Taste
By Paul Gregutt
Sons of the Pioneers
From struggle and sweat, Bookwalter wines are born again
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 Courtesy of the Bookwalter family Jerry and Jean Bookwalter opened their winery in 1983, when their son, John (at right), was only old enough to help with chores. Now 40, John has taken on a key role in the business after calling for its complete reinvention. |
WE HAVE REACHED a crucial turning point in the evolution of modern-era Washington wines. The men and women who pioneered the growth of the industry in the 1970s and '80s are nearing retirement; their sons and daughters are beginning to take the reins.
Such transitions are rarely automatic and almost never easy. I will always remember the words of a California vintner, whose son had recently come into the business after meandering around for a number of post-college years because he wanted, as his father explained, "to do his own thing." What brought him back? I inquired.
The vintner looked at me with a bemused half-grin. "He decided my thing was wa-a-ay better than his thing."
John Bookwalter, now 40, reached the same decision after a post-college decade working as a marketer/manager for Gallo, Winterbrook and Coors. The Bookwalters — John and parents Jerry and Jean — had moved to Washington state from California in 1976, when Jerry was hired to manage Sagemoor Farms, then the largest independently-owned vineyard in the state.
Less than 30 years ago there were roughly a dozen wineries and maybe 3,000 acres of wine grapes in all of Washington. Jerry Bookwalter was concerned about the periodic arctic blasts that could wipe out a vineyard, but his main worry was where could he sell all these grapes?
He cultivated dozens of home winemakers, as well as wineries as far away as California and Michigan. Gary Figgins (Leonetti Cellar) and Rick Small (Woodward Canyon) were among the customers who made their first vintages with Sagemoor grapes.
J. Bookwalter is at 894 Tulip Lane in Richland, Benton County. The phone number is 877-667-8300; the Web site is www.bookwalterwines.com.Live music is offered Wednesday through Saturday nights, and the tasting room is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Notes on a few wines now available:
2004 Riesling ($16). Succulent and fragrant with blossoms, sweet peach, mango and pear.
2002 "Chapter One" Meritage ($68). Layered and complex with streaks of pencil lead, licorice and charcoal around dense black fruits and sweet tannins.
2002 Cabernet Sauvignon ($38). Power and structure built upon tangy red fruits and a spicy frame, with a finish of licorice, cedar, tar and leaf.
2003 Merlot ($36). Smooth, supple and silky; inky to the eye and thick against the glass. Chocolate, coffee bean, cherry and cassis.
"Lot 18" Red Wine ($20). Soft, rich and complex with raspberry/boysenberry fruit and hints of leaf, black tea and baking chocolate.
John helped out summers. One year, he recalls, his job was to shoot birds. "Nothing else would deter the flocks of starlings. So I became the resident sharpshooter, all day every day, for the entire summer. For a kid 12 or 13 to walk around with a 12-gauge shotgun all day was pretty cool."
Jerry and wife Jean opened Bookwalter winery in 1983, mostly making off-dry riesling, chenin blanc and chardonnay. Though Jerry's focus had been as much on selling grapes as on growing them, he admits he didn't go out of his way to market his own wines.
"Jean and I were a mom-and-pop operation," he says. "If you called, we'd sell you wine; if you didn't, we probably wouldn't."
Nonetheless, the Bookwalter winery ran fairly smoothly; Jerry sourcing the grapes and making the wines, Jean serving as general manager. But problems with Bookwalter's other business ventures led to a bankruptcy filing in the early 1990s. Jerry was distracted and the wines suffered.
Still working for Winterbrook, John started thinking about how he might return to his parents' winery. Then Jerry injured his back and was laid up for a long while, which led to a family discussion about John coming into the business.
It was not your normal "Mom and Dad, there's something I'd like to ask you" conversation. "I did a full-blown SWOT analysis" — strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats — in PowerPoint and rolled it out to my folks," John recalls. The prognosis was not so good; John proposed a complete reinvention of the business.
The first year brought some challenges. For a decade, John had been managing salespeople in multistate territories; suddenly he was working as his dad's go-fer and running a forklift. A lot of sweat equity went into learning enough about the wine-making side of the business to see what needed to change.
"I remember sitting down with Gary Figgins early in 1998," he recalls. "We started tasting through barrels, and suddenly the light went off in my head. There's a difference between these barrels and the barrels we have in our cellar! It was what I call the 'Aha!' phase."
Wine-making consultant Zelma Long was contacted. "She stripped you naked and called the accurate shots," says John. The 2000 vintage marked their first vine-to-wine collaboration, and snazzy new packaging was introduced when the wines were released two years later. The transformation was startling; virtually overnight, Bookwalter had leaped to the front ranks of Washington red-wine producers.
The winery is now a $2 million company. Quality improvement is incremental but steady. "You don't just wave a magic wand and make it happen," says Jerry. "They say you can't put old heads on young shoulders; but maybe the old head can stand next to the young shoulders and some of it rubs off by osmosis."
He chuckles. At 65, Jerry Bookwalter has seen an entire industry come of age. But he knows the best is yet to come.
Paul Gregutt writes the Wednesday wine column for The Seattle Times and teaches wine-tasting seminars. He can be reached at tastesmart@aol.com.
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