Pouring with Passion

Winemaking helps Gaye McNutt’s family drink in the good life.

Winemaking wasn’t Gaye McNutt’s hobby—it was her husband’s. And she never imagined it would become a life-altering passion for them both. Her husband, Benjamin Smith, began working for Boeing in 1986 as an engineer and joined the company’s wine club a few years later to explore the art and science of wine production. Eventually he became the club’s chief procurement officer, forging relationships with some of Washington state’s most notable grape growers.

In 1997, McNutt and Smith purchased 10.5 acres on Red Mountain, a prime viticulture region that became an official appellation—a geographical name under which a vineyard is authorized to identify and market wine—six years ago. The area is semiarid and has a distinctive microclimate where merlot, cabernet and sauvignon vines thrive. Extensive soil surveys revealed that their property’s soil was among the most unique and varied within the appellation, with some of the soil types remarkably similar to parts of Bordeaux in France. The year after they bought the property, the couple founded Cadence Winery.

“Somewhere in the back of our minds was this idea that maybe, one day, we’d have an estate winery, but it wasn’t anything we intended to do anytime soon,” McNutt says. “We didn’t even have water rights, which is a critical factor in this desertlike spot, and it can take many years to acquire them.”

But in 2000, Smith decided to take his interest in wine to the next level, leaving Boeing and devoting his energies to Cadence Winery full time. It was not an unusual decision—Seattle Weekly suggests Washington state wines can be divided into two classifications: those made by Boeing Wine Club members and those made by everyone else. The newspaper also called Smith the most critically acclaimed winemaker of the Boeing alumni, and in 2002, Wine & Sprits magazine named Cadence the “Artisan Winery of the Year.” In a very short time, the couple clearly had made it.

At the heart of their success were McNutt’s legal training and her undergraduate degree in managerial studies from Rice. Once they decided to pursue this dream, she put together a business plan, ran the numbers and did a risk analysis. “We looked at the financials and decided we could make a living at this,” she says. “So we took our plan to the bank, it gave us a loan along with a second mortgage on our house, and we started buying the best grapes we could find.”

They purchased used equipment; set up a crushing, bottling and storage facility in a Seattle warehouse; and had the grapes trucked in. McNutt calls it an urban winery. “Forget about those picturesque châteaus,” she says with a laugh. “There’s nothing charming about this place, though we do hold tastings here.” The warehouse setting may sound unusual for a winery, but not in Seattle. Cadence is part of South Seattle Artisan Wineries, an alliance of four boutique operations in the heart of the city.

In 2003, luck was on the couple’s side again. The owner of a neighboring vineyard on Red Mountain discovered he held the water rights for their land and transferred them to McNutt and Smith. They had to drill down 800 feet before they found water, and when the well went dry four days later, they had to dig 100 feet deeper. “We just harvested our first crop this summer,” says McNutt. “If everything goes as planned, our own vineyards eventually will supply about half the fruit we need.”

Also that year, McNutt left her job as an attorney with Microsoft. “I had a job, a child born in 2001 and a winery to help run—it was one thing too many,” she says. “Something had to go, and it was Microsoft. It was an easy choice. I’d always been attracted to being my own boss, and the decision gave me the flexibility I wanted to spend more time with our daughter.”

Today, the couple’s venture has produced a lifestyle that makes them happy. They live and work in the city, and Smith makes day trips to the vineyards as needed. He is in charge of Cadence’s winemaking and wholesaling; McNutt handles the winery’s finances, strategic planning and legal affairs; and both participate in blending trials. They currently make 2,100 cases of wine per year and hope to get that number up to between 2,500 and 2,700. “We want to stay small and family owned and produce our wines in limited quantities,” says McNutt. “The goal is to keep doing what we’re doing.”