SEQUIM — Wind Rose Cellars, the rain shadow city’s first winery since Olympic Cellars moved westward in the late 1990s, recently opened a tasting room downtown and will make wines on property adjacent to Purple Haze Lavender.
There, owner-winemaker David Volmut, who learned the craft in Eastern Washington at Yakima Valley Community College’s viticulture and enology school in Grandview, will produce it Italian-style.
He interned as an assistant winemaker at Olsen Estates winery in Prosser.
“My family was Italian, and I want to focus on what my family used to drink,” Volmut said at Wind Rose Cellars’ tasting room, 155 W. Cedar St., Suite B.
The tasting room, tucked behind Second Chance Consignment Store and Rainshadow Coffee Roasting Co., opened more than a week ago.
Volmut, who along with his wife and winery partner, Jennifer States, moved in January to Sequim from the Tri-Cities area in Eastern Washington, joins nine other wineries and cideries now established across the North Olympic Peninsula.
States, who worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, now works for PNNL’s Sequim Marine Research Operation, also known as Battelle, in relationship management for renewable energy.
Wind Rose Cellars now produces about 700 cases a year, and Volmut said he plans to produce a maximum of 1,200 cases a year.
Now available for tasting is Wind Rose Cellars’ Bravo Rosso, made from grapes grown at vineyards on Wahluke Slope and Coyote Canyon-Hose Heaven Hills, and the Barbera Rose, from Wahluke Slope, Columbia Valley and Red Mountain grapes.
Silver medals
The Bravo Rosso won a silver medal in the 2011 Northwest Wine Summit, a silver in the Washington State Wine Competition the same year and a silver in the San Francisco International Wine Competition.
The rose earned a bronze medal in the Northwest Wine Summit and a bronze in the San Francisco competition.
Volmut, who designed his wines’ labels and markets the product, said he wants to make a sparkling Moscato, a lavender mead and maybe a white wine from Peninsula-grown grapes.
He said he plans to join the Olympic Peninsula wineries tour.
“We wanted a place that has tourism, and people love the Peninsula for tourism,” Volmut said.
“We wanted to be a part of downtown.”
The tasting room is a short walk from Sequim’s Open Aire Market on West Cedar Street.
The tasting room’s hours are from noon to 6 p.m. Fridays through Mondays.
Wind Rose sells online to Washington, Oregon, California and Washington, D.C.
For more information, visit www.windrosecellars.com and the Wind Rose Facebook page, or email wine@windrosecellars.com.
The wines are sold at Michael’s Seafood & Steakhouse in Port Angeles, the Red Rooster Grocery in Sequim and Sequim’s Alder Wood Bistro Restaurant.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
