Our Wine & Our Story
With over 15 years in the industry, Shaun is one of the youngest winemakers in Washington State. After studying viticulture and enology at Oregon State University, his winemaking career officially began as Assistant Winemaker at San Juan Island Vineyards in 2011. This is when he fell in love with the San Juan Islands, and fell in love with Washington Wine.
Amy has always been an island girl, and when she and Shaun met in 2014, she knew her future was always going to lead back to San Juan Island. Together, Shaun and Amy lived in Lake Chelan from 2014-2017, while Shaun was Assistant Winemaker at Hard Row to Hoe Vineyards and Head Winemaker at Mellisoni Vineyards. In 2017, they decided together to make the islands their forever home, and moved back to start Madrone Cellars.
The Beginnings
Terroir
and natural wines and ciders
Terroir, which is a sense of place reflected through taste, textures, and aromas, is the inspiration for our wines and ciders. We want to tell a story in every glass. We chose to focus on natural winemaking styles, which include wild fermentations, zero filtrations, minimal interventions, and much more. Natural, to us, means crafting wine and cider the way it was made for years. We do not manipulate our products but allow them to reflect the terroir and purity of fruit. An important distinction for us is that our products contain zero residual sugar. Biologically unstable, residual sugar requires chemicals or sterilization to prevent refermentation in the bottle. Natural wine ferments all the way dry and achieves balance through rest and age. Read more about our process in our blog.
Sustainability Ethos
Sustainability is something that we strive for in all facets of Madrone. At the farming level, we operate as zero chemical farmers, choosing to weed by hand and embodying circular economy farming. This style of farming mimics the natural systems, minimizing waste and outputs by creating a circular loop. Outputs (leftover apple and grape pomace, manure, pruning wood) become inputs. Every spring, we make our own ramial wood mulch using pruning wood from the orchard and vineyard at Saltwater Farm. Ramial wood mulch feeds and builds the population of healthy fungi (mycorrhizae) and bacteria in the soil. By fostering a healthy biological soil, we are increasing its capacity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Creating a healthy soil microbiome environment confers microbiome health to the plants, and the fruit we are growing. This is a key element for healthy wild fermentations. The apple and grape pomace that is leftover after pressing in the fall is mixed with manure from the Island Haven Animal Sanctuary, and is later spread as compost throughout our estate orchard and vineyard. This loop feeds the soil nutrients and energy for many years to come. In production, we only use biodegradable and salmon safe products. We are very aware of run off hazards, and keeping our oceans safe for all living organisms.
Saltwater Farm
Vineyard & Orchard partners
We partnered with Andrew Fleming and Merriss Waters, owners of Saltwater Farm, in 2021 when the estate vineyard was planted. The dream is island sparkling wines and ciders, reflecting the terroir of San Juan Island and Saltwater Farm’s specific micro climate. Their land is southern facing with excellent sunlight, rocky soil and a natural wind protection from their surrounding forest. The grape varieties planted at Saltwater Farm include Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Siegerrebe and Albariño. The estate orchard was planted in 2023, with heritage varieties sourced from the Kwiaht Heritage Orchard on Lopez Island. The Kwiaht Heritage Orchard works to preserve unique island fruit tree varieties that are rarely found outside the San Juan Islands.
Bottle Reuse Program
Shipping a pallet of glass bottles from the production plant in France can emit approximately 19,000lbs of C02 into the atmosphere. Recycling is great. Reusing goes so much farther! In 2022, we began our Bottle Reuse Program. Every pour bottle is saved at our downtown Friday Harbor location, the Madrone Bar + Kitchen.
We remove the labels by hand, wash, sanitize and store the bottles for the next bottle run. Since 2022, we have reused approximately 539 cases of glass bottles!