As we wrap up an incredibly fruitful and successful harvest season, we wanted to take a moment to thank our winemaking team and interns that worked tirelessly the past several months to ensure exceptional quality for DeLille Cellars’ upcoming vintages.
With the guidance of our winemaking team, 5 interns were able to learn from some of the best in the business. Led by our Director of Winemaking Jason Gorski, harvest 2023 kicked off in August and is finishing up this October. Our Winemaker Nick Bernstein and Assistant Winemaker Mari Rossi were joined by Cellar Leads Sarah Jackson, Page Kafonek, Sophie Louaillier and Matilda Schroeter to develop the next season of DeLille Cellars greatness.
We are excited to introduce the future of winemaking, introducing DeLille Cellars’ 2023 Harvest Interns!
Grace worked part-time in the tasting room for two years while studying Communication at the University of Washington. Her passion for the wine industry grew during her time at DeLille, and she decided upon graduating to get involved in the cellar. This is Grace’s first harvest, and she plans to embark on an abroad harvest this coming winter!
After graduating from the viticulture & enology program at WSU in 2019, Kaitlyn has been loving working in wine production. After a few years working as a cellar hand, she went to Australia to work a harvest earlier this year. She’s excited to be back home in Woodinville for another amazing harvest!
This is Sebastian’s first harvest, and prior to this he worked in the Tasting Room for a little over a year, and doubles as an at-home winemaker since high school. Sebastian finds wine to be truly fascinating, and that curiosity is what drove him to seek out the experience of harvest 2023. Sebastian plans to continue working harvests and other winery jobs with the ultimate goal of one day becoming a winemaker.
Sophie recently graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelors in Biology. In her senior year, while assisting with a graduate student project, she discovered that she could apply her knowledge of math and science to winemaking. She is doing her first harvest here at Delille and is excited to see where the wine industry takes her.
Gates is a business student who, a year ago, knew nothing about wine and was searching for a summer job. One day, he accidentally walked into the wrong door to drop off his resume at a local business, and ended up in the DeLille Cellars Tasting Room, where he became a part of the team and developed a passion for the wine industry. Gates credits his participation in harvest this year to him being a hands-on learner, and says that no amount of online research was as informative as physically turning hundreds of tons of grapes into thousands of gallons of wine. During harvest, he would ask a lot of questions about the winemaking process, and the answers would lead him towards more questions, in the never ending cycle of learning the art of winemaking.
Thank you to our incredibly hardworking Winemaking Team and the 2023 Harvest Interns for all of their care and effort that has gone into harvest this year. We have no doubt that the upcoming vintages of DeLille Cellars wines will only raise the bar of quality for the next years to come. To indulge in DeLille Cellars wines and witness the magic, make a reservation in our Tasting Room or The Restaurant. Additionally, we are now offering Winery Tour and Food Pairing Experiences available every Saturday and Sunday. MAKE A RESERVATION for your Winery Tour now.
DeLille Cellars is regarded as a top American producer of Bordeaux-style blends, showcasing a tradition of quality and excellence over its 30-year history. The winery remains a principal influence in establishing Washington State as a premier viticultural region, with a focus on the Red Mountain AVA and other prestigious vineyard sites throughout the Columbia Valley.
Founded on the concept of crafting world-class wine from Washington State, DeLille was one of the first five wineries in Washington to receive Robert Parker’s 5-star excellence rating. The winery’s legacy of consistent quality and acclaim includes over 800 90-plus point ratings from top international critics, numerous placements on Top 100 lists, and five consecutive Wine & Spirits Top 100 Wineries of the World accolades (2017-2020, 2022).
“At DeLille, we believe that Washington State is a Grand Cru wine growing region, created 10,000 years ago. The challenge for us has always been and remains: to create special wines from the uniquely expressive terroir that Mother Nature gave us a long time ago.” – Founding Winemaker Chris Upchurch
Sebastian Chrysafidis, Grace Wellman, Kaitlyn Neuenschwander, Sophie Barber, and Gates Michael Stephens
Sarah Jackson, Page Kafonek, Sophie Louaillier and Matilda Schroeter
