Tunnel Hill Winery
The structure that houses Tunnel Hill Winery is made of granite, harvested from the excavation of nearby Knapps Tunnel. At first glance, you could easily picture this building in the Normandy region of France. However, a quick look around at nearby Lake Chelan and the surrounding hills reminds you that you are smack dab in the middle of Washington’s vacationland. The slopes above the winery have been producing award-winning apples for generations, but now these hills are the estate vineyards for Tunnel Hill. Rows of pinot noir, riesling, and syrah grapes stripe the hillside.
Tunnel Hill’s owner and winemaker, Denny Evans, is producing small lots of estate pinot noir. Making fewer than 500 cases of wine annually requires Denny to wear many hats: grape grower, winemaker, production manager, head of marketing, and chief bottle washer. However, understanding Tunnel Hill Winery is appreciating the road that brought Denny here, one man’s version of the phoenix myth.
If you have been lucky enough to have seen the Emmy-nominated documentary Broken Limbs, you might recognize that a “star” of the show is Denny himself. Guy Evans, Denny’s son, made Broken Limbs to explain the sudden demise of Washington’s apple industry and to highlight how this downturn has affected families in the Chelan-Wenatchee area. Denny’s orchard was once one of the largest apple-producing farms in the state. Seemingly overnight, it fell on hard times, the result of foreign competition.
When 6'4'' Denny is pouring, you raise your glass. He locks you in with his blue eyes and patiently explains the winemaking style and vision of Tunnel Hill. Being a “dirt guy,” he is most comfortable being in the fields. However, reinventing yourself comes easily when you are a quick study, and Denny has taken advantage of Washington’s rich educational resources and its community of supportive winemakers and viticulturists. Now he can proudly state on his website, “On the shores of Lake Chelan, in a cool, quiet cellar under the hillside, we create handcrafted wines using age-old techniques.” From the ashes of burning applewood, Tunnel Hill Winery has risen.
WineTrail Note: If your group needs lodging while visiting the Chelan area, check out Denny’s FarmHouse at www.sunshineorchards.com. It’s easy to imagine that this would be the ideal place to explore the pairing of Tunnel Hill pinot noir with apples and pears from nearby orchards.
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Tunnel Hill Winery was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Lake Chelan South Shore WineTrail on page 236!
