Robert Andrake, Winemaker

In 1980 he became interested in wine and started tasting and collecting many different wines. In 1993 he was asked to write a weekly wine column for The Olympian/Gannet News newspaper. He did many wine tastings and tasted a lot of wine but now was tasting between 2,000-3,000 wines a year which gave him a unique view as to how wines taste and what sets the aromatics apart from one wine to another, which ended in 1996.

Being an inquisitive person and seeing wines that were starting to taste and smell very different than in the past, he started asking questions as to why and how the wines were so different now than in the past. In 1994 he met Doug McCrea (McCrea Cellars), Chris Cammarda (Andrew Will Winery), Alex Golitzen of (Quilceda Creek Winery). They helped answer some of the questions. Doug and Chris let him work in all aspects of winemaking. From going out to the vineyards, helping others with crush, fermentation, punch-downs, racking wines into barrel, ML, racking barrel to barrel, bottling and labeling gave him lots of winemaking knowledge and of course, tasting how the wine was developing through all it’s different phases were invaluable.

In 1995 he started developing some of the views as to how he would make wine that was different than some of the views held then. For Example: free-run juice---this always tasted and smelled better than pressed wine. That was the first thing he changed when he made his wine. Yeasts: – some were good fermentors that gave you good wines. Moving to a yeast that you had to pay more attention to during fermentation is more work, but it gives you a great wine with better aromatics, mouth feel, and taste. It also gives you problems if you do not pay attention to it. Helping at these wineries taught him a lot of the intricate workings of a winery should operate.

In 1997 he made the first vintage of Andrake Cellars’ wine, 200 cases. In 1998 there were 41 barrels of wine already in various stages of development – 41 barrels equal 1,000 cases of wine. From then until now, we have increased production significantly creating outstanding red varietals only. He has made Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Petite Syrah, Sangiovese, Reserve, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petite Verdot, and last, but not least, a Pinot Noir (yet to be bottled)!