Stottle Winery [May 2020]

Welcome back to Enumclaw, Washington for the summer!! This time I landed myself an assignment a little closer to “home” in Tacoma at St Joseph’s Medical Center!! I enjoyed this commute much better than last summer when I went all the way to Seattle!! HA!! I really enjoyed the people here and it was a nice place to work. You have actually met some of my awesome co-workers when I wrote about Abbe Vineyards. You will be seeing more of them this summer, since they are winos right along with me!! Hahaha!! The covid restrictions are starting to ease off a little at this point... except for [the rather large] King County. This county is where I just so happen to be living and working.

Our adorable little town of Enumclaw has set up tents for the local restaurants to be able to serve and operate completely outside, but no such luck with any of the wineries. It’s been more than a several months [which feels like forever!!] since I was able to go out and have a “real live” wine tasting. I’m racking my brain to remember how I found this little winery [as I said last week, in the next county over] that was doing actual wine tasting!! It was about halfway between my where my friend Amy lived [who I met last summer at UW in Seattle, and who you've met several times before] and us. I called her to see if she and Betsey wanted to meet up in person for some wine fun!!

Greetings from Lacey, WA and Thruston County!! Stottle Winery was opened in 2010 by husband/wife team, Josh and Amy Stottlemyer. [hence the winery name... Stottle] Prior to making the leap to follow a dream into the wine industry, Josh owned a web design company in Olympia. Amy is still a full-time teacher [of grade 7] but helps out at the winery when time allows. Josh is as passionate about education as he is about wine and has studied at the Northwest Wine Academy. He also loves the sales and marketing portion of owning a winery and interacting with people for part of his work day.

As you can see from the photos below, it was a beautiful to be out and about in a public place drinking some wine!! The sun was shining, we had our "paddles" full of a wine tasting, I mean who could ask for more!? [Betsey approves!! LOL] Everyone is doing it now, [or something similar] but this was the first time I saw a flight presented in this manner. This was so you could be served all your wine choices for your tasting all at once. No going back and forth to the bar for the next taste. I loved it!! I actually prefer when wine tasting are carried out in this way. I can then taste them all and then drink them in the order I like them, saving the best taste for the last taste!!

Amy and Josh are not only proud that they followed their dream to start a winery, but they are also very proud of their tasting room atmosphere. Believing that a comfortable and stylish place to mingle and relax, is what makes the wine tasting experience feel so personal. Thurston County has multiple wineries and the Stottlemyre’s would love for this area to be compared to the Woodinville winery scene. They are trying to work with the other wineries in this territory to put together a local winery trail map. Showing local and visiting wine lovers alike, that you do not need to travel so far north to Woodinville, in order to taste quality, delicious wine!!

The Stottlemyer's love living and working in the Olympia area. They also like to use local vineyards to get their grapes. They work with Elerding Canyon Vineyard in Yakima Valley [do you remember hearing about this valley?? It was where we stopped for my first Washington winery!?] to make their Viognier wine. They get fruit for their Syrah, Mourvedre, and Tempranillo wines from 6 Prong Vineyard, in Horse Heaven Hills. The Cabernet Sauvignon grapes come from Dineen Vineyard in Yakima Valley. [yet again] They feel that "a sculptor must find the statue incased in the stone, so must a winemaker find the perfect expression of that grape."

As you can see from the above photo, we really enjoyed the Tempranillo. We weren't ready for our wine tasting date to end, so we bought a bottle and shared it, near the parking lot at the picnic tables!! No complaints from Betsey.. or Shawn!! Haha!!

Next week, Wine with Wixy is taking a road trip to visit some ballooning friends in Montana!! You have already met Deb [a fellow #pilotwife] in Phoenix and you don’t want to miss out on hearing about all the fun we find, and trouble we can get ourselves into hanging out  in Kalispel!! Haha!!

Cheers to you my wine loving friends, and TTFN!!