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| Dr. Gerry Warren & his wife, Dianne |
Founded in 1975, the Enological
Society of the Pacific Northwest was the oldest volunteer-organized
wine appreciation group in town. Rechristened the Seattle Wine Society
in 2004, it continued to sponsor monthly wine dinners and an annual wine
judging whose excruciating fairness was better suited to the days when
Washington and Oregon combined had fewer than 100 wineries (many owned
by paranoid individualists barely on speaking terms). But its leaders
recruited international wine authorities as judges, and their influence
helped put the Pacific Northwest on the map.
Now it's "Mission Accomplished," for real.
Rather
like Willie Keith, "the last captain of the
Caine,
it fell to international business attorney Mel Simburg, serving a term
as president, to decommission the Seattle Wine Society. Thirty-seven
years ago, its founding board came straight out of Seattle's Blue Book
(Dorothea Checkley, George Taylor, Nancy Davidson Short, Betty
Eberharter), with a mission to guide its members "in viticulture,
enology, and the appreciation, enjoyment, knowledge and proper usage of
wine."
For
the next two decades, under the guidance of an early recruit to the
cause, Dr. Gerry Warren (a clinical professor of medicine and
bioengineering at the University of Washington), it did just that,
providing its 3,000 members with monthly educational programs and an
annual wine festival, all run by volunteers. Chapters were added in half
a dozen outposts, from the Tri-Cities to Spokane. The festival became a
focal point for a growing body of wine enthusiasts, not the least of
them the internationally renowned judges. Over the years, they included
Paul Pontallier of Chateau Margaux; the Italians Angelo Gaja and Piero
Antinori; the American historian Leon Adams; writers Roy Andries de
Groot and Gerald Boyd; California wine makers Joe Heitz and Warren
Winiarski; UC Davis professors Maynard Amarine, Denny Webb and Ann
Noble. Their palates, unfamiliar with the unique wines of the Northwest
(especially in the early years) were always impressed by the quality of
the top bottles; they were also unafraid to criticize flawed wines.
Today,
the number of wineries in Oregon, Washington and Idaho has grown from
fewer than 100 to nearly 1,000. The Wine Society's casual, chatty summer
festival has morphed into the tony Auction of Northwest Wines, one of
the nation's biggest charity auctions. The Washington Wine Commission
(which didn't even exist when the Society started) runs a two-day Wine
& Food Festival; there's also a privately run Seattle Food &
Wine Experience. There are smaller festivals in every valley and
hillside of the wine country, and wine maker dinners at restaurants
across the region. And no shortage of independent, benchmark judgings,
either, from the Platinum Wine Awards run by Andy Perdue of Wine Press
Northwest, to the high-profile Seattle Wine Awads (and its companion,
the Oregon Wine Awards) run by Rainier Club sommelier Christopher Chan,
who brings in a panel of top-name judges.
John
Bell, an engineer who spent his career working at Boeing while he made
wine in his Everett garage, is among those who regard the Wine Society's
work with fond nostalgia. Now the owner of a successful boutique
winery, Willis Hall, he's also a longtime Society board member who
appreciates what the Society has done as a catalyst for wine education
and appreciation, "to the point where that mission has now been taken up
by a plethora of individuals and groups."
"We are proud of our accomplishments," Bell says. "It's the end of an era, but it was truly a bright era, wasn't it?"
