About Us

After spending several pleasant years happily wandering around western Washington looking at island property, we bought our twenty acres on Anderson Island in 1997. The land had recently been clear-cut by logging interests and was a jumble of stumps and logging debris, but that didn't stop us from seeing its potential. We were confident that we could bring the property back to life with a large dose of love, care and hard work - not to mention the prosaic blood, sweat and tears. Originally, we envisioned a u-pick apple orchard, especially on the upper part of the property across the seasonal creek. For the next ten years we cleaned, cleared, stumped, re-planted thousands of trees (many of which the deer had for breakfast, lunch and dinner) and generally brought the land back to life. We put in a variety of both native and specimen trees, learning the hard (read EXPENSIVE) way that most had to be fenced to survive their infancy, and recreated grassy meadows. Many an hour we dreamed and debated about the perfect building site for a vacation house. Family and friends spent summer days playing and working on the land, swimming at the Ye Ole Swimming Hole, and exploring the beaches and best get-away spots on the island.

Finally, as dreams of full time island life became more and more frequent, the idea of a working vineyard and possible small "Les Garagistes" winery came into the forefront. Our epiphany came during a trip to Italy and a stay in a small working Tuscan vineyard and inn. After several idyllic days of dreaming and drinking their house wine, we thought why not try this at home? After all, isn't wine more fun than cider? So, upon return and a quick internet search we found the Puget Sound Wine Growers website and the project was off and running. After enrolling in a few seminars and talking to other Puget Sound vineyard owners, we made an initial decision on what variety of grapes to initially plant. This decision was made relatively early in the process due to the necessary one-year lead time to obtain large amounts of cuttings of grape varieties at reasonable prices. Some of our cuttings would be rooting at a commercial nursery, while others would be rooting in our backyard raised garden at home, in preparation for planting in the Spring of 2008.

As with other ventures of this nature, one advantage of the entire operation is that it gives you an excuse to acquire more toys like tractors, mowers, implements, etc., all items that make you the envy of all the other poor working slobs in the office. For years, my wife was worshiped by all men that knew me, simply because she actually bought me a small, grey-market bulldozer to help clear and groom our land. Men were lined up for hours just to get a short ride on the machine. Of course, ultimately the entire gift (100% based on my recommendation) was a waste because the small machine was not really big enough to do any real work and everything had to be contracted out anyway. But oh the years of pure adoration that little machine brought! Now with the vineyard preparation in full force, planning for the future winery and building a home at the same time, there is no shortage of possible new toys that could be acquired.

So, welcome to our website. We're going to be busy - but we'll try to keep it up-to-date as both the vineyard and winery progress. Wish us luck!