Leonard Redé
Redé is the European Wine Specialist at Esquin Wine & Spirits and an instructor for South Seattle College’s Wine Technology Program, where he has created the curriculum for the Associate of Arts Degree in Sommelier Studies.
Seattle is unique in its wine culture, sitting at a nexus of production, consumption and education. It’s the fastest-growing city in America, with wealth being created by the likes of Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft and Boeing. The population is well-travelled, well-educated and open-minded. These consumers have access to over 200 wineries within a 30-minute drive of downtown. They also have access to one of the most vital restaurant scenes in the country, many with wine programs curated by well-educated sommeliers.
Wine consumers in Seattle are very supportive of local wineries. With the success of wineries like Quilceda Creek, Cayuse and Leonetti Cellar capturing the world’s attention, the success and quality of wines has been an entré for local consumers into the world of wine. I feel consumers here might be more adventuresome than elsewhere. For example, in 2013, Esquin’s best-selling wine was a $20.00 Corsican rosé made from the Nielluccio grape.
Consumers here are very well-educated in wine, with classes and seminars being very popular. We regularly sell out classes from everything from food and wine pairing to sensory evaluation. They are also tech savvy, and with the growing database of information available on their smartphones they are also well-informed as to price, pedigree and points. Professionals need to be on their game with up-to-date and correct information — continuing education is a must.
I don’t know if there is a typical Seattle wine drinker; they are as diverse and eclectic as the winemakers who make their wine. One thing for sure, they are not the stereotypical elitist effete snobs that have been scorned by the general public in the past.
Charles Smith, Wine Enthusiast’s 2014 “Winemaker of the Year”, recently opened his Jet City complex, a 32,000-square-foot winery in Seattle’s Georgetown Neighbourhood. Reputed to be the largest urban winery in the US, it will be home to his top-end wines, including Royal City (which received 100 points from Wine Enthusiast). The grand opening featured a library tasting, food trucks, burlesque dancers, music DJ’d by Sub Pop-founder Bruce Pavitt, and a full-on concert by the seminal Seattle alternative band Mudhoney. Unorthodox, maybe, but it was not all that unique for Seattle.
Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen
Co-owner and winemaker at W.T. Vintners, lead sommelier at chef Michael Mina’s RN74, experienced wine list architect and Washington State Wine’s sommelier of the year in 2014, Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen has intimate knowledge of the Seattle wine scene, from every angle.
We now have 850-plus wineries in Washington, and with that there definitely is some localism, some Washingtonians and Northwest wine consumers who are familiar with and enjoy Washington wine — however, the Seattle wine market has become a lot more adventurous in the last three or four years. Wines that were a little bit off the radar are now more accepted and more sought after. The obligatory Bordeaux and the like are present — when building a wine program you have to have wine that everyone is familiar with — but people are far more willing to venture out and try other things.
Austrian Riesling is still a tough sell, but Grüner Veltliner you’ll see at pretty much every restaurant; and often offered by the glass, and one or two by the bottle. Any serious wine list will have a small selection of Austrian wines.
Southern Rhône has become one of the staples on my wine lists. It’s a great transition for people who are familiar with the New World wines in Washington, and California, to a lesser extent; the flavour profile, the style, the intensity of the fruit, it all has a familiar note. It’s a gentle transition for people who are beginning to drink wine with a little more seriousness and structure beyond what’s available on the shelf at a big retailer or grocer.
Wine is becoming a greater part of American culture, whereas it was just for the cognoscenti in decades passed, now it’s really becoming engrained in our culture. The consumer is becoming far more savvy, but with even a small amount of education comes a bit of daring and willingness to go with us on this adventure.
The cocktail culture is incredibly strong, but it seems like it and wine are starting to marry a bit. There used to be a big divergence as to whether you were a cocktail bar or a wine-centric restaurant, but now any wine-centric restaurant that has a liquor license has a fairly aggressive cocktail program, with enlightened bartenders pushing exciting flavours. On the wine side of things, with the global access that we now have, you can play with so many different styles and flavours and terroirs — it’s pretty much limitless.
David LeClaire
Former wine director at Alexis Hotel’s prestigious Painted Table, LeClaire is an instructor at Bellevue College and North Seattle College, and judges wine competitions which include the Oregon and Seattle Wine Awards, NorthWest Wine Summit, and Seattle Magazine’s Washington Wine Awards.
Rosé has become the darling of the wine world in many markets in the US, with Washington State leading the explosion of interest. Sure, France, Italy, and Spain have been enjoying dry rosé forever, but it’s finally caught on in progressive cities around America.
Why is it so popular in Washington? Mainly because many of the more than 800 wineries this state boasts are small enough to play with small-batch releases, unlike the more mainstream, large brands often found in California.
As founder of Seattle Uncorked, I began producing the event “Rosé Revival” 13 years ago; a celebration of all local pink wines that was slow to get off the ground but now sells out easily every year. Since rosé can be made from any red grape, the diversity of rosé as a category is unlike any other segment of the wine industry. And with the majority of wine drinkers being red wine lovers, rosé gives them a “white wine made from red” option, and they are snapping up whatever these small wineries are releasing.
Of course, while the Washingtonians are avid supporters of their own region with the “shop local” mentality, it’s hard to ignore the value price point of most international rosés, which has been a boon for the importers as well. Thus for the first time we added international selections of rosé at the annual Rosé Revival, and the tables were packed all night with enthusiasts. It’s not hard to declare that rosé is here to stay.
David Egan
Co-owner of Columbia City’s (via Capitol Hill) Vino Verité, Egan weighs in on the impact of Initiative 1183.
The Seattle-area wine market is still in flux after the passage of I-1183 in 2011. Traditionally, the Seattle-area market has been dominated by small, neighbourhood wine-sellers. With the initiative, the market has become attractive to the big box retailers.
As an inner-city retailer, we’ve been relatively insulated from the onslaught of the big box stores, but I hear from shop owners out in the suburbs that their sales have dropped off considerably. Some have closed, and others seem to be showing stress. This factor certainly affected our search for a new location. Columbia City looks to us like a place that will be safe from big box store encroachment for the time being.
The big box stores partly bypass the local distribution network, so that side of the business appears to be experiencing contraction as well. Several locally owned distributors have sold to their bigger competitors.
Now that the big national distributors can handle liquor, they’ve dramatically changed how they do business. The result of that is they appear to have lost interest in selling wine to small, wine-only retailers such as us, and concentrate on selling to their large accounts and on-premise accounts that are allowed to buy spirits.
We do very little business with the big guys anymore. At this time, there are still plenty of locally owned distributors that provide us a good selection of wine and good service. I hope they are able to survive and thrive in the new market environment here in Washington State.
