Chateau Sainte Michelle, Washington's Oldest Winery
Near Woodinville, Washington
Turn onto the tree lined drive here and you reach Chateau Sainte Michelle, the oldest winery in Washington State, set on a former dairy estate about twenty miles east of Seattle. The land beneath these formal gardens once belonged to Frederick Stimson, a Seattle timber baron who bought the property in nineteen twelve and named it Hollywood Farm for the holly trees he planted along the entrance. Stimson did not grow grapes.
He built one of the most advanced agricultural operations in the region, eventually spreading across roughly six hundred acres, with a model dairy herd, a poultry operation, and prize winning Duroc Jersey swine. He died in nineteen twenty one, and the grand manor house he built still stands on the grounds. The winery itself grew from a different root.
In nineteen thirty four, just after Prohibition ended, the National Wine Company was founded in Washington. Twenty years later, in nineteen fifty four, it merged with the Pomerelle Wine Company to form the American Wine Company, the direct ancestor of today's label. The company acquired the old Stimson estate in nineteen seventy six and built the chateau styled winery you see now.
The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy eight. Here is the twist that surprises many first time visitors. Almost none of the grapes are grown here.
Western Washington is too cool and wet for wine grapes. The fruit is grown more than one hundred miles east, across the Cascade Mountains, in the warm dry vineyards of the Columbia Valley, then trucked over the passes to be crushed, fermented, and bottled in Woodinville. What Woodinville offers is not vineyards but hospitality, a place close to Seattle where visitors can taste and tour.
More than three hundred thousand people come through these gates every year, and since nineteen eighty four the estate has hosted a summer concert series that began humbly in the parking lot and grew into an outdoor amphitheater. Chateau Sainte Michelle became the anchor that turned a quiet dairy valley into one of the most visited wine destinations in the Pacific Northwest.
