of the of the wines and not just an opportunity for carving so our wines have been well recognized for their being very food friendly and being a great complement to to a wide range of food what makes our wines probably unique i suppose is the passion that i bring to them i don't make a wine that i'm not passionate about i'm not going to be do wines that other people can do better than i can and they seem to like more than i do so we make them all that we make cabernet savi make more low we make all those standard ones but we also do some very interesting ones like that mall back or temper neo or or some unique blend that are absolutely gorgeous one of the hallmarks of our winery is really sort of the welcome that you get when you're coming here regardless of the weather we have a custom beautiful wrought iron firepit seven feet in diameter there's almost always a fire going there because i'd like fires and it sort of is a beautiful warm welcome that you can come to the tasting room here is really quite beautiful too they're comfortable chairs you have a fireplace in there too so regardless of weather because washington doesn't necessarily well known for good weather all the time it's always going to be a warm welcome when you come so we have beautiful gardens we have we have outside alcoves i call them that people come in frankly they don't want to go away and as long as you're buying wine that's perfectly fight or if they want to bring a picnic it's a perfect picnic place you know we've got things around here places to sit we have fountains we have a lot of hand carved jade it's really a wonderful experience we're not just about wine we're about a lifestyle that i think celebrates really the best things in life and all of those things need to be shared westport wineries a family endeavor it's a true collaboration for all of us my husband my sending and my daughter carrie and i all work together here my son dana is our wine maker and how he came to that position is kind of funny we decided to do the winery and we asked each of the kids do you want to work with us dana said yeah i want to be the man and we said well the man the wine maker so he immediately went back to school went to debbie issue to get a professional winemaking degree and did an internship at our mentor winery in leavenworth we looked at our daughter carrie and said you want to work with us and she said yeah we said what do you like to do says i like to count money so we sent her back to school with her four year college degree and she went back and s d bookkeeping in accounting she's our c f o here but we don't actually color that because we don't want to have to give her a raise my husband blames the farmer and the leader of the team he's the glue that really holds us all together under his efforts we've taken this land's twenty five acres that was completely covered with noxious weeds impassable even to walk through on the trail and we've converted it about two great fine acreage it's what we call vineyards by the sea and half of it's in bury production we make a lot of different fruit wines we came to that just as a matter of necessity we were running out of grape wine and that first summer doing this start learning to make fruit points that we had something to give our customers my job is more to be that connection out to our community i design the labels i design the buildings i design the parking lot and where the grapes grow we have this beautiful sculpture garden and my love for arts allowed me to collaborate with different local artists in order to create these sculptures the family even itself with one of us missing we couldn't be as strong as we are one of the great things for my family and i here at the winery is that we're always to throw a festival or a party we do our wine club parties four times a year but in the spring we have a special festival called the florida leaf festival we're wanting to take off on the great tradition that the skagit valley started with their daffodils and tulips so we planted five thousand irises here and they bloom for us in june we invite local artists musicians dancers cheese makers and even local authors are here doing book signings during that event we've had a petang tournaments which is a french version of  create this french marketplace feel for our june celebration here between westport never again through the summer we have lots of visitors on their way to the beach for fishing and surfing in play and in the sand so we like to wrap up the fall with another festival called crush me squeeze me make me wine at the beach and for this we either grow or bring in our own grapes and let people do the lucy and ethel experience where they stomp on grates with their feet drink wine enjoy talian wedding soup and just have a wonderful time and during this event we even have the lucy and ethel lookalike contest that's open to men women children and dogs last year a really cute dog won the event so we hope folks will take the time come down to westport winery if you're wondering when things are happening you can always hop on our website or call us but we welcome you we welcome you to the beach this is the most wonderful community in the world we're so happy to live here and we would love to share it with you westport winery opened in march of two thousand and eight in february of two thousand and seven we purchased twenty acres here and desired to produce a variety of different agricultural products we started by planning grapes in now include black berries raspberries blueberries very different fruit trees the very first year from our vintage in two thousand and seven we produced about four thousand cases and that included varieties that we had sourced from over in eastern washington mainly of the columbia valley and but also including grapes from the horse seven hills in the while loop slope and it was our desire to include all washington fruit and so later on we began to expand our our wines and from the initial ten varieties that we made now we produce thirty two different wines each of those winds has a different label that is unique and crafted to tie back into the local charity that it benefits as well and we continue to produce each of those with its own unique and different identity of our thirty two wines that we offer at westport winery here today there are a number of wines that we consider to be our most popular products the first among those  blonde is a really nice blend of riesling and divert that's done the little bit of off dry sense but it's real fruity and light and seems to appeal to a wide variety of white wine drinkers that like something a little between dry and sweet raspberry and chocolate together and when you drink it it's just like drinking a raspberry truffle our approach to distributing our wines is fairly unique rather than sending our one to a grocery store we attempt to draw people to come and experience our unique beach culture that we have out here at westport with our destination winery we include a restaurant display gardens where you can come and bring your family and have fun enjoying the variety of different things that we have draw for here at the farm as well as our unique products and