Legacy Washington brand will also be revived at the location
Brian Carter Cellars has opened a tasting room in the Columbia Collective building in Woodinville. The tasting room is the first to open in the space since Landmark Event Company became involved with the property earlier this year. The building was formerly home to Columbia Winery.
The Columbia Collective tasting room is Brian Carter’s second location in Woodinville. The winery opened a tasting room in Woodin Creek in February of 2022 after crowdsourcing funding to assist with development.
Hollywood area Woodinville’s “Ground Zero”
The new Brian Carter Cellars tasting room, which opened at the end of September, is approximately 650-square feet and has an outdoor patio. It is located in the former club room for Columbia Winery.
Food has long been an important component at the Brian Carter Cellars tasting rooms. The Columbia Collective tasting room will initially offer charcuterie, with plans to expand the menu in the near future.
Brian Carter Cellars previously had a tasting room in Woodinville’s Hollywood region. Now, the winery will once again have a presence in that same area.
“We’re happy with the space in Woodin Creek, but I think it’s safe to say that the Hollywood area is still Ground Zero,” Carter says.
Indeed, this area of Woodinville has long been teeming with tasting rooms. However, the redevelopment of the old Red Hook Brewery campus has further enlivened the area. It’s about to get an even bigger boost.
Harvest Woodinville is slated to open in 2025 and will include tasting rooms, restaurants, a hotel, retail, and residences. Chateau Ste. Michelle, a stone’s throw away, is exploring redeveloping parts of its Woodinville property in ways that would bring additional consumers.
New tasting room part of larger trend
Brian Carter Cellars now has four tasting rooms. In addition to the two in Woodinville, the winery has one in Seattle, which opened in 2022. Brian Carter Cellars opened a tasting room in Vancouver, Washington in 2020.
Opening multiple satellite tasting rooms is part of a trend in Washington. Doing so allows wineries to sell more wine direct-to-consumer (DTC) and less wine through distribution.
Brian Carter Cellars currently sells over three-quarters of its wines DTC. Carter expects that number to increase with the new tasting room. “That was part of the motivation,” he says.
The shift to selling more wine via satellite tasting rooms has partially been driven by retailer and distributor consolidation. This has made it substantially harder for small wineries to sell wine via that route. It has also been turbo-charged by a 2017 change in state law, which expanded the allowed number of satellite tasting rooms from two to four.
Wineries make more profit per bottle selling wine direct. However, the proliferation of satellite tasting rooms has also resulted in Washington wine having a substantially smaller footprint nationally than it did a decade ago. The trend has also increased competition amongst tasting rooms.
Another tasting room to open in Columbia Collective
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Photographs courtesy of Brian Carter Cellars. Historical illustration of Haviland Winery courtesy of Columbia Collective.
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