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Taste By Paul Gregutt

A Buty-ful Thing

Youthful energy and deep experience make this winery worth watching

THERE IS NOTHING about winemaking that doesn't take time and teach patience, from establishing a vineyard (or finding good grape sources) through fermentation, barrel aging, blending, bottling and cellaring to marketing the new "baby" while waiting for the rave reviews to roll in. For a new winery, it seems as if everything is on hold for the first few years — everything except the mounting debt.

It's a hard road, especially if you are doing it on a shoestring and aiming for the very highest quality. When I encounter a new winery, eager to show off its first release or two, I know how long they have waited for the moment to arrive. What I look for, apart from well-made, delicious wines, is consistency, steady improvement and an emerging sense of a polished style. I have found all three in the wines of Buty.

This small Walla Walla winery (it's pronounced "beauty") is on the cutting edge of quality and innovation. Caleb Foster and Nina Buty Foster founded their family business in 2000, but Caleb's winemaking experience dates back a decade. His résumé includes eight years with Rick Small at Woodward Canyon, winemaking positions at Mount Baker Winery and Glen Fiona, and further experience working crush in New Zealand and South Africa.

Along the way, he and Nina fine-tuned their ideas about the style of wines they wanted to make. They decided they would bootstrap the business on their own — "no investors, not even family." Early on, they received a tempting offer: a complete buyout of their stock in return for a prestigious wine-making job at a Walla Walla startup.

"We said no, we've started this, we're into it, we believe we're going to enjoy this, and we're not going to let it go," Caleb recalls. "We already had a taste of owning our work, and we were ruined," adds Nina. So they sucked it up and soldiered on, making their wines at five different locations in the first six years, using borrowed equipment and trading their labor and expertise in return.

"We rented everything," says Caleb. "If we didn't put it in the bottle, put a capsule on it and sell it, I didn't want to own it." Their limited resources were carefully allocated to purchasing the best possible grapes and hiring the best consultant they could find — Zelma Long. Long, who also has been working with J. Bookwalter Winery, was hired to help Buty build a better chardonnay.

The years at Woodward Canyon had left the Fosters excited about the potential of Washington chardonnay, but eager to work in a different style. "I wanted to get out from underneath Rick Small's shadow," says Caleb, "and making wines without oak was a way to do it." They began to explore ways to maximize flavors and textures without using new oak barrels, not just in chardonnay but in their sauvignon blanc/semillon blend and recently in their red wines, also.

The proof, as always, is in the bottle. Buty started out at a very competent level, but has consistently ramped it up from there. Throughout the couple's first five vintages they haven't yet failed to make a wine that was stylish and well-crafted. Each year, the wines gain something in terms of detail and precision; it's clear that the focus on specific vineyards and fermentation techniques is paying off. Buty wines, both white and red, regularly show the sort of nuance and depth that mark the world's best.

They are committed to keeping alcohol levels in check, striving for balance, elegance and extract. The wines blend subtle mineral, herbal and spice components in a style that is clean, a bit lean, polished, complex and powerful.

All Buty wines are made in very limited quantities, with total production at about 3,000 cases. This year, for the first time, the Fosters expect to crush and ferment at their own, tiny Walla Walla airport facility. Their star is on the rise. Restaurants and retailers around the country are aggressively seeking out Buty wines; they may be better known in New York than in their home state.

"We could make 10,000 cases tomorrow and sell all of it," says Caleb matter-of-factly. Do they want to grow? "The demand is there. But we have a new daughter, and we always wanted a very small winery." Then again, he muses, "every market wants more; and the fruit's there to get. So I struggle with that."

While he struggles, I suggest you find a bottle or two of Buty, before someone beats you to it.

Paul Gregutt writes the Wednesday wine column for The Seattle Times and covers Northwest wine for the Wine Enthusiast magazine. He can be reached at wine@seattletimes.com.