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CapitalPress.com
Friday, September 10, 2021
Applegate House Vineyard: Avennia: A rising wine-making star in Woodinville
Wine with Oregon history
By HEATHER SMITH THOMAS
For the Capital Press
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Jessica Applegate, owner of
the Applegate House Vineyard
near Yoncalla, Ore., shows off
the label of the Applegate
wine. The Applegate House is
featured on the label.
gate said. “It’s a way for this old
house to go into the future while
still respecting its past.”
Applegate plans to eventually
resume tours of the house and the
vineyard and to sell Applegate
wine with those proceeds used to
maintain the two-story home.
“We want more of a boutique
vineyard, not a mass produc-
tion operation,” she said. “We’re
looking for quality over quantity,
keeping it small and manageable
for us and making sure we’re fol-
lowing our values for it.”
Wood managed the vineyard
for its fi rst fi ve years, and Isa-
bel Newlin has been the vine-
yard manager for the past
two years.
Avennia Wine
Marty Taucher and Chris Peterson blending wine trials at Avennia
Wine in Woodinville, Wash.
classes on wines of the world.
Chris has traveled to all the major
wine growing regions of France, Tus-
cany and Sicily where regional wine,
vineyard tours and relationships with
other winemakers inspired his wine-
making practices.
Eventually, he worked at
DeLille Cellars at Woodinville and
spent seven years helping make
some of Washington state’s most
heralded and award-winning wines.
After he and Marty met, they laid
the foundation for Avennia. When
Marty asked Chris to review his
draft winery business plan in 2009, it
coincided with Chris’ desire to start
a new chapter in his own winemak-
ing career.
They chose the name Avennia
for their new winery, the Latin name
for the city of Avignon in southern
France. Chris has always admired
French wines and their balance
between fruit and non-fruit charac-
ter. He envisioned making Wash-
ington wines that portrayed this bal-
ance, yet still remain unmistakably
Washington.
Their respective strengths and
experiences enabled them to forge
an eff ective partnership, with their
passionate commitment to signa-
ture vineyards and natural processes
in the cellar, resulting in timeless
world-class wines.
With support and input from
Chris’ wife Lauren, and Marty’s
wife Colleen, Avennia became a
reality. By the end of 2010, 16 tons
of fruit were transformed into wine
(released in 2012) and they had rela-
tionships in place with some of the
state’s best growers, to secure the
best fruit in the region for future
vintages.
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YONCALLA, Ore. — Pio-
neer Jesse Applegate planted
a 12-acre vineyard in 1876 on
property his family had home-
steaded 20 years earlier.
That vineyard was eventu-
ally destroyed by an insect infes-
tation. But now, over a century
later, a young vineyard is matur-
ing on a southeast-facing slope
of the property a couple miles
east of Yoncalla, Ore., in north-
ern Douglas County.
In 2014, Jessica Applegate,
a sixth generation descendant
of the Applegate family, and
Nathan Wood, owner of Elkton
Vineyard Management, prepped
and planted the 3-acre Apple-
gate House Vineyard on what
had previously been sheep pas-
ture and hay ground. There are 2
acres of Pinot noir and 1 acre of
Albarino.
“You plant what you love to
drink if it works for the land,”
Applegate said.
The vineyard is across the
backyard of the Applegate
House, the oldest home in Ore-
gon owned by the same fam-
ily since its construction in the
early 1850s. The house is on the
National Register of Historic
Places.
“I think of this as a steward-
ship project,” Jessica Apple-
WOODINVILLE, Wash. —
Winemaker Chris Peterson tells peo-
ple that the success of this venture —
which began in 2010 — is the result
of two people with complementary
skills who met at a fortuitous time.
Chris had the winemaking skills,
after many years working at DeLille
Cellars. He started the Avennia proj-
ect with Marty Taucher, a local exec-
utive who wanted to branch out into
the wine trade.
Andrew Bradshaw, who joined
the operation in 2016 to open and
operate their tasting room and
become manager of retail operations
and services, says the two partners
had a similar vision.
Marty graduated from Oregon
State University in 1977 and started
working at Microsoft in 1984. He
led their public relations and event
marketing teams for 10 years and his
work involved a lot of travel around
the world. During those travels, his
interest in wine and winemaking
grew. He still enjoys seeking out
new vintners and wine styles from
all over the world.
Following his passion, he took
classes at South Seattle Community
College and graduated with a degree
in wine. In 2009, he became a crush
intern at DeLille Cellars, where he
met Chris.
Chris graduated from the Univer-
sity of Washington, and then became
the fi rst graduate of Walla Walla
Community College’s Enology and
Viticulture program. Later he taught
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