Cuillin Hills Winery

According to the Cuillin Hills Winery (pronounced Coo-lin) website, the winery was conceived “when a Scottish girl and a wine-loving bagpiper found themselves in the Highlands of Scotland; a place where dreams and possibilities are realized,” and where a hobby suddenly changes its path and a winery is born. The bagpiper is Derek Des Voigne, who honed his winemaking skills as the assistant winemaker at Vin du Lac Winery in Lake Chelan.

For the wine enthusiasts making the rounds of the Woodinville WineTrail North tasting rooms, a visit to Cuillin Hills Winery is a special treat, because you get a nice two-for-one surprise. Derek and his brother Darren Des Voigne, founder of Des Voigne Winery, chose to colocate their wineries in the same suite of the same business park.

Being a new winery, Cuillin Hills focuses on small lot production of ultrapremium, hand-crafted wines. And what great wines they are! No wonder Cuillin Hills Winery was featured in the April 2006 issue of Seattle Magazine as a “hot-off-the-press winery making a splash at Taste Washington.” By limiting his production to 600 cases of wine, Derek is able to focus on syrah, sangiovese, and claret red. His primary focus is on complex, full-finish syrahs, and we suspect that the folks from Seattle Magazine were sampling this beauty.

The tasting room is fairly plain, the wines are complimentary, and wearing a kilt is optional. But we suspect that you will take home a bottle of Cuillin Hills syrah, pop in your copy of Braveheart, and uncork this wine. Your clan will truly enjoy this with a large pepperoni-and-sausage pizza.

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  Cuillin Hills Winery was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Woodinville WineTrail North on page 114!