Steve and Nikki Bruere with Alan Busacca (right) of Capital Call Vintners

Winery has also purchased the Barons brand

Capital Call Vintners, founded by Steve and Nikki Bruere along with Alan Busacca, is opening a tasting room in Walla Walla. The tasting room is scheduled to open October 5^th.

“We’re excited to be out there and to be part of the community,” says Steve Bruere.

The tasting room is approximately 2,000 square feet and is located on North 2^nd Avenue across from the Marcus Whitman Hotel. The space was previously home to the tasting room for Barons Winery.

The owners of Barons retired and closed their tasting room earlier this year. However, after Bruere talked with the owners about the tasting room space, he decided to purchase the Barons brand, the winery’s customer list, and its social media handles.

“I was intrigued by the name, and they’d been around for 20 years,” Bruere says. “It seemed like a good fit.”

An interest in agriculture leads to wine

One could call Bruere, like many in the wine industry, an accidental winery owner. However, while many start with winemaking that evolves into a commercial enterprise, Bruere started from the grapegrowing side of the business.

Based in Iowa, Bruere is the president of Peoples Company, an agricultural land transaction firm. He first became involved in the wine industry in 2016 as a real estate broker for a large parcel of land in Walla Walla Valley. His visits to the area made an impression.

“I really fell in love with the [Pacific Northwest] and fell in love with wine,” Bruere says.

Soil scientist and geologist Alan Busacca had a lot to do with both. Busacca was contracted to do soil analyses for the site Bruere was brokering. After numerous discussions, dinners, and, of course, bottles of wine, a kinship developed.

Busacca owned a vineyard in the Columbia Gorge and invited Bruere to visit the site. Bruere was taken by the area’s sweeping views, with backdrops of Mounts Hood and Adams and the Columbia River.

“For an Iowa farm kid where everything’s flat, it was just so beautiful,” Bruere says. “I was sucked in.”

Bruere subsequently decided to buy out Busacca’s partner and become an investor in the 34-acre vineyard, which is named Windhorse.

Capital calls

At that time, Bruere was thinking more about the farming or investing aspect of the vineyard than about becoming involved in the wine industry. That soon changed.

One Sunday, Busacca called. With Bruere and Busacca already having invested considerable capital to replant Windhorse Vineyard, Bruere jokingly asked Busacca if he was calling asking for money. He was.

“I said, ‘Gosh, Alan, that’s all this wine business is good for is capital calls. That’s all I do is write checks!’”

The name stuck. Capital Call Vintners was born. “It’s meant kind of tongue-in-cheek about the wine business,” Bruere says.

The Brueres and Busacca started making a limited amount of wine under the Capital Call Vintners label in 2020. The intent was, in part, for Bruere to have wine for business dinners and for gifts to clients. The Brueres also began to sell the wines at Middlebrook Mercantile, a bar, event space, and retail center they own in Cumming, Iowa.

“There’s a pretty affluent wine scene back here,” Bruere says. “It’s been fun exposing folks in Des Moines to Northwest wine.”

A love of land and vistas

The Brueres subsequently got further involved in the industry, purchasing a 29-acre vineyard by the edge of the Blue Mountains. The site is named Wheatfield Vines. Bruere’s Peoples Company also manages a 6-acre vineyard called Carbondale on the Oregon side of the valley.

“I’m just a sucker for land, vistas, and real estate,” Bruere says.

Despite the sizable amount of acreage, Capital Call Vintners’ production remains modest at 2,000 cases annually. The wines are made by Josh Maloney, a long-time industry veteran. Most of the grapes are sold to other wineries.

Bruere, who has an office for Peoples Company in Walla Walla, visits the town at least once a month. He says his goals with Capital Call Vintners are simple.

“I have a passion for agriculture, for farmland, and for growing things. If we can open some doors for people in Walla Walla to bring some Midwest people into the region and maybe bring some great wines from the region back to the Midwest, that’ll be a win.”

Images courtesy of Capital Call Vintners. 

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