Home > Articles > News > Columbia to Close Popular Suburban Seattle Visitor Center

Columbia to Close Popular Suburban Seattle Visitor Center

Winery will move its operations to its main facility in eastern Washington, but hopes to open another tasting room in Woodinville in the future

Harvey Steiman

Posted: Thursday, December 20, 2007

Columbia Winery, which helped make the Seattle suburb of Woodinville Washington's busiest destination for wine tourism, will close its showcase winery and visitor center and consolidate all of its winemaking and bottling operations in eastern Washington, the winery announced this week. The move comes after parent company Icon Estates, a division of Constellation Brands, was unable to negotiate a new lease on the property, which expires in April.

"With the lease up for renewal, this was a natural time to reevaluate our winemaking operations," said Glen Coogan, vice president of Northwest operations for Icon. It made sense, he added, "to have all our winemaking operations in one place, close to the vineyards in eastern Washington."

One of Washington's oldest currently operating wineries, Columbia started in 1962 in the Seattle garage of one of its founders. It has been in its current building since 1988, anchoring a burgeoning collection of more than 30 Woodinville wineries that range from Chateau Ste. Michelle across the street to tiny operations such as Matthews Cellars, just down the road.

No grapes grow in Woodinville, however. It's a mostly residential town adjoining Redmond, the home of Microsoft. Smaller Woodinville-based wineries truck fruit more than 100 miles over the Cascade Range, while bigger operations such as Ste. Michelle and Columbia make most or all of their wines in facilities near the vineyards in eastern Washington, before finishing and bottling some or all of the wines in Woodinville. Columbia will now have all its winemaking and bottling operations in Sunnyside, in the Yakima Valley, where the company already shares a winemaking facility with Covey Run.

Columbia has drawn tourists to the Woodinville area with its tasting room and souvenir shop, which is on the same block as the Red Hook Brewery, the luxury Willows Lodge and the Herbfarm, a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence-winning restaurant. Columbia hopes to open a new visitor center elsewhere in Woodinville.

Several wineries are interested in moving into the building, said Stan Baty, CEO of Corus Estates, whose family owns the building. "If we can't make a deal by late spring, we'll just move our Zeferina winery in there and use the rest of the facility for custom winemaking," Baty said. "I did a quick poll of some of the Woodinville wineries, and there was a lot of interest."

Back to top

Currently on Wine Spectator Online:

• An Abruzzo Pioneer Dies
  Gianni Masciarelli helped bring modern winemaking to his region
• Unfiltered: Bottle Shock Pops Into New York, and a Theater Near You
  Plus, wine bottles turn up at Rutgers Stadium and in a Scottish sideboard, a Hamptons gallery owner lets the bubbly flow, and a suspected CRAV member gets nabbed with dynamite
• Dinner for Pope Benedict
  Mother and son restaurateurs Lidia and Joseph Bastianich prepared Pope Benedict XVI’s meals and selected the wine pairings during the Holy Father’s recent stay in New York
• One of Montepulciano's Best Estates Changes Hands
  Family owners of Avignonesi sell a majority share to Belgian businesswoman
• White Burgundy Alphabetical Listing