Winemaking Gets Personal at Kirkland's Northwest Cellars

TEN YEARS AGO, Bob Delf was just another software guy in town. Having transferred from Vancouver, B.C., to Seattle in 1978 to open an office for Columbia Computing Services, he was practically a native by the time he was running his own CEO coaching business, Strategic Consulting.

Then he received a privately labeled bottle of wine as a gift from a corporate client and his career path changed.

“It was so disgusting! I wondered why anyone would put their company name on it and give it as a gift,” says Delf, 62, who knew he could do better.

In September of 2004, Delf funneled all of his business know-how into , one of only two producing wineries in Kirkland (the other being Finn Hill Winery). The goal was to make great wine that could be privately labeled for what Delf thought would be his niche market: weddings and real estate agents.

“Real estate agents love seeing their name in print,” he says.

That didn't pan out so well. We all know how the real estate market tanked, forcing agents to forgo profit-cutting costs like privately labeled wine. Fortunately, other clients emerged.

Corporate orders comprise the bulk of income for Northwest Cellars. A PR firm in Chicago recently ordered 54 cases of Northwest Cellars wine featuring their company’s logo as a gift for each employee. Personal sales, hotels and private clubs make up the rest of Delf’s profit producing sales.

But Delf isn’t all about profit. A large portion of Northwest Cellars' product goes to nonprofit organizations. He sells the wine at cost to these organizations who, in turn, put on their own labels and resell it as a fundraising tool.

With 3,000 cases per year, Northwest Cellars is not technically a boutique winery like its neighbors down the hill in Woodinville. But it is a very small business employing only a couple of people, including Delf and Kathleen, his wife of 2.5 years, whom he met in a wine class. Delf is hoping ultimately to boost production to 10,000 cases.

Why doesn’t he market the wine to restaurants or grocery stores?

“That’s what everybody else does and I don’t see how to make money with that model.”

WHAT HE DOES love is seeing the surprise on a person’s face when they discover how great his wine tastes. That’s where the tasting room comes into play. Though the grapes come from five different viticulture areas around the state and the wine-making is done in Grandview, it’s the tasting rooms in Spokane and Kirkland that make loyal customers.

And why did Delf set up shop in Kirkland, instead of Woodinville like everybody else?

“Because I already had the space,” says Delf, who was using a Totem Lake business park suite for wine storage and an office.

Delf would love to have three or four more wineries locate within the business park, to make it a tasting destination and draw in more potential customers.

Northwest Cellars is currently enticing customers through social media deals like Groupon and food and wine pairing events. On Friday evenings, Delf brings in local Indian restaurant for a $50 tasting event, pairing five wines with five dishes.

While the business end of the winery takes up much of Delf’s time, he relishes blending day with his wife. Each year, Delf makes a unique red blend called Intrigue. Robert Smasney, the consulting winemaker in Grandview, sends several different red varieties that Delf uses to create the year’s blend. After tasting each wine, Delf chooses the best as the dominate base, then the second best and so on until the year’s Intrigue is complete.

“A lot of winemakers are very scientific about blending, trying to raise or lower the pH...that sort of thing,” says Delf, who chooses a more intuitive path.

He must have the knack, though. The 2006 Intrigue won the Sommelier Journal’s Wine of the Year award in 2009, among other gold and silvers in various wine competitions.

Delf likes to hold onto his wines longer than most wineries, which he thinks often release wines too young.

“If you buy a bottle of wine and the winery tells you to bottle-age it for another five years, why didn’t they hold onto it for those five years?” he asks. “I want my wine to be ready to drink the day a customer buys it.”

During our interview, Delf decides to uncork the first bottle of  2007 Intrigue, allowing me to have the first sip on the planet. The flavor explodes!

“Do you think it’s ready?” Delf asks me, his tasting room manager and photographer Richard Duval, who smiles at his luck in showing up just at the right time.

“Well, it could probably use about five more minutes,” Duval teases, swirling his sample before it disappears down his throat, happily delaying discussion of his photo proofs spread across the tasting bar.

Choosing six proofs for the Artist Series Label series can clearly wait.

The Northwest Cellars tasting room is open Saturday and Sunday, 12-5 p.m. or by appointment, call 425-825-WINE.