Columbia Winery and the Professors of Associated Vintners
Near Woodinville, Washington
Directly across the road from Chateau Sainte Michelle stands Columbia Winery, and its origin story is pure Seattle. It began not with a wealthy tycoon but with a group of curious University of Washington professors. In the nineteen fifties, a circle of friends, several of them faculty members, started making wine at home as a hobby.
Led by psychology professor Lloyd Woodburne, born in nineteen oh six, they turned the hobby into a real business, incorporating as Associated Vintners in nineteen sixty two and planting their first grapes the following year. They were pioneers, helping prove that fine European style wine grapes could thrive in eastern Washington at a time when almost no one believed it. In nineteen seventy nine the winery hired the English trained winemaker David Lake, who pushed Washington into new territory, producing some of the state's first vineyard-designated wines and its first Syrah.
The company adopted the name Columbia Winery in the early nineteen eighties and moved its home to Woodinville in nineteen eighty eight, helping seed the wine district that surrounds it today. In tribute to the founder, the winery has long bottled a dry Gewurztraminer under the Woodburne name, a quiet nod to the professor whose living room experiment helped launch an industry.
