A Top-Tier Local Winery to Set Your Sights on
A Top-Tier Local Winery to Set Your Sights on
Woodinville has earned its reputation as the region’s premier wine destination, with more than 130 wineries and tasting rooms across four districts. From small-batch producers to nationally recognized labels, the experience blends craft and setting. It’s a place where a day of tasting turns into something memorable.
by Jeff “Wick” Wicklund
As serendipitous happenstance and just dumb luck would have it, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to see, sniff, sip, and savor some of the best wines made on our planet by iconic producers and from stellar vintages with monikers such as “Grand Cru,” “Super Tuscan,” or “Cult Wine.” Along with these lofty designations come the obligatory, head-shaking fees, which, for the most part, I’ve also been blessed to delegate. I liken these fleeting but glorious, viniferous adventures into the mystic to a visit to Las Vegas. You know it’s a world that exists, and it’s intoxicating to dip your toe in the pool, but how does it square with your personal reality? I’m asked often, “So, Wick, what’s your favorite wine?” My typical response is, “In what world?”
“Affordability” seems to be a catchy, popular term these days, and it’s been at the core of my wine evaluations for as long as fermented grapes have tickled my tonsils.
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The old cost/benefit analysis, as it pertains to wine, does require points of reference. This brings to mind an old, classic jazz tune by the incomparable Les McCann, “Compared to what?” I’m just trying to make it real.
In my real world, the bliss found from discovery is the self-perpetuating fire that keeps this Wick lit. Finding new wines from around the globe that over deliver is always a delight. But being reminded year in and year out that there are old and new friends right in my backyard who consistently produce world-class, affordable wines is another level of inspiration.
A local, inspiring winemaker, Sean Boyd of Sightglass Cellars in the Artisan Hill district of Woodinville, is that guy.
I first met Sean Boyd about two decades ago when he took the reins of Head Winemaker at Woodinville Wine Cellars. Wine is figuratively and literally in Sean’s blood, as he grew up immersed in wine. His father, Gerald Boyd, was the Editor of The Wine Spectator in its earliest days when it was a newspaper. The Boyd family subsequently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Gerald went on to be the Winewriter for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was pre-ordained that Sean would follow the path of wine and, in one capacity or another, be his life’s vocation. Before Sean was even legal to drink wine, he was selling wine at The Liquor Barn in San Mateo, California. Fate, guided by his father’s connections, led Sean to Australia, where he cut his teeth making wine at the iconic Penfolds.
“This is what sealed the deal for me to pursue winemaking as my life’s mission,” Sean proclaimed.
While being the chief architect and builder of noteworthy wines at Woodinville Wine Cellars, Sean crafted some of the state’s best unoaked Chardonnay from Conner Lee Vineyard, a stellar, value-driven Bordeaux blend called “Little Bear Creek” and a reserve Cabernet Sauvignon that became something of a “folklore” wine for Washington State. It apparently was entered into a blind tasting at Compass Wines in Anacortes, where it was pitted against one of my afore-mentioned “cult wines” of California with a rather lofty name–”Screaming Eagle,” which currently tips the scale north of $3,000 a bottle! Sean’s wine prevailed, which prompted Proprietor Doug Charles to refer to it as the “Eagle Eater.”
Sean eventually left Woodinville Wine Cellars and launched his own winery with his wife, Kristin, taking with him coveted vineyard contacts and contracts. Sightglass Cellars (named for a tool used to identify clarity in wine) was born.
On a recent visit and tasting with Sean and Kristin at the Sightglass Winery, I was reminded again how refreshing it is to rediscover excellent, affordable wines crafted with such competency and care by a humble, real Artisan.
“I’m Irish, so I like to talk, and I happen to make wine, so I get to talk a lot about that, but I really don’t like to talk that much about myself. I just let the wines do that for me,” Sean quipped.
