Boeing wine-club alumni turn passion into profession

You might call them the Triple A farm team for the Washington wine industry.

Alums from the Boeing Employees Wine and Beer Makers Club who have moved up to the Big Show include Dave Larsen (Soos Creek), Ben Smith (Cadence), Ron Yabut (Austin Robaire), Tim Narby (:Nota Bene Cellars) and John Bell (Willis Hall). Still others are right behind; they have their wineries bonded and will be releasing their first commercial wines soon. Steve Foisie, who teaches winemaking to BEWBC members, has mentored many who have turned their passion into their profession. A full-time manager for Boeing Support Services, Foisie is a true lover of wine.

He became a club member in 1978 and has seen its growth and maturation parallel that of the state's wine industry. Over the years, better grapes and more grape sources led to better wines. More people got excited about joining the club, and all sorts of resources, from grapes to yeasts to literature to pH meters, became more accessible.

Foisie, who is self-taught, has a practical grasp not only of winemaking but also of wine marketing, which he emphasizes in his teaching.

"If you are going to go commercial," he says, "you have to focus not only on how you make the wine, where you source the fruit, but also on how do you get exposure, how do you differentiate yourself from all the others? And you have to be solvent and understand how to create cash flow. It's a full-time business."

This might seem self-evident, but to those in the grip of wine fever, such practical considerations might take a back seat to the burning desire to put their product out in the market and see how it fares.

Be ready, say those who have gone before, to have your mettle tested in ways you could never imagine.

Trials and triumphs

Smith and his wife, Gaye McNutt, launched their tiny Cadence winery in 1998. Smith's years in the Boeing club brought him a handful of first-place medals and the confidence to launch a professional career. Cadence won immediate praise from critics and retailers and gradually ramped up production toward a goal of around 2,500 cases. But the road has proved challenging every step of the way.

Last spring, a 10-acre vineyard was planted on Red Mountain (14,500 vines by hand), after paying upwards of six figures to drill a well. Happily, all but four vines survived the first winter. But the wines from the 2002 vintage, released last winter, ran into cork problems. More than a third of the 1,800-case production had to be scrapped, a huge drain on cash flow.

Still, Smith remains upbeat. Resting in barrel are such gems as the 2003 Bel Canto; a 2004 Ciel du Cheval nebbiolo; and a gorgeous, free-run 2004 Tapteil cabernet. The Red Mountain vineyard should push its first crop next summer, and a new wine, the 2003 Coda, has just been released and shows many of the winery's strengths at a friendly price ($22).

Meanwhile, down in South Park, fellow alum Narby and his wife, Carol Bryant, are pouring wines from their new vintage and telling their own tales of winemaking woe.

:Nota Bene Cellars has just released its second round of wines, but already the young winery has had to make a major label change and has run way past its carefully plotted growth plans. The label redesign was prompted by the comments of a would-be distributor in the Midwest who didn't like the old triangular style. It also turned out to be cheaper to do it over rather than purchase a special, $100,000 labeling machine that could place them properly on :Nota Bene's stylishly tapered bottles.

The extra production was simply the product of pilot enthusiasm. "I was only supposed to be at 500 cases by 2003, the third year," Narby says, "and I'm at 1,100. I shouldn't have done that." One suspects that once he had his own winery, he simply wanted to open up the throttle and see what this baby could do.

Setbacks, then good wines

Somehow, Smith and Narby and all the other risk-takers who decide to put their winemaking dreams to the acid test manage to take such setbacks in stride, and even find a certain pleasure in telling their trials and tribulations.

:Nota Bene began its first crush in September 2001; in fact, the forklift (major purchase!) was bought on 9/11. Shortly thereafter, Narby recalls, no one was buying airplanes, and he was certain he'd be laid off with no income while waiting the 18 months before his first wines could be released. Meanwhile, the price of barrels took off, from $650 the first year up to $950 today. "That's $12,000 a year extra," he says. Despite his financial trials, Narby has taken the admirable step of significantly dropping prices on all of his new wines, down from last year's $30 to $22 across the board. It makes it that much easier to recommend them, not just as good wines, which they certainly are, but as excellent values relative to their peers.

I have not yet heard any tragic tales from Bell at Willis Hall, whose first releases have just been introduced. I'm sure he has his share of horror stories, or will. But as entertaining as those stories might be, what matters most to consumers is the quality of the wines, not the suffering of the winemakers. All three of these young wineries are handling the winemaking part of the business exceedingly well, and Foisie takes a bit of parental pride in their accomplishments.

"Considering the talent, passion and pride that my colleagues bring to their jobs," he wrote in a follow-up e-mail to our conversation, "it is no surprise that their commercial wines have achieved such high regard locally, nationally and even internationally."

Speaking of Smith, Foisie recalls, "He had an excellent nose and a real inquisitive mind; he also did a really good job of understanding the role that marketing plays."

Foisie makes his home in Fall City, where he owns a small vineyard. With some 30 vintages under his belt and a number of star pupils to his credit, you'd think he'd be champing at the bit (or barrel) to turn pro. But he'd rather coach than play this game.

"It requires a tremendous passion and dedication to succeed," he says. "And I've got too many other interests. I'd rather be building canoes or making bamboo cane fly rods than out there meeting distributors."

But even the coach fouls one off his foot once in awhile. Last year, bears ate Foisie's crop, and he had to build an electric fence around the entire vineyard. This year, he predicts, should be better. "As long as I can keep the bears out of vineyard," he says, "I'm doing fine."

Paul Gregutt is the author of "Northwest Wines." His column appears weekly in the Wine section. He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.