A massive arched door that’s hand-hewn from solid knotty alder serves as the main entryway to Mike Haddox’s dream — The Winemaker’s Loft.
It took nearly three years and $2 million to build. Two of the six tasting rooms within the Tuscan-style, V-shaped villa at Vintners Village in Prosser, Wash., still await tenants. But for Haddox, completing the project and opening the doors has been a healing process.
Haddox set out to make his good life better still when he took on the project. He was general manager for Silver Lake Winery in Zillah, Wash., and winemaker for Glen Fiona in Walla Walla.
He had a supportive, beautiful wife, Dana Arevalo-Haddox, and two teenage children.
Yet he yearned to put his name on something he could call his own. And Dana knew how to balance her ambitious husband.
“She was reality and could pull me back,” he said. “I’d known her since I was in eighth grade, and we were a really awesome team.”
So in 2004, Haddox bought the land for his dream from the Port of Benton and left Silver Lake to build the 10,000-square-foot upscale winery incubator and its six tasting rooms.
A few days later, though, Haddox’s dream was derailed: Dana was diagnosed with leukemia.
She had not felt well for several months, but physicians hadn’t been able to come up with the source of her illness. Early visits to their family doctor proved fruitless, so Dana went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist in Yakima. When he told Dana her symptoms were because of a case of mononucleosis, the couple rejoiced.
“He said to go home, sleep, drink lots of water and eat, and in a month she’ll feel better,” Haddox said. “We were so excited.”
A month went by, but Dana didn’t get any better.
They went back to their family doctor, who did more tests and discovered Dana’s illness.
“He called us a few days later and told us he was sorry to have to break it to us over the phone, but that we needed to get to the hospital now,” said Haddox.
There were many nights during the next few years that Haddox would spend in a hospital room, next to his wife.
Dana went through her first round of chemotherapy two days later, and the couple was ready to fight. Doctors told them her type of leukemia had a good recovery rate. Haddox was determined to keep his wife’s spirits strong and help her fight.
“The kind we had was the most beatable, so we said, ‘Yeah, it will be a sucky year, but we’ll get through it,’ ” Haddox recalled.
When Dana’s hair began to fall out because of the chemo, Haddox shaved his wife’s head for her, then his own, in solidarity.
He spent every night with Dana, whether she was home or in a stark, white hospital room. Her parents stayed with her during the day. For the first time in his life, Haddox learned to take care of a house and his autistic children on a daily basis.
“I realized how hard her job really was. She had it way harder than I ever did,” Haddox said.
Despite good odds and strong resolve, Dana’s health continued to deteriorate.
“Each session (of chemo) got tougher and tougher to get through,” he said.
And the hardest thing for Haddox was watching the woman he loved, sickened by the disease.
“I couldn’t even rub her back to make her feel better — her body just physically hurt,” Haddox said.
Dana died in 2006. She left behind a much different man.
“Before she got sick, I never cried or talked about my emotions,” he said. “But when she passed, it was like a sea of emotions flowed. For the first year, I couldn’t talk about it without getting choked up.”
He’s rebuilding his life, and the Winemaker’s Loft has been an essential part of that.
“If I didn’t have the winery going when she passed, I think I would have fallen into a hole,” he said. “It kept me focused — on my future and on my kids’ future. Nobody cares about what’s happening in your personal life, just that you do what you say you are going to do and pay your bills.”
And between the illness and the winery, the bills were mounting and so was the pressure.
Haddox accepted that he wouldn’t finish the project himself, so he gathered some backers. And in the fall of 2007, Haddox opened those heavy doors to the Winemaker’s Loft, revealing the tasting room for his Michael Florentino Cellars label — the Florentino name a tribute to Dana’s family.
A loosely formed stone fireplace runs up a tall wall in the corner of the room, and ornate European-style furniture makes visitors feel is if they’ve entered a castle. The tasting room also is where Haddox offers the Wyndstone Winery wines, a label he started with his financial partners.
The loft also is home to Masquerade Wine Co., owned by Bill and Jennifer Kimmerly, who have been making wine since 2004 and crushing it at another Columbia Valley winery.
The Kimmerlys were making wines with the goal of one day building their own tasting room, an expense that was years out of reach. But the monthly rent payment was something they could afford, Bill Kimmerly said.
Plus, they not only get the equipment they need and storage facilities, but Haddox also is always within reach, ready to mentor his tenants when they ask.
“That’s been invaluable,” Kimmerly said.
That personal touch always was part of Haddox’s business plan.
“I’m not the first guy to do an incubator,” Haddox said. “They are popping up everywhere. But I wanted to give my tenants something more than a building.”
Harry Alhadeff, founder of Apex Cellars, moved the label’s longtime tasting room from Sunnyside to the Winemaker’s Loft in late August.
Nearby are more wineries, including Willow Crest, Thurston Wolfe, Olsen Estates and Airport Estates.
“I’m convinced it will be a destination draw,” Alhadeff predicts.
There’s much more in store for this year, as Haddox’s other tenants — Tasawik Cellars and Maison Bleue Winery — are scheduled to open their tasting rooms.
And Haddox plans to expand — building a 15,000-square-foot production facility behind the Loft as well as another adjacent incubator.
“Ultimately, it would be a place for the tenants to grow into,” he said. “They could start out in The Winemaker’s Loft and as their production outgrew this facility, they would move over there, making more room here for new startups.”
He’s also partnering with developers in Yakima to start the New World Wine Co., a studio concept similar to the Loft, but larger — about 20,000 square feet — that will be in the center of a new retail development being built off 16th Avenue in Yakima.
More importantly, there’s a fiancée and a baby.
“I’m starting to get my equilibrium back,” he said. “There’s not a day that passes when I don’t think about Dana or what she might think of what I’m doing.”
And there are times when he believes Dana is there at the Winemaker’s Loft watching him. e
* Mary Hopkin is a longtime journalist who covers the wine and grape industries for the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash. She is a frequent contributor to Wine Press Northwest.
* Jackie Johnston, a freelance photojournalist, is a regular contributor and the page designer for Wine Press Northwest. Her Web site is WineCountryCreations.com
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