“It’s just wine, drink it.” – Charles Smith

Our founder’s words have become an unofficial catchphrase. He’s right, of course. It is just wine, and you should definitely drink it. But we know not all wines are built the same, and they’re certainly not all crafted with the passion and attention to detail as ours are.

Sure, you’d expect a wine brand to say that, right?

But our record speaks for itself: 198 scores over 95 points. 768 scores above 90. Wine & Spirt’s Winery of the year. Oh, and let’s not forget Charles himself has been dubbed Winemaker of the Year by both Food & Wine and Wine Enthusiast magazine.

So how did a former rock band manager build a Washington wine empire? Passion, obviously. Passion and lots of hard work. But none of that matters if your juice is junk.

You have got to have great grapes to make great wine. Period.

But how do you get great grapes? It’s not as easy as just throwing a vine in the ground and adding water and sunlight. Now, we’re sure you’re familiar with plenty of big name wine growing regions, ours included.  But it takes more than acreage in a famous AVA to get the level of character we demand from our fruit.

As you’ll learn in the coming weeks via our new Vineyard Tales series, our favorite House of Smith wines come from very particular places. Some are a near carbon copy of the greatest growing regions of France, others reflect Washington’s geologic background, some are tiny chunks of land unlike anywhere else in the world.