Katy Smith Perry, Tildio Winery

Katy Smith Perry, courtesy of Tildio Winery.

Katy Smith Perry, co-founder and winemaker at Tildio Winery in the Lake Chelan appellation, passed away January 27th after a two-year illness. She was 66 years old.

Perry’s Tildio Winery is one of the oldest in the Lake Chelan region, and the winery’s vineyard also has some of the area’s earliest plantings. Perry played a key role in establishing the Lake Chelan appellation.

“She was basically hands-in with the very beginning of the Chelan wine industry, “ said her husband, Milum Davis Perry, who serves as co-winemaker at Tildio.

Kathryn ‘Katy’ Elizabeth Smith was born in Seattle, Washington October 31st, 1958. The child of Ray William Smith and Mary Jane Lentz, she came from a family of nine children and lived in the city’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood.

Perry lived for a period in Washington, D.C. and initially studied geology. She married Martin Louis Artiano in Virginia in 1982. The couple subsequently divorced in 1986.

In 1987, Perry returned to school to study enology and viticulture. She graduated with a B.S. from University of California, Davis in 1990.

Perry worked at a who’s who list of wineries in her early wine career. Her first job was in the research laboratory at Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley. She subsequently worked for Stags Leap Wine Cellars, Geyser Peak Winery, MacRostie Winery, and others in the Napa and Sonoma areas.

In 2000, Perry moved back to the Northwest to serve as white winemaker at Chateau Ste Michelle, Washington’s largest winery. While at Ste. Michelle, she consulted for Lake Chelan Winery.

Perry’s family had been traveling to the Chelan region during summers for decades, and she had a brother with a hobby vineyard in the area. After traveling to the Okanagan Valley and seeing that grapevines could succeed in that area, she decided to take the plunge in the Lake Chelan Valley.

Perry met Milum Davis Perry in 2001 while riding a chairlift at Stevens Pass Ski Resort. In the spring of of that year, the couple started planting Tildio’s eight-acre estate vineyard near the shores of Lake Chelan, continuing the following year.

In 2003, Perry left Ste. Michelle. She subsequently served as the first winemaker at Tsillan Cellars at a facility that she helped design. In 2004, Milum and Katy married.

The couple opened Tildio’s tasting room in 2005. The moniker comes from the Spanish name for the Killdeer bird that frequents the winery’s vineyard. At the time, there were only a handful of other wineries in the area that included Tsillan Cellars, Vin du Lac, and Benson Vineyards.

Perry and others worked to get the fledgling winegrowing region federal appellation status, hiring geologist Alan Busacca to write the petition. Lake Chelan was approved as growing region in 2009. Today, the Lake Chelan appellation is home to more than 40 wineries and 344 acres of vineyards.

A celebration of Perry’s life will take place at a future date.

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