Casey McClellan has been the winemaker at Seven Hills Winery for over 30 years now. The fifth winery to open in the Walla Walla Valley, way back in 1987, Seven Hills started out in Walla Walla, moved to Milton Freewater in 1988, then relocated to its current, iconic location in an old woodworking mill in downtown  Walla Walla in 2000. Seven Hills has consistently produced excellent wines for over three decades and have continued to do since McClellan and his wife Vicky sold the winery to Crimson Wine Group early in 2016. Since the sale, they’ve continued to run the winery – and of course Casey is still the winemaker. McClellan took time out of his busy schedule to sit for this fascinating interview late in 2019. 

WALLA WALLA WINE LIMO: Can you talk a bit about your background? I understand that you're originally from Oregon. 
 
CASEY McCLELLAN: Well it’s a little nomadic. I was born in Oregon City and we moved to Walla Walla when I was a year old and then we moved back to Oregon wine country when I was in my Junior High School years. Eventually we moved back to our old house in Walla Walla, then I moved away for a decade or so in my 20s and came back and jumped into the wine business. We’ve been going ever since.  
 
WWWL: Your family has been involved in farming dating back to the 1800s and you were involved in planting the first Cabernet grapes in the Walla Walla Valley way back in 1982. Can you discuss how that came about? 
 
CM: I grew up working in viticulture,  both in Walla Walla and in Oregon, mostly summer jobs or part-time jobs. Corporate farms, sheep, strawberries, corn, hazelnuts. But I didn’t really do it as a full-time profession until I got into the wine side of things. The first thing I did in this business was to help plant the 1982 old block Merlot one hot June. It was during summer vacation during college.I thought “this is pretty interesting” and soon after switched degrees and got a winemaking degree.  I had been interested in wine before but working in the vines was when it got more interesting for me. 
 
These were tiny plantings, mostly in people’s backyards.  My father,Tim McClellan, and his business partner, Herb Hendrix, got the first commercial size vineyard rolling. It was set up to sell grapes to other wineries. By the late 80's they were ready to open the Seven Hills Winery and my wife Vicky and I moved back to Walla Walla. 
 
WWWL: A few years go by and you decided to go to school to make wine at UC Davis. There was no wine program in Walla Walla yet, so how did that decision come about? 
 
CM: I like learning and I like science and education. I wanted to get an intensive degree and learn about the whole world of wine and bring that knowledge back here. I spent two years at UC Davis and got a winemaking degree there; then I worked at Preston Vineyards in Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma. I crushed there, did one harvest there and then when I got out of school, there was sort of a downturn. We ended up looking at different jobs and the most appealing one turned out to be working in Porto doing port wine, so we moved over there with our six-month old daughter and lived in Portugal for almost a year. I worked in combined technologies, more like food science, helped the port industry with some problems and issues they had in port production. After my time in Portugal I was ready to move back to Walla Walla.
 
WWWL: Seven Hills Winery started up in 1987, the fifth winery in the Walla Walla Valley. What were the biggest challenges running a winery in the early years of Seven Hills? 
 
CM: Well I think it was evolving thing. I think both the original founding couples probably thought a winery made sense. Leonetti had released some of its first vintages back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I think it evolved naturally. I think the idea was “We’ve got this vineyard, let’s get a winery going”. The folks from Waterbrook, Eric and Janet Rindal, helped them that first year and then I came back in 1988. I could have ended up anywhere and I was pretty open-minded at the time as to where I would go. But it was a pretty attractive idea to help start an AVA and establish the tone and direction of the wines to figure out what was going to work here. It was a rare opportunity.
 
WWWL: When did you first get interested in drinking wine and how did that come about?
 
CM: My parents drank wine at home when I was growing up and I had the chance to taste it. I first got interested in wine in my late teens and college, drinking it for enjoyment. Pretty early on. I was 23 when I planted the Seven Hills vineyard in ‘82. I started early and I have been learning about wine ever since, nearly forty years now. 
 
WWWL: Can you talk about the challenges you faced in the first few years of Seven Hills Winery? 
 
CM: The cold winters have always been a challenge. A bigger challenge in the first few years was really hard winters in 1989 and 1991 – fortunately those kind of winters have become much less frequent, so that’s gotten a little easier. But back then there also wasn’t a lot of knowledge in the industry here as we were doing something new. We’d make mistakes and would hope they weren’t really big mistakes so we could keep going. Another challenge was developing the market and getting people around the market to understand where Walla Walla was. First you have to explain the name of the town and that you’re in Washington State and not Washington DC.That’s gotten so much easier after three decades of work --- Walla Walla actually  has a reputation now! 
 
WWWL: Absolutely. My wife and I went to Italy for the first time in January 2019 and the first time we talked to our tour driver in Tuscany we mentioned that we were from Walla Walla, expecting  that he wouldn’t have heard of it. But as it turned out, he had actually spent two weeks in Walla Walla the previous year! 
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CM: Incredible. It has been a great group of people in the wine business in Walla Walla. It started out really focused on quality and people have done amazing things to get this wine region more well-known. The key thing that people wanted to be a part of it. We were never a commodity business --  it was always about fine wine.
 
WWWL: You were actually the first winemaker in Walla Walla to have a winemaking degree. Do you think that gave you any kind of an advantage? 
 
CM: I think it gave me a different perspective as at that time it was really kind of farmers making wine, and other local people that grew up here. It’s not necessary to have an education to make wine as there are a lot of ways to make great wine.  If you work hard and have an appreciation for great wine that certainly helps.
 
WWWL: Who were your mentors in your early days of winemaking? 
 
CM: I think it was not necessarily  mentorship but seeing what Rick Small (Woodward Canyon) and Gary Figgins (Leonetti) had done and their discipline and intensity. Also the helpfulness of other wineries, especially Waterbrook, in our early  years. These were things that transpired and assisted in growing Seven Hills and seeing how big the future could be. I have been lucky to work with a lot of great fruit growers, great vineyards, so important and I really value those kind of relationships. We learn from each other and seeing a wine style develop.  Seeing all the intelligence, the dedication and everyone working towards making it a great industry was great. I also had some great professors at UC Davis that I admired.  


WWWL: What would you say is your winemaking style and how has that changed over the years? 
 
CM: I think the style of our wines has always been a little more elegant, a more restrained style. But it has changed over the years. It’s become a little more controlled and sophisticated, more refined at times. We started with a blank slate and moved forward from that. We like to pick a bit earlier, a style more compatible with meal-time. It’s a cliché to say that the wine should taste more like the fruit from the vineyard, but we really walk the talk on that due to the ripeness of our fruit, the time we pick and less use of new oak. You can actually taste the varietal flavors and our strong commitment to the vineyard sites. That personality hasn’t changed over our 30 years. It hasn’t always been popular – wine tastes can be so subjective -- but it’s a stylistic vision where we’ve attracted a following.  Our customers seem to be saying,  “You keep making good wine, we’ll keep buying it.” When you’re a small artisanal winery. you don’t have to make everybody happy – you just have to make several thousand people happy…
 
WWWL: Do you have a favorite wine to make? 
 
CM: I got into winemaking for the Cab and Merlot, but  if I could only make one wine it would be Cabernet. It would be an easy choice to make, but 
thankfully I don’t have to choose. 
 
WWWL: You’ve spent over thirty years making wine and running Seven Hills. What accomplishments at the winery are you most proud of?
 
CM: At this point, it’s a bit transitional for me. I am happy to see I have a great team and they are doing more and learning more and taking the reins on more things. It’s great to see the legacy carried forward and the wine quality carried forward, which is something I am pretty focused on now. We have made a lot of good wine over the past 30+ years. I’m proud of the wines, they’ve aged well and it’s been  a pleasure to work with Seven Hills Vineyard, Klipsun Vineyard and all the other great vineyards we source from.  From the business side, it is a small business and keeping it around 30+ years and surviving the great recession of 2008, which took a lot of guts and hard work, was a major accomplishment in and of itself. That was a tough time to go through because when the economic conditions are like that, it affects things like the luxury wine business  the most. 
 
WWWL: Can you talk about your decision to sell the winery three years ago? What went into that decision and how did you eventually settle on the right buyer?
 
CM: Vicki and I have been doing this a really long time and it didn’t seem like the business was going to transition into the next generation, so we explored other possibilities and we happened to get into discussions with Crimson and they were a very dedicated fine wine company and it seemed they were a good match and things progressed from there.  We completed the transaction in January 2016, so it’s been more than  four years now. As far as the logistics of the sale, you  can use a broker or you can do it privately but you’re basically making approaches and having discussions. It takes a fair amount of preparation. Typically you don’t just wake up one day and decide you are selling the winery and it is sold the next day. There is a lot to learn about the process and what the market looks like and who is good to do business with and which brokerage you should use. I spent a fair amount of time exploring that. When we were ready to make the decision we were pretty well-educated on it and it wasn’t an easy process. But it’s an important one to get right.  Historically Crimson has been very focused in letting the wine brands define the style and in the winemaking arena, letting the wineries continue to make the same wines sylisticly that they were making before the sale. 
 
WWWWL: How have things changed for you since the sale? 
 
CM: It is a little lower stress for both myself and my wife, Vicki, who is just consulting now. We now have a 15 or 16 person sales team around America and for export as well. Before it was just me, Vicki, Julie and our national sales guy. Almost everyone who worked here was on the sales team (laughs).
 
WWWL: What do you like to drink when you’re at home on a typical night? 
 
CM: I drink a lot of Pinot Gris.  If you count the bottles at the end of the year that would probably be the varietal I drank the most of, especially in warm weather. Other than that, Cab based wines from our designated vineyards. We have kept a very extensive wine library of all the Cabs we have made. On special nights, we might dig out an old Cab or Merlot. It’s always interesting to think back to that vintage and what was going on back then with our family and the business.
 
 
WWWL: Hypothetically, you’ve got 24 hours to live. What bottle from your wine cellar do you have to open?!?
 
CM: Gosh, umm, probably some of the wines in the cellar that I’ve been looking at that I say, “I can’t open that one yet.” I just got a bottle of Champagne from the producer 1869, really old top mark Champagne. Definitely that one. It wasn’t cheap either. Oh and there’s two 30-year old Ports I would get down and maybe one or two vintages of our wines that are very special to me. Great memories.
 
WWWL: What are your hobbies? What do you like to do when you’re not making wine?
 
CM: I like the outdoors. I like to spend time in the Willamette mountains. I am a skier, alpine skiing. Vicki and I have a pretty nice garden.  We like to spend a lot of time working in the garden. That’s very relaxing. I Road-bike a little bit.  We have two daughters that live in town and one has two children, so we like to see one another and get together with family. 
 
WWWL: What’s the best thing about being a winemaker? 
 
CM: For me I like the variety, the fact that you have this job where you can be out in the vineyard, kicking around the dirt, and the next day you can be selling wine in New York City and it is the same job and everything in between. It is a huge collection of activities and I like that variety. When you’re running a smaller winery, you have to wear a lot of hats. 
 
WWWL: What’s the worst thing about being a winemaker? 
 
CM: Paperwork, taxes, regulation. And then those times when you have severe weather events that dramatically change your outlook for the year.  You are at the mercy of the weather and the climate and that’s hard. Some years we only had one-third or one-fourth of the grapes that I thought we were going to have due to a winter kill .You have to be resilient. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen as often as it used to.
 
WWWL: Why is that? 
 
CM: Gradually, it seems the winters have been milder generally speaking. It can still be a little erratic, but generally there are fewer freezes.  
 
WWWL: Can you talk about what makes Walla Walla special? 
 
CM: I think what makes Walla Walla special is it is a bit isolated. So it has developed its own style and community.  It wasn’t a suburb of a big city that pulls people apart. There is a nice mix of things going on. Lots of history. Very well established agricultural community and banking and education. There was a strong core even before the first vines even appeared and people were willing to believe in a vision. It started as a small community of farmers and winemakers and it took about twenty years to persuade the community that this could really work for them and be really good for Walla Walla. By the early 2000’s we finally saw it take off. The great thing today it that it’s still a relaxing, small wine region. Low traffic, enough good restaurants, great lodging options. You can have a very enjoyable time without much hassle. Compare it to Napa where you sit in traffic jams going back and forth to tasting rooms. Here it is wide open. I just think it is more relaxing and enjoyable due to its  size and natural beauty. It’s a great place to visit.
 
WWWL: How much more can the wine industry in Walla Walla grow?
 
CM: I seem to always be wrong on my predictions --- I am amazed that we have as much going on today as we do(!), but I think we could eventually see double the number of wineries, many more restaurants and more lodging, with more flights going in and out of Walla Walla. 

One of our favorite winery owners Marilyn Zerba of Zerba Cellars, passed away unexpectedly this March. We’ll miss her smile, her candor, her love for dogs and seeing her at the winery’s Milton Freewater tasting room. 
 
Born in Redmond, Oregon in 1946, Marilyn was known as an adorable child, even earning the nickname “Betty Boop” during her teenage years. She met her second husband, Cecil, on a blind date and they married in 1981. 

Wine was a third career for Marilyn, who first worked as a nurse and later opened a nursery with Cecil, Zerba Gardens. The couple first planted wine grapes in 2000 and soon after started Zerba Cellars, which produced its first wines from the 2002 vintage. The winerry has received many accolades over the years, including being named Pacific Northwest Winery of the Year by Wine Press Northwest Magazine in 2011. 
 
Marilyn is survived by her husband Cecil, sons Shawn (Tamara), Jeff (Linda) and Travis (Heather), sister Enid, nephew Justin and her four adoring grandchildren Michael, Carolyn, Ethan and Zach. 
 
A celebration of Marilyn Zerba's life will be held on Thursday, July 25th from 5pm to 7pm at Zerba’s Milton-Freewater tasting room, located at 85530 Highway 11. 

On April 14th and 15th the annual Reveal Walla Walla Valley event and wine auction took place and it was a rousing success.
 
The two-day event began on April 14th at Dunham Cellars, with the twenty-four participating wineries pouring library wines dating as far back as the 2002 vintage. That was followed up by a spectacular dinner catered by Andrae’s Kitchen that was attended by wineries and auction registrants.
 
Then on April 15th came the main event at Corliss Estates. Wine trade and private collectors had the opportunity to taste and bid on small lots of unique, one-of-a-kind wines from some of Walla Walla most prestigious wineries. Each auction had a starting bid of $1,800 for the 60-bottle lots (some wineries made 30-magnum lots instead). A total of $127,200 was raised in the auction, an increase of over 30% from last year's Reveal auction. 5% of those funds ($6,360) will go to the Enology and Viticulture program at the Walla Walla Community College. The highest winning bid was $15,000 for Woodward Canyon’s 2017 Cabernet Franc, 
 
 

  Long Shadows Vintners, one of the premier wineries in Walla Walla, is a unique partnership that brings several of the world’s most prestigious winemakers to Washington State, with each winemaker making a single wine from Washington-grown fruit. Gilles Nicault has been the head winemaker for Long Shadows since its inception in 2003 and is also responsible for making the winery’s Chester Kidder, Cote Nicault, Shoup and Julia’s Dazzle wines. Seattle Magazine named Gilles its Winemaker of the Year for 2016. The always-gracious Nicault was kind enough to sit down with us for an interview in early April.
 
WALLA WALLA WINE LIMO: Let’s start at the beginning. When did you first start tasting wine?
 
GILLES NICAULT: That’s a great question. It’s been so long ago, I barely remember (laughs). Basically, my dad was selling wine so each time we went on a vacation or a road trip somewhere, we’d visit the different wine regions and stop at vineyards and wineries. Being a kid, I really enjoyed being in the vineyards. At first it was more about the vineyards for me than the wine. Then, being inside the winery and seeing all the barrels and the tanks, the smell was amazing. I grew up with it and I’ve always loved it. My dad was working in Champagne at the time and I grew up in Avignon, which is where Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf du Pape are from. There was a school there for viticulture and winemaking and that interested me. So at 17 years old I started on a four-year degree there. Then,  not long after I finished school, I came to Washington State – in 1994, twenty-five years ago.
 
WL: You were just 21 years when you came to Washington. How did the opportunity arise for you here in Washington?
 
GN: After finishing the four-year school, I was looking for a one-year internship. I was thinking about Australia or Napa Valley, but I got an offer from Staton Hills Winery -- they're no longer around -- in Yakima Valley. At the time I didn’t know anything about Washington wine or about the Yakima Valley. There was very little Washington wine making it to France then. I knew of Seattle and had heard of the Pacific Northwest. But once I got here I fell in love. I just love the diversity between the oceans and the mountains and the quality of the growing season.
 
WL: You also fell in love with a young woman – you met your wife [Marie-Eve Gilla, winemaker at Valdemar Estates] very early in your time in Washington.
  
GN: Yes, Marie and I met on either Day One or Day Two actually.
 
WL: How did you two meet?
 
GN: When I came to Yakima, she was already a winemaker, working at Covey Run and someone at one of the wineries said they knew a French lady winemaker and suggested that we meet.
 
WL: What an amazing story. At the time the two of you and Christophe {Baron, from Cayuse) probably made up 75% of the French winemakers in Washington State! How long have you and Marie been married?
 
GN: We’ve been together 25 years, married for 20 and we have two children. Our daughter is 15 and our son is 17.
 
WL: Any chance either of them will follow in yours and Marie’s footsteps and make wine?
 
GN: I don’t think so. Maybe my daughter, but she’s too smart to be a winemaker (laughs). But it’s probably too early to know for sure.
 
WL: So how did this winery in Yakima, Staton Hills, find you?
 
GN: There’s an organization in Seattle called Experience International and they find places for internships and they find interns from different countries, so basically my school was in touch with Experience International and that’s how it came about.
 
WL: Tell me about some of the first wines that you made.
 
GN: Back when I was still in France, I did an internship in Champagne and I also did an internship at Chateau Revelette aix-en-Provence. The winemaker at Chateau Revelette was Peter Fisher and he was starting to experiment with Cabernet Sauvignon and blends of Cabernet – because there was not really appellation regulation there. I loved it and eventually that became the inspiration for the Chester Kidder wine I began making with Alan Shoup when we started Long Shadows.
 
WL: You were the winemaker at Woodward Canyon from 1996 until 2003, when you left to help Alan Shoup start Long Shadows. What an exciting project to be a part of!
 
GN: It has been. It's a very unique project with seven prestigious winemakers from all over the world. For me it has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with some of the world’s greatest winemakers in Washington – making wines from Walla Walla and Columbia Valley fruit.
 
WL: Who were your mentors in your winemaking career?
 
GN: I’ve worked with quite a few mentors. When I was at Woodward Canyon, Rick Small was great. I loved his passion to make wine and I respect that he never cut corners in his quest to make pristine, concentrated wines. From the grapes to the barrel selection to the winemaking, Rick wants to make the best wine he can make. I think that’s where I carried my passion from once I started at Long Shadows. And then at Long Shadows I began working really closely with Michel Rolland from Bordeaux, who was like a God for me. He’s been making wine since the 1970’s and he’s worked in twenty different countries around the world.
 
WL: With all that amazing winemaking talent at Long Shadows, have all seven of the winemakers ever been in the same place at the same time?
 
GN: It’s never happened that we’ve had all seven together. The most has been five and that’s happened twice. Once was on a Long Shadows cruise in the Mediterranean – we were missing just Michel Rolland and Augustin Huneeus. And then we did a beautiful dinner in Napa with everybody but Agustin and Giovanni Folonari.
 
WL: Tell me about tasting wine at the young age of 16, 17. To us here in the US, that seems quite odd.
 
GN: For French people it’s not that odd. We don’t consider wine as an alcoholic beverage, it’s part of the culture, part of our everyday life. The French enjoy wine as part of the meal, not as a means to get drunk. Seventeen was definitely a very young age to pursue wine as a career, but for me, I was like, “Why not?”.
 
WL: I’m sure being exposed to fine wines at such an early age had a positive impact as your developed your love for wine.
 
GN: Certainly. I was able to try some very special wines at an early age and it helped create a passion for me. I love vineyards. I think it’s very important for a winemaker to be attached to the viticulture side of it, because when you make wine, everything starts with the grapes. If you don’t get the right grapes to make a certain kind of wine that you want to make, that’s when you have to correct the wine, when you have to do more manipulation to the wine. When you get the grapes that you want, then you just let the magic happen, you don’t have to touch it as much. So you have to make sure you have the right grapes and from there you can make the wine you want. 
 
WL: What’s the best thing about being a winemaker?
 
GN: The lifestyle and the opportunity to transform grapes into fine wine. It can be a really hard job, especially during harvest when you’re working seven days a week for two months. It’s really rewarding, but at the same time there’s stress because you don’t want to screw it up – you just have that one chance each year to make wine. One thing that that has been amazing to see is the growth in the wine industry in Washington State, from 75 wineries in 1994 when I first got here to over a thousand now.
 
WL: Hypothetically speaking, you’ve got 24 hours to live. What wines in your cellar do you have to open?
 
GN: I’d try to open up as many bottles as possible and drink as much as I can. I’d probably start with a champagne and end with a champagne – with a lot of wine in between!
 
WL: Do you have a favorite varietal that you like to drink?

GN: Not necessarily. What’s so exciting about wine is the sense of place, the sense of vintage. But I suppose if there’s one wine I’m attached to more than others that would be Cote du Rhone. So maybe a beautiful bottle of Cote Rotie. That would probably be my go-to, but there’s so many other amazing wines. 

Rich Funk and his wife Anita started Saviah Cellars in 2000 and two years later, opened the first tasting room on the Southside of Walla Walla. Starting out small at just 300 cases of wine a year, Saviah now produces 25,000 cases each year. A self-taught winemaker, Rich’s background in chemistry and microbiology has served him well. Rich arrived in Walla Walla fresh out of college at Montana State University in 1991 for a job as an Environmental Health Specialist with the Walla Walla County Health Department. In a fortuitous twist, he quickly became acquainted with Walla Walla’s wine pioneers as he helped them work through their issues with water quality and wastewater management.  
 
WALLA WALLA WINE LIMO: You and your wife moved to Walla Walla from Montana straight out of college. How did you happen to pick Walla Walla?
 
RICH FUNK: In 1990 I applied for three positions as an Environmental Health Specialist in Eastern Washington. I interviewed in Colville, Wenatchee and Walla Walla and was offered the job in all three locations. However, I really hit it off with the team in Walla Walla and we thought Anita would be able to find a good job in Walla Walla as well. So we relocated and I started my new job on January 1st, 1991.  Soon after we arrived Anita was hired at Key Technology.
 
WINE LIMO:  What was your plan at the time?
 
FUNK:  We thought we would pay off some bills, stash away some money and eventually move back to Bozeman and start a microbrewery. That was our dream at the time.
 
But three months after being in Walla Walla, I was diagnosed with cancer. So at that point, we put our entrepreneurial dreams on hold and focused on getting well.

 As time passed, we fell in love with Walla Walla, started a family, built a home and began to study the idea of launching a winery. We approached the winery idea with a ten year plan. We did not take a dime out of the business or hire a full-time employee for the first six years. We worked every aspect of the business on evenings, weekends, holidays and vacations. We were living the dream, as they say.
 
WINE LIMO:  You’re well-suited to the wine business.
 
FUNK: That’s true. I’ve embraced nearly all the aspects of owning a winery. I get satisfaction from the challenge, truly enjoy the problem solving, love the creative aspects, as well as the freedom to build something from nothing. But mostly, I love working with our team of dedicated employees to share the fruit of our labor.
 
WINE LIMO: Your wife Anita has been a big part of Saviah too.
 
FUNK: Definitely. I couldn’t have done it without her, not at all. We are a team, and she contributes a tremendous amount to the business, even though it isn’t her full time job.  She has worked at Key for 28 years and is currently the Manager of Global Marketing. She has a skillset that is very valuable to the winery. We have built this business together every step of the way.
 
WINE LIMO: So it’s been a bit easier since those first five years?
 
FUNK: Well actually the first ten years were really hard. Going into our 20th harvest, we look back with tremendous satisfaction. The journey has been tough, though incredibly rewarding.
 
 WINE LIMO: So in those early days, you got the job working for the health department, you started meeting those guys in the wine industry, the early winemakers in Walla Walla (Rick Small from Woodward Canyon, Marty Clubb from L’Ecole No 41 and Gary Figgins from Leonetti. Had you been interested in drinking wine before you moved to Walla Walla?
 
RF: We discovered wine once we got here.  I was a brewer. I was a microbiology major and I was really into beer, but when we moved to Walla Walla we discovered that we liked wine.  And so then of course, I just had this laser-like focus, this shift and I dropped the whole beermaking idea and focused on wine. We started drinking and enjoying wine.  A doctor friend was on the Leonetti list and he loved to invite us over and share his wines with us. I bowhunted with him and he would bring nice wines up to camp and if we killed an elk, he’d break out a special wine to go with the fresh elk loin and I just started getting very interested in making wine.
 
WINE LIMO:  2000 was the first vintage at Saviah, correct?
 
FUNK: Yes, that’s right. About that same time Myles (Anderson) was getting together the enology & viticulture program at the college and they were having all these great classes and all these cool people from around the world came to give presentations. I became friends with Myles and Gordy (co-founders of Walla Walla Vintners). I told Myles that I was starting to make wine under my bond that fall, but that I would like to work harvest with someone who was really solid technically.
 
So I was in Montana bowhunting the first week of September and I called home from a pay phone to talk to my wife and she said, “You need to call Myles right now, he’s got an internship for you.” So I called Myles and he said “How would you like to work for a world-class winemaker this fall? “ And I said, “I would love that, who is it?” He said, “It’s Mike Januik. He’s been the head winemaker for Chateau St Michelle for the last ten years and he’s starting his own project and he’s making his wines at Three Rivers and I think he would be a fantastic guy for you to hang out with.” So, I went back to camp, threw everything in my truck, and drove home that day.
 
When I met Mike and Charlie (Hoppes) I said “I will bust my ass for you and you don’t have to pay me a dime. Just answer my bonehead questions and let me figure out how you really do this stuff.” Because you can read every book in the world but the hands-on experience is where it’s at in the wine business.  
 
WL- So that alleviated the need for a formal wine education in winemaking?
 
RF: I had the microbiological knowledge, I understood the science side. The practical application of that science came easy to me. There was no guesswork there. I wanted to see the process through their eyes. Coming away from this experience the big questions for me were, “How do I sell this? and “How do I establish connections on the fruit side?” Because that’s really what drives the bus.  Both boiled down to relationships and both required patience and time. I soon learned patience, persistence and perseverance were the secrets to the wine business.
 
I approached Ron and Leonard Brown, who farmed apples in the valley, and asked if they would consider planting some grapes for me. At the time they weren’t really interested in planting grapes. They were great people and loved wine, so I kept inviting them down to the cellar to taste my wine. One day I got a call out of the blue from Ron. He says “We just tore out ten acres of red delicious apples and it’s right next to the very first block of Cabernet (one of Leonetti’s most coveted block of Cabernet at the old Seven Hills vineyard).  It’s 30 feet away. What do you want to plant?”  I said “Cabernet!!!” It was a ten-acre block, so they put in six acres of Cabernet Sauvignon, and an acre each of Merlot, Cab Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec.  There was no Petit Verdot, Cab Franc or Malbec available at that time in the valley.
 
Working with the Brown’s planting vineyards has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this entire adventure.
 
WINE LIMO: You make a lot of different varietals, a lot of wine, is there a particular wine you are most proud of?
 
RF: If I had to only pick one varietal it would be Syrah. The reason is the range of styles. Syrah is the one grape that challenged me the most when I was starting to learn about wine. Stylistically, they were all over the board. Rhone, Aussie Shiraz, Washington, California all different down to parcels from which they were grown. My first epiphany with terroir was Syrah from The Rocks here in the Walla Walla valley. Syrah is one of those varietals that expresses sense of place better than most other varietals. But it wasn’t easy to sell in the early years. We now grow and sell quite a bit of Syrah, as Saviah has become known for being a consistently good producer of Syrah.
 
WINE LIMO: What do you and your wife drink on a typical night at home?
 
RF:  I love wines from the Rhone valley and always have them in my cellar. Recently we have been drinking a lot of Rhone-style wine out of California’s Central Coast. I am really inspired by Rhone varietals at this stage in my life and that’s where I see the future for Saviah. I am keenly dedicated to showcasing unique terroir-driven Syrah from our Funk Estate vineyard and The Stones Speak vineyard in The Rocks District.
 
WINE LIMO:  Speaking hypothetically, you have 24 hours to live. What bottle in your wine cellar do you have to open?
 
FUNK: Just one bottle?  That is a tough one… I’d open a bunch of bottles. Ha! (laughs) Twenty-four hours? I could polish off a few at least. I’d open a lot of bottles, pulling corks and having a splash! But as far as specific bottles, I’d probably go back to our first ten vintages because those are wines I kept so few of because I had to sell everything. I have a very skimpy library of our first vintages. Ultimately though, I’d like to polish it off with a bottle from our estate vineyard in The Rocks.  So, I would open a 2016 Funk Estate Syrah. Reflect back to the year 2000, when I first tasted a Syrah from The Rocks, back to when all of this was just a dream.
 
WINE LIMO:  Here’s a question you might not have heard before. Walla Walla wine is thriving pretty well, there don’t seem to be a ton of problems. But the one issue I tend to see at many of the tasting rooms around town is significant turnover in the tasting room employees. You seem to have done a good job of avoiding that, as you have a number of people that have been with you a significant amount of time. What are your thoughts on what wineries can do to avoid having so much turnover?
 
FUNK: First and foremost, you can’t micro-manage. You have to let your employees become the master of their expertise.  I provide guidance. I am very precise on how I want things to be done. I keep a tight ship, but I don’t nitpick.  If I see something, I take care of it. How you make people feel is so critical. Ultimately, I think it is important to empower people and be grateful for the time they are willing to commit to working with us.
 
WINE LIMO: I love that! That’s a great approach. 
 
FUNK: The golden rule is to treat people the way you’d want to be treated. I don’t want anyone looking over their shoulder and I trust everybody to use their best judgement, to communicate. The beauty of cell phones these days is that I don’t have to be at the winery all the time. That’s a beautiful thing. I am so thankful for that. I can be out in the vineyards, at our cabin, out on my bike, on the road selling wine, and I feel completely confident that business is getting done. I am fortunate. 
 
WINE LIMO: So what’s the best part about being a winemaker?
 
FUNK: I enjoy the entrepreneurial aspect. One of my first memories is my mom buying me a little snow shovel because I wanted to shovel the neighbor’s walks. I was always that kid in the neighborhood, a poster child for child labor. I had a paper route. I would mow lawns. Help bring in the hay and irrigate. I helped a neighbor build a log house. I started working in the woods cutting down trees when I was fourteen and then I formed my first LLC in college, bidding jobs with the U.S. Forest Service to thin old logging units. I was always willing to work hard at anything and everything.
 
Being a winemaker is work. Fortunately, I have always enjoyed work. But more so, this has allowed me to enjoy the practical application of all the science I studied,  as well as enjoy the artistic and creative aspect to this craft. My mind is never in neutral. I am always thinking of how we can get better at this. I love working with Anita on this endeavor. She’s a hard worker, and we work well together. That’s all you can ask for in life.
 
WINE LIMO: What’s the worst part about being a winemaker?
 
FUNK: Probably my least favorite thing about being a winemaker is going on the road to work the market when there is so much work to be done at the winery and in the vineyards. I am really happy to wake up in my own bed, have coffee with my wife and putter around doing what I do.  

WHAT WE’RE DRINKING AT WW WINE LIMO HQ
 
Forgeron Cellars                       2012 Facon Rouge
Solemn Cellars                           2015 Sangiovese
Armstrong Family Winery 2014 David’s Folly (red blend)
Zerba Cellars                              2014 Petite Sirah
Gundlach Bundschu               2014 Cabernet Sauvignon (Sonoma) 

WHAT WE’RE DRINKING AT WW WINE LIMO HQ THIS MONTH
 
Saviah Cellars         2014 The Stones Speak Syrah
Brook & Bull Cellars   2016  The Few and Far Between (Red Blend)
Locati Cellars.                2005 Sangiovese
Chateau Bellevue      2015 Saint-Emilion Grand Cru (France)                      
                     Dutcher Crossing.       2015 Proprietor's Reserve Syrah (Sonoma) 

WHAT WE’RE DRINKING AT WW WINE LIMO HQ
 
Garrison Creek Cellars  2013 Cabernet Sauvignon
Dillon Cellars.                      2014 Wrought Syrah
Devona                                   2016 Chardonnay
Ardor Cellars                       2014 Red Blend (GSM)
Alta Vista                              2015 Malbec (Terroir Selection)