We are moving to Lake Chelan (ok Manson)!

In 2008 Lacey worked on a consulting project doing marketing and PR while The Lake House at Chelan was opening. While she was there to work, I would venture out, play on the lake and enjoy the scenery. After visiting the wineries in the area we were in love. There aren’t many places where you can stare at the gorgeous lake, mountains, and enjoy fantastic wines. We knew that one day we wanted to move our winery here.

A few months ago while visiting Manson we found an old apple packing shed amongst a beautiful orchard with a great view of the mountains. We had found our spot!

While we love Seattle and the wineries in the city it has been our dream to move East of the mountains and we are finally making that dream a reality.

Our West Seattle tasting room will be open through Saturday, May 25th and then we will be closing that location to focus on getting our winery set up in Manson. The good news is that while 3400 Harbor Ave Suite 113 will no longer be Cairdeas Winery’s tasting room, our good friends Josh and Amy Stottlemyer are taking over the space and it will still be a winery tasting room. Look for Stottle Winery to move into that spot soon.

Our new winery location will be opening this summer and we will be located at 2480 Totem Pole Rd, Manson WA near Tildio Winery, Four Lakes Chelan, and The Blending Room about 5 minutes drive from downtown Manson.

Click image for larger version

For more info about the area and wineries check out – http://www.lakechelanwinevalley.com/

Here are some pictures of our new space. Check out our progress as we get ready to open!

After a week off, I’m back at it.  Writ­ing that is.  I rarely take a week off from drink­ing wine.

Last week, I attended my brother’s wed­ding in Hous­ton. Now my brother has become a bit of a wine drinker in the last cou­ple of years and the wine selec­tion at the recep­tion was impres­sive.  Guests were offered choices includ­ing a Cal­i­for­nia Chardon­nay, Goose Ridge Ries­ling, (pur­chased while vis­it­ing the North­west) a Mal­bec Rose, and an Argen­tinean Mal­bec.  I enjoyed a glass, or two, of the Rose.  It was crisp, refresh­ing, easy drink­ing wine to accom­pany a tra­di­tional Texas bar­beque dinner.

Before leav­ing on my trip, I attended the Debuts and Dis­cov­er­ies event at the Seat­tle Aquar­ium.  (Thanks to David LeClaire of Wine World and his wine club “Uncorked” for a great event.) Out of the large col­lec­tions of winer­ies pour­ing that evening, Caird­eas Win­ery took home top hon­ors by the judges, and earned high marks from me as well.  I enjoyed both of their offer­ings, but the depth of the Cab Franc was par­tic­u­larly notice­able and noteworthy. 

A wine with depth gives your senses more to enjoy and allows the fla­vors to develop in your mouth.  It doesn’t lack for lay­ers and doesn’t leave you hang­ing in the taste depart­ment.   Wines with depth can be a lit­tle over­whelm­ing for some drinkers still devel­op­ing their palettes.   But here’s the great part about drink­ing wine with depth, you don’t have to do any work.  The fla­vors roll over your senses.  Food might enhances those fla­vors, but the wine is still enjoy­able on it’s own.

You can apply that same com­par­i­son to con­ver­sa­tion part­ners.  A per­son with depth, and lay­ers of expe­ri­ences can offer more in a con­ver­sa­tion than some­one you con­sider one-dimensional.   This is key, espe­cially when talk­ing sports, because a pas­sion­ate fan or a fan with some time invested in a team or a sport will be able to do more of the talk­ing and allow you to relax, sit back and enjoy.   I coun­sel many sports novices who get inti­mated at the thought of talk­ing to a pas­sion­ate fan.  They’re afraid to be “found out” when it comes to their lack of sports knowl­edge.  But the truth is, it’s much eas­ier to talk to some­one with a deeper knowl­edge base because they have more to offer  - just like a wine with depth.

Other winer­ies I enjoyed at Debuts and Dis­cov­er­ies: 509  Wines– which will be tast­ing in Wood­inville at Vil­lage Wines week­ends through the month of July.  And make sure to check out Martedi Win­ery, I enjoyed their Syrah and Sangiovese.

Caird­eas Win­ery has a tast­ing room in West Seat­tle at 3400 Har­bor Ave SW, Suite 113.  Stop by and try a glass, you won’t be disappointed.

Judge Awards

1. Cairdeas Winery
2. AniChe Cellars
3. Icon Cellars

Seattle Uncorked just announced the Peoples’ Choice winners. All the participants attending Debuts and Discoveries were given a ballot and asked to select their favorite winery of the night. Here are their choices.

Peoples’ Choice

1. Kerloo Cellars
2. Pandora Cellars
3. Cairdeas Winery / Purple Star Wines

Congratulations to Cairdeas Winery the only Washington winery that received recognition from both the judging panel and the general audience!

Look for more of our thought on the new wineries to watch for and which of their wines to try first later this weekend.

Cairdeas Winery founders, Charlie and Lacey Lybecker, are focused on creating small lots of red and white wines made from Washington fruit while practicing sustainable wine making. The Lybeckers produce their wines in South Seattle

“The Tasting Room will give West Seattle residents and visitors alike access to Cairdeas wines and give them a chance to try our wines for the first time,” says winemaker Charlie Lybecker. “We started producing wine in West Seattle so we are thrilled to open our tasting room in the neighborhood.”

Cairdeas (Car-dess) is an ancient Gaelic word meaning friendship, goodwill or alliance. Cairdeas Winery founders, Charlie and Lacey Lybecker, believe that good wine should be shared with friends, goodwill spread at every opportunity, and alliances created with those who share our passion.

The Cairdeas Winery tasting room is located at 3400 Harbor Ave SW, Suite 113 in West Seattle, and will be open throughout the summer on Saturdays and Sundays from 12-5pm.

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Big smiles from Cairdeas Winery owners Charlie and Lacey Lybecker when we stopped by their new West Seattle tasting room at mid-afternoon: Grand-opening weekend was going well, despite the lack of sunshine to bring a massive flow of traffic past their Harbor Avenue front door (southernmost street-level storefront at ActivSpace, just north of the West Seattle Bridge). The wines they’re pouring/selling now are all West Seattle-made, from their first winery on Delridge; they’ve since moved home base to Bryn Mawr, but their fondness for West Seattle led them to launch their tasting room here.

If you missed their opening weekend, catch them next weekend and future Saturdays-Sundays, noon-5 pm Saturdays and Sundays. (Wondering about the name? As explained online, it’s pronounced “car-dess” and: “Cairdeas is an ancient Gaelic word meaning friendship, goodwill or alliance. We believe in all three.”)

Yesterday I got to sleep in late and it felt so good! It was really sunny and warm and one of my favorite things is sleeping on the deck. My humans got up and made coffee while I ate my breakfast outside. Then they decided it was time to bottle the 2010 Nellie Mae Roussanne/Viognier blend. I helped as they made all of the preparations. I stood guard making sure no birds or squirls were lurking.

Bottling was a lot of fun. I was hoping that my humans would have spilled some on the floor so I could try it too… but that never happened. I did hear them say that it tastes really good though. I think it should be ready by the time the new tasting room that they keep talking about opens.

After helping in the winery I was really tired and just wanted to lay around in the sun. It felt so good to be outside! My humans let me have dinner on the deck. I had my favorite kibble and they BBQ’d salmon and drank a little of the Nellie Mae to celebrate.

Today its back to rain, so I am back to sleeping on the couch. But I am looking forward to meeting you soon at our new tasting room. Just remember I like it when you pet me!

Yesterday in the mail we got our new crusher destemmer. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of it at first… I thought I might be in trouble for something!

Once I realized that my humans are going to use this machine for handling the grapes more gently I got really excited about it though. I got to walk under it and sniff it to check it out… seems like a really cool thing to have. I hope that I get to eat some of the grapes this year.

I know that my humans are expecting a few more shiny things before harvest too.

We also bottled our 2009 Cabernet Franc that is a great fruit forward wine. This one will probably be released late summer.

Check out the photos from bottling here. We will be adding more to that photo gallery as well once the white blend is finalized and ready to be bottled.

We are really excited about these wines and can’t wait to share them with you.

2010 was a big year for Cairdeas Winery and now that our reds are resting quietly in a barrel and our whites in a tank I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year. It was our 2nd crush as an official winery, and we made twice as much wine as our first vintage. We worked with some great vineyards and made a lot of new friends in the wine world. And one of the most exciting things that happened this year… we adopted Tannin from the Seattle Humane Society. We love our wine dog!

There has been a lot of talk about the 2010 vintage along the way. With a very late start to the growing season some were really worried about the quality of wines that would be made this year. But as it turns out, with late breaking summer heat and longer hang times on the fruit we ended up with some really concentrated flavors which will translate into some fantastic wines. We did see some lower sugars on some of the fruit but we are really excited about what we brought in!

Our Merlot has a great balance of fruit and tannin. Syrah is showing a wonderful cracked black pepper note. Cabernet is bold. Cabernet Franc (one of my favorite varietals) is showing great potential. Malbec is really dark, inky, spicy, and awesome. Viognier and Rousanne are crisp and bright. All in all we are very happy with the results.

We are looking forward spending some quality time with our family and friends over the holidays and also to some really big things on the horizon for the winery in 2011.