CENTRALIA, Wash. - Each day on Interstate 5, thousands of wine lovers roll right through the largest town in Lewis County unaware they are less than a mile from tasting two of the finest wines made in the Northwest.
More alarming is that some who arrive at Bob and Flossie Heymann's tasting room leave just as ignorant, victimized by their own prejudiced palate.
"We have people who come in, and go, 'Oh, fruit wines,' and just walk out of the store," Flossie said. "We just look at them and smile. Everybody has their own tastes, but we do recognize that people look down their nose at the fruit wines."
These aren't your vin ordinaire offerings, though. But then Heymann Whinery isn't your typical winery.
Yep, that's "winery" with an "h."
Heymann Whinery's NV Cranberry Wine captured a gold medal at the 2008 Capital Food and Wine Festival, gold at the 2008 Northwest Wine Summit, and then a double gold at the 2008 Wine Press Northwest Platinum Competition. It also was recommended on Northwest Public Radio last year as an ideal wine for the Thanksgiving table.
"Occasionally, those people who don't like fruit wines will take a taste, and they will admit they are good," said Bob, the winemaker.
This year, his 2008 crop of cranberries yielded another gold at the Capital festival. However, best of show at the Capital went to another fruit wine - the Heymann NV Apricot Wine. Both received "Outstanding!" ratings via blind judgings by Wine Press Northwest. (The reviews are available on Page 89).
"There's definitely a market for fruit wines," said Flossie, who operates their downtown wine shop, which is open daily. "Even people who say they don't like grape wine will taste the fruit wines and will walk away with at least a bottle. The fruit wines don't have the tannin taste or the alcohol they associate with the grape wines."
That would begin to explain the success the Heymanns are enjoying. They launched their winery in 2004 by producing 250 cases. Last year, production reached 800 cases, which includes their grape wines. He makes wine from Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gewürz-traminer, Merlot, Riesling and Syrah. Sale of grape wines vs. fruit wines is about even, they said.
"We have people come through and they always seem to like the grape wines, but they can get a Cabernet anywhere. They can't always get a good apricot wine, though," he said.
They receive fruit from throughout Washington. The coastal town of Grayland produces the cranberries. Apricots and cherries come from Wapato. They drive to Burlington for the raspberries, blackberries and strawberries.
"Some wineries use a Riesling base and then add fruit juice to it," he said. "Not us. If it says 'Cranberry,' then it's 100 percent cranberry. I don't want people to pick up a glass of our wine and wonder, 'What fruit is this?' "
Wine judges and critics base much of their opinions of fruit wines upon the balance of sugar and acid. Bob seems to have that mastered.
Success making fruit wines, particularly cranberry, is no small feat, according to Gordon Taylor, winemaker for Daven Lore Winery in Prosser, Wash. A Canadian national, Taylor worked several years for Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.
"Think of making wine from lemons and you get an idea of how acidic these little guys are," Taylor said. "Even cranberry juice cocktail is only 27 percent juice from cranberry - 100 percent would rip your face off."
Heymann uses only water to dilute his cranberry juice. Most wineries use Riesling as the base. And it requires one pound of cranberries to produce a tablespoon of juice. He needs to add sugar just to keep the fermentation going.
"There are 11⁄2 pounds of cranberries in each bottle, and the fermentation is very slow because there is so much acidity," Heymann said. "While it might take a week to ferment grapes, it will take a month to ferment cranberries."
There are other pitfalls to making the fruit wines.
"Winemaking equipment is designed for grapes, so what I struggle with most is the filtering," he said. "There's a lot more sediment with the apricots and cranberries. Grape wine will settle out and clear so much faster than apricot. I can filter a grape wine once, where with apricot it takes three filterings."
The Heymanns continue to rely on Allen Devlin in Grayland for their cranberries, but this year they plan to use a fruit vendor for their other needs - which don't include pears.
"Pears don't have a lot of flavor," Bob said. "I've tried pear wine, and I didn't care for it. We love to make a wine that you can get a lot of flavor from."
To achieve that, they buy their fruit frozen - except the apricots.
"Most frozen fruit is easier to process than fresh," he said. "And that way, we can make several batches throughout the year."
That batch method means the Heymanns don't offer vintage bottlings for their fruit wines, but it allows them to offer more vibrant and fresh-tasting wines year-round. It's a painstaking process, though.
"We will have some help stoning the apricots this year," Bob said. "Flossie and I spent 10 hours apiece removing the stones."
Flossie added, "There are 4,773 pits in 1,000 pounds of apricots. We saved them, counted them and had a contest in the store. It was amazing the guesses we had."
Stoning is another reason Bob prefers making wine from vinifera grapes, which he sources from Harold Pleasant in Flossie's hometown of Prosser. And the Heymann 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon - his first commercial vintage - garnered an "Outstanding!" from Wine Press Northwest in 2008. His NV Raspberry Chardonnay earned a bronze medal at last year's Capital judging.
"I'm not that crazy about the sweeter wines, so I have Flossie taste those when I'm making them. We won't release a wine that doesn't have the Flossie seal of approval," Bob said with a chuckle.
There's a lot of levity between the Heymanns when they discuss the many phases of their business. And that includes the name, which flummoxes computer spellcheckers.
"It began as a joke, and I tell people we're the only ones who spell it right," Flossie said with a chuckle. "We came up with that label before we got our license. When we sent it in to the state, we sent it in with the 'h' crossed out because the crossed-out h is really what we wanted."
Fortunately, the Heymann's label ended up in the hands of a bureaucrat with a sense of humor.
"They said it was unique and told us, 'You should keep it. It's cute,' " Flossie explained. "So the federal license at the house is the only one that does not have the 'h' in it. We had to get a second federal license because we are moving our shop and expanding our winery, and that federal license DOES have the 'h' in it."
Still, it's a serious business relying on various factors to make it profitable. When they first opened, their grape wines weren't available, and the fruit wines weren't selling well, so their gift shop includes supplies for those making beer and wine at home. He also teaches winemaking.
"This isn't the wine capital of the world over here," Bob said with a chuckle. "You have to pull together everything you can to make ends meet, and there's a lot of interest in the home winemaking and beer-making, and that part of the business seems to be growing."
Bob, 59, a production manager for a fiberglass and composite company during the week, looks forward to the day when he can focus all of his attention on the winery, play more golf and spend more than just weekends with his customers.
"Nobody comes into a winery looking to have a bad time," said Bob, who fled the Los Angeles rat race and embraced the Northwest in 1970 after being stationed at Fort Lewis.
Flossie runs the day-to-day operations after retiring as director of custodial and grounds at Centralia Community College.
"I traded a 9-to-5 job for a 24-7 job with no paycheck," Flossie chuckled. "We're not taking any trips to Italy just yet."
This spring, they moved to the next block, stepping up to a location with two storefronts and improved production facilities.
"We will be transferring wine from our home in the next month, so our neighbors in Chehalis will be excited," Bob deadpanned. "The wines have been in a 13-foot by 25-foot space that most people call a garage, but it's never had a car in it."
Their wines are available at a few restaurants in Centralia and Olympia as well as liquor stores in Chehalis and Tumwater, but 90 percent of their sales occur in their tasting room. That's where the profit is.
"My whole theory has been to not overload ourselves," he said. "Friends and customers give us a bad time constantly because we keep moving our store, but at least what we've got is paid for."
The Heymanns also get teased about their homespun label.
"We talk about making changes, but we went back to this," he said. "We thought of putting caricatures of us or some animal or something else on the label, but we're trying to personalize it. And how much more personal can you get if you put your picture on it?"
Life got deadly serious at their retail store this past January as the Heymanns feared they'd lose their business to the flooding Skookumchuck River.
"We sandbagged the front and back of the winery and spent most parts of two or three nights waiting for the water," Flossie recalled.
Bob added, "The Skookumchuck went the other direction. We lucked out. Others did not."
This spring, they celebrated the third annual Chehalis Valley Wine Tour, which includes Centralia, Chehalis, Onalaska and Tenino and features Birchfield, Scatter Creek, Weatherwax, Wells and Widgeon Hill wineries.
"Most people don't realize there are six local wineries, and we were the third one," Flossie said.
Fans of Heymann Whinery have something new to look forward to in 2010. Bob will make a commercial strawberry wine for the first time, but the process will be akin to that of overcoming a "hair of the dog that bit you" experience.
"In Germany, I overindulged on strawberry wine," Bob admitted. "I was 17 years old and drank anything they put in front of me. I've made it since then, but I always gave it away because of what happened to me in Germany."
If it passes Flossie's taste test, then the strawberry wine figures to be as good as gold, too.
Heymann Whinery, 212 N. Tower Ave., Centrailia, Wash., 98531, 360-623-1106, www.heymannwhinery.com.
Eric Degerman is Wine Press Northwest's managing editor.
Print
E-Mail
