Beer, Wine & Spirits in Olympia

While other teenagers were trying to steal sips from their dad’s vintage wines, Ray Curtis was dreaming of making his own. Ray’s career began at Shawnee Vineyards, where he was a jack-of-all-trades, bottling, labeling, and racking the central Ohio winery’s signature varietals. After moving to the Northwest 10 years ago Ray opened Olympia’s Northwest Mountain Winery, which lies along the idyllic South Sound Wine Trail and specializes in handcrafted wines of his own invention. Patrons populating the tasting room can enjoy such creations as the 2009 Columbia Valley syrah, which posits its flavor bouquet of dark cherries, cola, and smoked cedar to studious taste buds, or the Mountain Majesty, a medium-bodied blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and zinfandel. The Firebreathing mead earned a bronze medal at the Seattle Wine Awards for its surprising hints of honey and jalapeño, which delightfully complement spicy Thai dishes or bees with a taco craving.

To make their award-winning, handcrafted wines, Amy and Josh Stottlemyer source their grapes from the local eastern Washington fields in the Horse Heaven Hills, Yakima Valley, and Columbia Valley. From that harvest, they craft thirteen wines, ranging from classics such as cabernet sauvignon and malbec to less-common flavors such as barbera and viognier. At tasting rooms in Lacey, West Seattle, and Hoodsport, they raise spirits at public tastings held three to five times a week. Stottle Winery also breaks into the darkest corner of the cellar during tastings of limited and reserved wines held on the first weekend of each month, and welcomes groups for by-appointment private tastings with cheese and crackers for up to 20 guests. Revelry continues at the winery’s other private events, where up to 60 guests can mingle over munchies, hum along to live music, and aggressively sniff sommeliers to teach them what it feels like to be wine.

Every time he begins a new handcrafted batch, winemaker Philip Coates strives to bring out the elemental flavors of his Washington-grown grapes. A limited production schedule lets Philip and his team spend more time on each varietal, de-stemming grapes by hand before fermenting batches with native yeasts and aging them in french oak barrels. Next, they fill, cork, and wax each bottle by hand before applying labels designed by local artists.

Though his repertoire has grown since 21 Cellars’ inception in 2003, Philip’s specialty remains bordeaux varietals, including a 2009 malbec and the 2006 Pont 21 cabernet sauvignon, which _Seattle _ magazine deemed Washington’s top new wine of 2011. Alongside wine by the bottle, staffers pour samples of current wines at weekly tastings at Anthem Coffee and the 21 Cellars’ own tasting room—a cozy grotto lined with oak barrels.