"This is an exciting time to be a Washington State winemaker. Sales of Washington wine are up around the country as the quality and value of our wine is recognized both by the press and the wine buying public. A new generation of growers is planting and marketing quality fruit. They have come to realize the impact of viticultural practices on the wine industry as a whole and see themselves as allies in quality with winemakers rather than just a fruit source. The field is still wide open for stylistic interpretation of wines produced in Washington. There is just no such thing as typical or expected (aside from quality) of the wines from both the new and standard grape varieties available to winemakers here in Washington.


I’m one of many who’ve stumbled into the wine world. I started in the wine industry in 1983 as a delivery driver for a small premium wine distributor in Seattle Washington. Being fresh from the music industry, I hadn’t had much exposure to wine. I knew that it came in red, white, pink, and sometimes bubbly, but I preferred beer.


The owners of the distributorship were people who believed that knowledgeable drivers were an asset. They made it a point to keep everyone informed about the special characteristics of the wines we handled every day. This included regularly scheduled Friday tastings of all types wines—both the cheap and very high-end. The owners and sales staff made sure that we drivers all knew not only how to pronounce each wine’s name and origin, but also what was special about the wines we were handling.


For me, this was an incredible learning experience and formed my interest in wine making. The owners soon saw that I had a better than average palate, so they began honing my skills, I began to be invited to taste with them when they were assessing samples from brokers and wineries, and to attend the various winery presentations to the sales staff.


My newly discovered interest didn’t stop there. I began making wine at home, building a micro winery where I even had my own little chilled tanks. My greatest desire was to discern how these wines — wines that could give me so much pleasure—were made. My goal was to make commercial quality wines at home. And I did. Soon I was winning home winemaking awards for wines that were red, white, pink, and sometimes bubbly.


In 1987, I went to work for Columbia Winery and Winemaker David Lake as Cellarmaster. I ran the cellar, and learned as I went along. David’s style of management was to get his people involved and keep them involved in all aspects of the winemaking processes. This open style allowed me both to see, and participate in the artistic side of winemaking. As Cellarmaster, I became more and more knowledgeable of the production side of the trade. Meanwhile, I continued to make wine at home and applied what I learned from the master, developing my own unique style of winemaking.


After working for Columbia Winery for nearly a decade, I had the opportunity to take my skills and experience and start a new my own winery, Chatter Creek. The year after starting Chatter Creek I was promoted to Winemaker for a new brand at Columbia, Cascade Ridge before departing early in 2000 to focus on Chatter Creek."