This year, Chateau Ste. Michelle celebrates its 50 year anniversary in grand style. After a $7 million dollar investment, a new visitor center opened in August, doubling in size and including an 80-seat modern theater with tasting tables plus an interactive blending room where guests can create their custom bottle from the winery's estate vineyards. There's a Col Solare Bottega featuring Chateau Ste. Michelle's partnership with Tuscany's Marchesi Antinori, a private club room and an enoteca representing the global brands in their portfolio including Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte, Tormaresca and Tenet, a partnership with Rhône Valley winemakers Michel Gassier and Philippe Cambie.
PHILLIP CAMBIE
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The Woodinville winery was built in 1976, just 30 minutes from Seattle, which proved to be an excellent business decision for accessibility to visitors. Over the years, many more wineries have followed suit and there are now more than 100 tasting rooms in Woodinville although Washington's vineyards are all several hours east. For Chateau Ste. Michelle, all grapes are pressed at the vineyards in Eastern Washington and red wines stay there while fermentation and barrel aging for white wines takes place in Woodinville.
As the dominant winery in the state – approximately half of the state's 55,000 planted acres of vinifera go into Ste. Michelle Wine Estates wines – Chateau Ste. Michelle embraces the leadership role of championing Washington wines on a global scale. In 2009, their sister winery Columbia Crest Reserve Cabernet was named Wine Spectator's number one wine in the world – the first and only Washington wine to receive this award. “That was a defining moment for us,” CEO Ted Baseler says. “It was a great endorsement for Washington as a region and one of the things we're most proud of." It's certainly not easy balancing size and quality in the most fragmented business category in the world. "There are over 2 million wineries and less than 10% are commercially viable. So you can be a low-end winery and produce boxed wine and makes tens of millions of cases or you have higher quality. But having both quantity and quality is exceedingly difficult."
WOODNVILLE WINERY
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