Basalt Cellars

If you live in the Pacific Northwest and haven’t had the pleasure of visiting the twin cities of Lewiston-Clarkston, you need to put them on your “top 10 local places I need to visit” list. Why? How about history? This is where Lewis and Clark camped in 1805 as the guests of the Nez Perce. How about beauty? The Lewis-Clark Valley will make you pull the car over and get out to soak in the view. How about wine? At one time in the late 1800s, there was a bounty of vineyards producing premium wine grapes throughout the area. But with Prohibition, the fledging wine industry was dealt a deathblow. Now, however, a re-emergence of the vineyards and wineries is in the offing, beginning with Clarkston’s Basalt Cellars.

Owners Rick Wasem, Don McQuary, and Lynn DeVleming took enology classes at the Clarkston campus of Walla Walla Community College and discovered in one another a kindred passion for crafting wine. It wasn’t long before they bonded the winery, and Basalt Cellars was born in 2004. From just 200 cases produced in their first year, they have enjoyed phenomenal growth. In 2006, they crushed 26 tons of grapes from such vineyards as Willard, Seven Hills, Millbrandt Brothers, Sagemoor, and Pepper Bridge. That’s a lot of grape stomping. By the way, if you are wondering how they came up with the name Basalt Cellars, you simply need to take your nose out of the glass and look around. The surrounding hills are composed of basalt rock, the result of past volcanic activity.

Rick Wasem is Basalt Cellars’ chief winemaker and he is one of a half-dozen other Washington winemakers who have backgrounds as pharmacists. (More than a pharmacy, Rick’s drugstore, Wasem’s Drugs, is a key retail and home medical supplier for the Lewiston-Clarkston area and employs a small army of locals.) Rick has garnered medals at San Francisco and Tri-Cities wine tasting competitions for his impressive array of white and red wines. In addition to Bordeaux and Rhone-style wines, Basalt Cellars has produced an unusual lemberger port (which quickly sold out) and is close to bottling a red blend with the cryptic name of “PVCF” (an acronym for petit verdot and cabernet franc). To sum it up, Clarkston might be the Gateway to Hells Canyon for many, but for WineTrail enthusiasts, it serves as the entrance to a heavenly selection of Basalt Cellars wines.

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  Basalt Cellars was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Spokane-Pullman WineTrail on page 548!