New winery goes online in Quincy

Saint Laurent opens production facility

QUINCY - Quincy residents get their first opportunity this weekend to look over one of the newest wine production facilities in their area.

Saint Laurent Winery holds a grand opening celebration Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. Visitors may sample wines, eat fresh country cheeses, breads and fruits, tour the production area and vineyards and meet the owners, winemaker, wine grower and viticulturist.

Mike Mrachek co-owns the winery with his wife Laura.

Saint Laurent originally located near Malaga, Wash., 6 miles southeast of Wenatchee. The winery has been operating since 2003. Mrachek said he has been a Wenatchee area resident for 56 years.

The Mracheks were looking for a new location, and heard about the availability of the Quincy building through their accountant, who is also the accountant for a family, which had started a winery in Quincy in the early 2000s until a death in the family.

Mrachek came to look over the building, which is about 20,000 square feet.

"I said, 'Wow, this has a lot of potential,'" he recalled. "So I ended up buying all their equipment, leasing their building and leasing their vineyard. They're pretty happy to have it continuing."

The Mracheks will keep their Malaga tasting room, but are moving the operation to Quincy after sharing a facility in Rock Island with another winery.

"Their lease was up and I had decided I wanted to make quite a bit more wine," Mrachek said. "Now we're the major wine production here."

The facility also houses production for the other winery.

The Quincy location is closer to the company's vineyards near Mattawa.

Mrachek said he had been looking around Wenatchee for quite a while, but was not able to find a suitable location. When the opportunity surfaced with the Quincy site, he said, he was not able to turn it down.

"For me to build a building like this on the property, with an orchard and a vineyard in Malaga, I didn't really want to invest that much," he said. "It would be, in my mind, prohibitive to start from scratch. We wanted to make wine this fall and we didn't start working on this until April. There wasn't enough time to build our own facility, and so I happened onto this. We made some modest improvements, not a lot, and moved our equipment in here, lots of new tanks, so now we're making wine."

A tasting room in Quincy is open by appointment only, although Mrachek said it may be opened to the public next year.

The facility employs eight people during crush and bottling times, but those only last for a few days. Some come from Wenatchee and some hail from Quincy, Mrachek said. Three employees will be on site the rest of the time.

The winery produces Cabernet Sauvignon, merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Sangoivese, chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc.

Saint Laurent produces under its own label and also sells some wine by the gallon to other wineries, or to restaurants in bottles under their own labels.

"For our own production, what we keep for ourselves, this year we're about 5,000 cases," Mrachek said. "But by the year 2010, we'd like to be about 12,000 to 15,000. So we're expanding our market base. We're mostly in Washington right now, although we have new distributors in Oregon, Texas, Chicago, Florida and British Columbia."

The Quincy facility produces about 70,000 gallons this year, but is capable of doing double that amount in the future, Mrachek said.

"We have enough room," he said.

Mracheck declined to discuss cost.

From what he's heard, the response from the Quincy community has been quite positive.

"The people I've talked to think it's great," he said. "They're pretty excited about everything going on in Quincy - Microsoft and Yahoo! Inc., and everything."

Mrachek doesn't foresee such moves having an adverse effect upon his business.

"They don't employ that many people, but I think with Sunserra, it's surely not going to hurt," he said. "The people employed by Microsoft drink wine, they drink good wine, and Intuit and all that - I think for the whole community it's fantastic."

Winemaker Craig Mitrakul said the Quincy facilities are in a central location for the business and have set the winery up for quality productions.

"It allows us to make better decisions as far as picking decisions, because we have more capacity to say, 'Pick at optimal ripeness,'" he said.

The Quincy facility is located at 9224 Road S N.W., in Quincy. For more information, call 509-888-WINE or access the company Web site at www.saintlaurent.net.