Mt St Helens Cellars

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With a postcard view of Mount St Helens in front of you, the tasting room at the Blue Heron Inn on Spirit Lake Highway offers travelers along nearby I-5 a reason to stop. Launched in 2010, Mt St Helens Cellars is the product of two couples – Gary and June Dunbar and Jeff and Janis Snyder. Gary is the chief winemaker with his nephew Jeff pitching in with all the steps needed to convert grapes into wine. June and Janis are the marketing muscle behind the new enterprise.

Although new to Washington’s wine scene, Gary began making wine while residing in the Santa Clara Valley in California nearly 20 years ago. He and June’s property included acres of grapes that Gary converted to wine as a hobby. That hobby continued when they moved back to Washington with Gary making forays into eastern Washington to purchase Vitis vinifera for home winemaking. With great joy, Gary now has a commercial venture to call his own.

If you look closely at the Mt St Helens Cellars label, the “volcanic” cloud over the exploding mountain is actually a cluster of grapes. When you think about it, Washington viticulture owes a great deal to the volcanic explosions from the Cascade Mountains over the millennia. The ash from the repeated upheavals combines with sandy soils of eastern Washington to form loess. The vines love it. The soil and climate conspire to put Washington on the winemaking map with 40,000+ acres of grapes under production.

Historically, erupting mountains have played a big role with respect to wine production. In 79 AD, the wine drinking inhabitants of nearby Pompeii awoke to find Mount Vesuvius erupting. The eruption destroyed vineyards (and the numerous wine bars in Pompeii) forcing Rome’s leadership to plant extensive vineyards closer to the capital. However, if you’re visiting Mt St Helens Cellars’ tasting room and see a plume shooting up from nearby Mount St Helens don’t be too concerned. The winds tend to blow to the east.