2022 W A S H I N G T O N W I N E R Y O F T H E Y E A R 2022 W A S H I N G T O N W I N E R Y O F T H E Y E A R
GNWW 2022
Westport Winery Garden Resort Xxxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx a lot of different wineries, and I’ve never seen a diversity of clientele like this.”
By Eric Degerman
A
BERDEEN — It’s been a remarkable voyage in Grays Harbor County for the Roberts family, a project of depth and layers that lives up to its billing as Westport Winery Garden Resort. “We were in a remote location, and we knew if we were going to be successful, we needed to create a destination and multiple reasons for people to come here,” says Blain Roberts, who previously owned a famous dive business on Maui with his wife, Kim. “We also needed to treat our consumers so well that they become our sales people and recruit their friends and family to come do business with us.”
Bosso arrived from Woodinville not long after he helped turn Orenda Winery into Wine Press Northwest’s 2020 Washington Winery to Watch. He took over the cellar from the Roberts’ son, Dana. “We are grateful for our continued relationship with John Bookwalter as our mentor and wine consultant,” Kim says. “Mark has built upon that foundation to take us up to the next level.” The résumé of Bosso, who served in the Peace Corps, includes working for Erica Orr at Baer Winery and Javier Alfonso of Pomum
Kim and Blain have reinvented themselves several times. Even though Blain grew up as a lifeguard in Southern California and Kim in Marysville, Wash., they met in the harbor of Westport in the early 1980s. Kim captained a charter boat in the summers as a Washington State University architecture student when Blain was having a boat built for his business in Hawaii. Three decades later, they recast themselves in Grays Harbor with two adult children, all four embarking on an adventure for 21 acres of forested land. “We bought the property and we asked the ag agent what to do, and he suggested we open a winery,” Blain says. “We decided to do that, even though we knew nothing about wine.”
Last year, the family christened their nonprofit International Mermaid Museum. Pandemic be damned, the fanciful exhibit attracted 83,000 visitors to the 21-acre campus along Highway 105 that features demonstration gardens with sculptures from dozens of regional artists, the on-premise Sea Glass Grill and an Ocean’s Daughter Distillery. “It ultimately comes back to making great wine and being a Washington winery,” says Kim, whose four-year term on the Washington State Wine Commission ended in 2014.
PHOTO BY GREG JACOBS/CAPTURE.SHARE.REPEAT
Critics and consumers — Westport Winery Garden Resort is owned and operated by the Roberts family, led by Blain, Carrie and Kim. Their business was named savvy or inexperienced — apWashington Winery to Watch in 2011, and they used six Platinum medals last fall to become the 2022 Washington Winery of the Year. preciate those efforts. In 2021, Westport earned six Platinum Awards from Cellars/Idilico. Bosso already knew first-hand Labels on their bottles bring a sense of whimGreat Northwest Wine, giving the 15-year-old how valuable it was to work with highly decosy, tell stories and showcase regional artists, but brand a career total of 30, moving them into a rated Elephant Mountain Vineyards and sister judges at international wine competitions don’t tie for seventh on the all-time list. site Sugarloaf Vineyard. Both are owned and know any of that. And the acclaim continues to farmed by Joe Hattrup and now serve as the Westport earned its Platinums using a variety come in waves, year after year. breadbasket for Westport Winery. of approaches, ranging from Malbec and the “People assumed we were a joke because our rare Italian red Sagrantino, a rosé of San“Westport doesn’t have a speciality, but it has bottles didn’t have a brown label with a brick giovese off famed Red Willow Vineyard, two a broad appeal, and that’s a strength,” Bosso building on it,” Blain said. expressions of Riesling and the locally sourced said. “Kim tells a story that starts with introsparkling cranberry. It’s a deliciously eclectic Kim looks back and says, “Not knowing what ducing people new to wine with the fruit wines portfolio. you can’t do meant there were no boundaries, and there’s a progression that happens almost but the year before we opened, we went to evuniformly with all of the wine club members. “There are only a few routes to the coast, ery Washington Winery of the Year and quietly Before you know it, they are drinking dry reds so many people have to come by this winery,” visited them to see what they were doing.” says winemaker Mark Bosso. “I’ve worked for and dry whites.”
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