Andrew Will winery

On Vashon Island, just a short ferry ride from Seattle, Andrew Will Winery has been quietly and steadily producing some of Washington State’s most highly regarded red wines since 1989. The estate is small, there is no tasting room for visitors, and its core focus has remained unchanged for over three decades: Bordeaux grape varieties, grown in a handful of carefully selected vineyards in eastern Washington State, are bottled under the names of the vineyards themselves.

History

Chris Camarda, a Seattle native, began winemaking as a hobby in 1987 and released his first commercial vintage in 1989. The winery's name is a combination of the names of his son Will and his nephew Andrew. The initial production was tiny: a 10-by-60-foot space where he produced around 2,000 cases, measuring them out with a tape measure. In 1994, he moved all production to a country estate on Vashon Island, where the winery remains to this day. His wife Annie played an active role in building the winery until her death from breast cancer in 2005. In 2013, Will Camarda, a geologist by training, joined his father full-time and is now involved in winemaking. Chris has also been named one of the world’s 50 most influential winemakers and is a co-owner of Champoux Vineyards, one of Washington State’s finest vineyards.

Vineyards

Andrew Will works with four vineyards, all of which are located in eastern Washington State. Champoux Vineyard and Discovery Vineyard are situated in the Horse Heaven Hills AVA wine region, Ciel du Cheval is on Red Mountain, and Two Blondes, the estate’s own vineyard, is in the Yakima Valley near Zilla. Two Blondes was planted in 2000, covers 30 acres and is named after Annie Kamard and Melody Fleckenstein, the wives of Chris’s business partner. The Champoux and Ciel du Cheval vineyards have been part of the story since the very first harvest. All the grapes are harvested by hand and transported by lorry westwards to Vashon, with the final leg of the journey completed by ferry.

Terroir

Eastern Washington is characterised by a semi-arid, almost desert-like climate, which contrasts sharply with the wetter and greener western part of the state. Summers here are hot and dry, nights are cool, and the growing season is short but intense. The Two Blondes vineyard is situated at an altitude of around 1,150 feet on a cooler site with a heat summation of approximately 2,200 degrees, which ensures a more gradual ripening than in the warmer parts of Washington and less susceptibility to the frosts that can affect the region.

The soils are a mixture of the Harwood, Burke and Will series, mainly silty loams formed from wind-blown loess on a hard calcareous-siliceous layer. Horse Heaven Hills and Red Mountain lend their own character, with the soil on Red Mountain being more gravelly and stony.

Grapes

The focus is on Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. All four varieties are planted at the Two Blondes vineyard, whilst other vineyards supply similar stock. Chris Camarda has always been interested in clonal selection, which was one of the reasons he originally wanted to have his own vineyard. Production is around 5,000–5,500 cases per year, so the volumes of each wine are modest.

Winemaking

The approach in the cellar is hands-off. All the berries are completely destemmed, fermented using indigenous yeasts in stainless steel tanks, and aged in French oak barrels, mostly second-use, with a proportion of new oak of around 25–35 per cent depending on the vintage and the wine. Since 2001, the best wines have been blends rather than single-varietal wines, as Chris believes that a blend expresses the vineyard’s character more clearly than a single grape variety. According to him, the aim is to allow the vineyards to express themselves, with moderate alcohol content and a structured, savoury style, rather than overt notes of oak or jammy fruit.

Wines

The flagship wines are single-vineyard red blends: Champoux, Ciel du Cheval, Discovery and Two Blondes, each of which is a unique Bordeaux-style blend characteristic of its plot. Sorella, a multi-vineyard blend, sits at the top of the range. Alongside these, the ‘Black Label’ range of single-varietal wines is produced from grapes not used in the vineyard blends. These wines are made for ageing and are compared by leading critics to some of America’s finest reds.