Food & Drink
From Soil to Bottle
A love of wine becomes a career for vineyard manager and Dumas Station winemaker Jay DeWitt.
Jay DeWitt loves Cabernet Sauvignon. That's good, because his work as a vineyard manager and winemaker allows DeWitt to guide the process of making Dumas Station Cab (and its other wines) from beginning to delicious end. "Like a lot of winemakers, I started making wine in the garage as a hobby," says DeWitt. "Now wine is my full time ‘hobby'."
After studying agronomy at WSU, DeWitt began a career in farming and slowly found his way to doing what he loves. Today he is the manager of the Minnick Hills Vineyards, near Walla Walla. He is also co-owner, as well as winemaker, at Dumas Station Winery, near Dayton.
All of Dumas Station's wine is "Estate" wine. "That means that we have control over the growing of the grapes," says DeWitt. He selects about 25 percent of the production at Minnick Hills to be used in Dumas Station wines. About seventy percent of their wine is Cabernet, with most of the rest of their output being Merlot.
Dumas Station's wine is available only in the Pacific Northwest, with much of it sold in Southeast Washington. "We sell lots of our wine in Dayton," says DeWitt. "People in Dayton have been great supporters."
In Dayton, Dumas Station wine is served at Patit Creek Restaurant, the Weinhard Café, Manila Bay Asian Cafe and Skye Book and Brew. Bottles can be purchased at the Country Cupboard Bakery. It is also served in several restaurants in Portland and Seattle.
In 1897, a schoolteacher from Waitsburg named J. L. Dumas planted an apple orchard in the Touchet River valley between Waitsburg and Dayton. He called it Pamona Ranch, after the Greek goddess of fruit and trees.
Dumas also built a large apple packing plant at the orchard. The orchard and packing plant were operated continually by the Dumas family until the 1960s. In the 1980s the land was converted to wheat and grain farming.
In 1991, DeWitt and his father, a Walla Walla area wheat farmer, purchased the packing plant facility and ran a seed processing operation there for about 15 years. As Jay's interest in wine developed, he thought that the site, next to the railroad tracks, would be an ideal place to make wine. DeWitt says the location of the winery inspired the name and the labels on their bottles, which feature a train theme.
Jay and his business partner, Doug Harvey, began making wine in one of the buildings at the seed plant in 2003 and released their first 400 cases of wine in 2005. The partners soon expanded their output, and now produce 1,000 cases annually. "We'll probably stick with that for awhile," DeWitt says.
Since seed processing is no longer done at the facility, DeWitt says he is encouraging other winemakers to consider operating in the old packing plant. "We have a lot more space here than we'll ever use," he says. "It's a great place for making wine."
What does DeWitt like most about his work? "It's very special to be able to follow the grapes from the soil all the way to the finished product that people consume," he says. "Not many jobs in agriculture offer that.
"It's fun, because when I drink the wine I can actually taste a lot of the decisions I've made in the final product."
Visit the Dumas Station Winery website.