Sagelands Vineyard

WineTrail Note: As of June 2010, Sagelands Vineyard announced the closing of their tasting room to the public. The reason given was due to a water main break under the building and considerable structural damage. This indicates that the tasting room will reopen once the renovation is completed. Stay tuned.

OK, my fellow “wineaux,” who’s interested in visiting a first-class tasting room? Located just east of Yakima off I-82, Exit 40, the Sagelands Vineyard tasting room and winery stands as the gateway to the Yakima wine country. Of course, when the parent company of Sagelands is Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines with multibillion-dollar holdings (perhaps you’ve heard of Beaulieu Vineyards, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, Smirnoff vodkas, Guinness, and Baileys Irish Cream, to name a handful of Diageo’s assets), you would expect a gorgeous facility and you wouldn’t be disappointed. With a view of Mount Adams to the southwest, Sagelands Vineyard provides a spacious tasting room that can readily accommodate a busload or two of tourists, which it often gets. There is plenty of space inside to converse with the pouring staff, mingle about the gift shop area, and peek inside the barrel room. Sagelands’ focus is cabernet sauvignon and merlot. However, if they should be available, also check out the merlot rosé and the port-style “Ellipse.” By the way, if you are a Rattlesnake Hills Passport holder, you get 10 percent off all wine purchases at the tasting room.

Sagelands’ winemaker, Frederique Spencer, is a transplant from Provence, France. Frederique is refreshingly demure about her winemaking style and past accolades. She is not one to boast about her wines, preferring instead to let their fruit-forward, full-bodied tastes do the talking. Her training, however, emphasized blending grapes from different vineyards and using traditional winemaking techniques to create Bordeaux-style wines. Believing that it all starts in the vineyard, she collaborates with contracted wine growers from the area known as “The Four Corners”: Wahluke Slope, Walla Walla Valley, Horse Heaven Hills, and Rattlesnake Hills.

There was a time when sage covered most of Eastern Washington. Thus, the name “Sagelands” is fitting. Nowadays, however, the sage has receded and been replaced by fields of cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

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  Sagelands Vineyard was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Wapato WineTrail on page 276!