Black Diamond Winery

Located in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains southwest of Port Angeles, Black Diamond Winery specializes in making fruit wines, the kind you might describe as “back-porch” wines. Despite the proliferation of Bordeaux-style wineries around the state, Black Diamond owners Lance and Sharon Adams haven’t deviated from their specialty wines, which they began perfecting 20 years ago.

Leaving the road, you make the short 200-yard drive up to the winery and catch sight of their orchard and small 2-acre vineyard. In the summer, you can see the plums, raspberries, and rhubarb ripening for harvest. Either Lance or Sharon will greet you in the small tasting room situated at the end of the building that houses the winery, just above Tumwater Creek. By paying a nominal tasting fee, you have the opportunity to try their Ridge white wine; a Müller Thurgau wine (the grapes are from Whidbey Island Vineyard); Shiro plum, rhubarb, loganberry, cranberry, and raspberry wines; and “Sharon’s Blush,” a blend created from red and white grapes grown in the Adams’ vineyard.

Lance and Sharon’s passion for making their fruit wines can be tasted in every sip you take. Each berry picked, each pressing made, each vintage bottled represents an enormous amount of labor. Black Diamond Winery produces an impressive 800 cases of wine a year. For visual impact, check out the photos on the tasting-room wall showing the ripe Shiro plums ready to be picked and the huge stalks of rhubarb being pulled during the harvest. One can almost feel the aching arm muscles that would come at the end of a day picking those babies.

Now, one final mental exercise: Imagine raspberry wine poured over French vanilla ice cream. Ahhh.

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  Black Diamond Winery was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Olympic Peninsula WineTrail on page 66!