Sound Vines: Puget Sound vineyards have been around for over 30 years
and their popularity is growing.

September 22, 2008 by Doug  
Filed under Current Issue

Driving up NE Day Road on Bainbridge Island, one sees something not
often seen in Western Washington. Vineyards. On the warm, overcast day
we visited Bainbridge Island Winery, the roadside trees suddenly
turned to rows of grapevines whisking past our open windows. Pulling
up the drive to the winery past a menagerie of farm equipment, we
could see fields of pumpkins and vegetables between plots of
grapevines. There is something about vineyards that inspire a sense of
serene nostalgia, even for those who have never been around
grapevines. One gets a sense of the earth, the life of the vines, the
growth of the berries, and the toil that has been poured into all of
these things. The vineyard is something that Gerard Bentryn, owner and
winemaker for Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery, is very
passionate about. For over three decades, Gerard has been growing
grapes on his Bainbridge Island farm, and making wine in a tradition
he loves.

This winemaker is from the old guard, when wineries and vineyards were
assumed to be synonymous, and winemaking represented more than formal
education, business plans and marketing, but a sun-up to sun-down way
of life. “Wine is a metaphor for life,” he told me, and he
embraces the beauty and community of the wine-centered
lifestyle. Gerard has a long, colorful history that has brought him to
where he is today. During the war in Viet Nam, President Kennedy took
a new approach to the draft, and decided that soldiers should serve in
positions appropriate to their civilian skill set. Having worked for
Bell Labs for a number of years, while all of his friends were getting
sent to the front lines, Gerard was sent to Europe to work on Hawk
guided missiles when he was drafted. While there, he fell in love with
the European landscape, and with European wines.

After returning home, Gerard marched in anti-war demonstrations in
full uniform with the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a
busy time for him, but the wine bug never left. In the 1970s, Gerard
started making wine, and eventually he and his wife Jo Ann bought some
land on Bainbridge Island for a mere $10,000 per acre (area land now
sells for over $200,000 per acre). He chose the area, because he
determined that it would be best suited for the grapes he wanted to
grow, the Germanic wines like Siegerrebe and Müller-Thurgau.

Müller-Thurgau is a hybrid of Riesling and the Chasselas or
Sylvaner grape. While a hardy grape, its wine tends to be mild and
soft, sometimes lacking acidity. It’s best grown in cooler
climates, which encourage acidity rather than sugar. Siegerrebe is the
German lovechild of Madeleine Angevine and Gewurztraminer. Because of
its early-ripening characteristics, it’s perfect for the cool
climate of Western Washington.

Siegerrebe wasn’t available in the United States when Gerard was
getting started, and due to some odd laws, if it wasn’t already
here, he couldn’t bring any in. He finally worked out a deal with a
research chemist to buy some vines from Vancouver BC for the lab. Once
in the lab, it was technically in the U.S., so Gerard was able to buy
six vines from the chemist. He planted them in short order, and
started sharing cuttings with everyone he could convince to try
growing it. Jo Ann Bentryn is proud to tell people that she and her
husband were the first to grow Siegerrebe in the United States.

Gerard Bentryn is a purist, to say the least. A self-described
curmudgeon, it takes little provocation to get him to pontificate
about his philosophy of winemaking, and to offer diatribes about what
the Washington State wine industry has become. Essentially, the
dynamic innovation of Washington winemaking excludes the age-old
practices of the purist. “Wine is time and place in a bottle,”
he says, and Gerard is one of the dwindling number of winemakers who
makes his wines at the vineyards he owns. He’s with the wine from
the time of planting to the time the bottles are sold. “Of course,
a winery is sex, but a vineyard is love.” As grapes—and even
sometimes wine—is increasingly sourced from all over the state,
Gerard is both proud of his own efforts, and irritated by the
evolution of the industry. For example, he points out that many
wineries include the words “Estate” or “Vineyards” in
their names, though they don’t own any of their own estate
vineyards. He points out that wineries will put an appellation on the
label, produce the wine in a different region, and give a winery
address that’s in another location still. According to him, labels
are becoming meaningless—the law is allowing it—and consumers
never experience any connection between the wines, the winemakers, the
wineries and the vineyards. Gerard believes that sourcing grapes from
vineyards far away from wineries “is like being married, but having
two or three girlfriends on the side.”

“There’s something about wine—in the history and the
mystery—that is completely lost when you begin to follow the
industrial model,” he said. While he concedes the point that many
of these wines are very good, he believes current practices are
disingenuous. Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery has been
self-sustained for over thirty years. It’s not a hobby; it’s not
a job; it’s a life.

 

In his philosophical fortitude, Gerard makes wine to match indigenous
foods. Because of the predominance of fish, crab and other seafood in
the Pacific Northwest, his wines are made to pair with that local
fare. Light, elegant, nuanced and acidic, the wines from Bainbridge
Island Vineyards and Winery won’t overpower the Puget Sound seafood
that is so ubiquitous.

“I thought I could set an example for people to do what I’m
doing, but what I didn’t expect was the meteoric rise of Eastern
Washington and big reds,” Gerard told me. Big, bold, high-alcohol
red wines have gotten overwhelmingly popular over the last decade, due
in part to the preferences of the most well known wine critics. Wine
has become a cocktail replacement rather than a meal
accompaniment. He’s very frank when he says, “If you’re a big
red wine drinker, we don’t have any wine for you.”

 

However, some are following in Gerard’s footsteps. Enter Hollywood
Hill Vineyards, where there are estate vineyards coupled with the
winery on Hollywood Hill in Woodinville. Though an ex-Microsoft
techie, Steve Snyder is following the old guard tradition. Starting in
1998 with his friend Ron Nelson growing Siegerrebe and
Müller-Thurgau in what he calls an “overblown amateur”
venture at Maury Island Vineyard, six years later he was ready to
start his own gig. After considering some land in Oregon, he
established his winery in 2004 in Woodinville with his wife Becky.

 

That’s when he met Gerard Bentryn. In researching which wines to
grow, he came across an online forum of which Gerard was a
member. After trading emails, he went out to Bainbridge Island Winery
to take one of Gerard’s classes in the vineyards there, and the two
became friends. Gerard was an inspiration to Steve, who kept returning
to Bainbridge to learn a lot working in the vineyards there. The two
have remained close over the years.

As a true garagiste, all production is done on the property around his
home. He grows Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in his Estate Vineyards, but
he also currently sources some grapes from Eastern Washington, such as
Syrah from Kiona Vineyards on Red Mountain, and another Syrah from
Portteus Vineyards in Zillah. Eventually, though, Steve dreams of
producing all of his wines from estate vineyards. He plans to expand
in the next year, and begin growing Siegerrebe and Müller-Thurgau,
the success of which has been proven by wineries like Bainbridge
Island Winery, and with which he has experience.

Steve loves the vineyard aspect of winemaking. He proudly points out
the color change in the Pinot, lists the work that needs to be done
after the recent rains, calculates the inhibited progress of the
berries due to an unseasonably cool summer, and points to the virgin
plots of ground where he’ll be planting new vines this year. Like
Gerard, Steve lives the sun-up to sun-down wine life.

Steve Snyder likes to make wines in a French-influenced style, a bit
lighter, more nuanced food wine. A friend of his took a bottle of
Hollywood Hill Chardonnay to the Francophiles at Le Pichet in Seattle
to have them try it, and in a blind test, they were sure it was a
Loire Valley Chardonnay. They were shocked to hear it was grown and
produced right here in Woodinville.

Hollywood Hill Syrah is the big red wine you’d expect from Eastern
Washington grapes, and he produces it to fill a demand. Cost of entry
is a factor for newer wineries like Hollywood Hills. It is easier for
a winemaker like Gerard Bentryn, who has owned his land for decades,
to stick to rigid, narrow principles. But for someone entering a
highly competitive market and with a high startup costs, unless they
are independently wealthy, winemakers like Steve Snyder have to
consider what they can best sell, and work their way toward the
autonomy of principle. Fortunately, Hollywood Hill Winery does it very
well.

Many have said that vinifera grapes just don’t grow well in Western
Washington. This is true if one’s idea of quality only includes
high sugar, high alcohol, low acidity and intense flavor. It makes
sense that there are so many wineries in Western Washington,
considering large numbers of them sell mostly from their own tasting
rooms and the population density ensures customer traffic. It also
makes sense that most of Washington’s grapes are grown in Eastern
Washington, which produce wine styles that are very popular right now.

But, there are a growing number of consumers and winemakers who are
looking to the impressive potential of northern European-style white
wines in Western Washington. Mike Lampier of Perennial Vintners
continues to expand his vineyards in Bainbridge Island, and Steve
Snyder points out that there are a lot of new plantings in Skagit
County.

The wine industry has perhaps irreversibly changed over the years, and
though vintners like Gerard Bentryn and Steve Snyder prefer the
oldschool winemaker’s life, there is little reason to believe that
it will ever return to the way it was before. Whether that’s
regrettable or a cause of celebration, it’s good to see two
things. First, that tradition is being kept alive in some form by
diligent devotees like Gerard Bentryn and Steve Snyder, and second,
that impressive homegrown wines can be found on the West side.