MILTON-FREEWATER — If Milton-Freewater City Council members uncork a proposal at their September meeting, the town could gain a new wine production facility in 2024 and, eventually, much more.

The council at its regular meeting Monday, Aug. 14, tabled a vote on the project at the request of the Milton-Freewater Winemakers Studio’s three founding partners.

That delay will allow the trio to present new information next month, including plans for a from-scratch building on the former Sykes Enterprises property off Highway 11.

Peter Cornett, Tim Donahue and Andrew Brown began their quest with the idea of creating space to allow local grape growers and winemakers in the region’s designated wine region to make and market their product through shared resources.

Winemaking already runs in the blood of all three.

Brown has long Milton-Freewater agricultural roots, first in his family’s apple processing company founded by patriarch Earl Brown, then in the Browns’ ownership of Watermill Winery and Blue Mountain Cider, where Andrew made both wine and cider and helped develop the businesses into community venues.

Donahue, with three decades of wine experience, led Walla Walla Community College’s Institute for Enology & Viticulture and now offers technical and creative winemaking support through his consulting company, Horse Thief.

Cornett has a background in data science and cyber security. He worked at Boeing in digital aviation, then enrolled in WWCC’s wine program during Donahue’s time there. Cornett took head cellar master stints at two area wineries and now owns the Walla Walla winery Sun and Stone Cellars.

Special groundA primary point of the envisioned facility on the south hill of town is that emerging winemakers will have space and support to take advantage of Milton-Freewater’s designation as an “American Viticultural Area,” or AVA. Here the AVA is labeled “The Rocks District,” so named for “the geographical distribution of soils … which are derived from the cobblestone-rich gravels deposited by the Walla Walla River,” according to The Rocks District member association.

Those stones are entirely formed of basalt, a dark-colored volcanic rock derived by erosion of the Blue Mountains, the district’s website states.

That soil situation delivers “distinctive sensory characteristics to the wines produced from those grapes” on vines grown in well-drained soil — a characteristic that forces the plants to grow long roots to reach water.

Inside its 6 square-miles, The Rocks District has grown to more than 30 wine grape farmers since gaining designation in 2015.

To benefit from the confluence of the unusual geographical blessing and a growing interest in grape agriculture within the AVA, local and state officials have been considering a wine production facility in Milton-Freewater for many years, city manager Linda Hall has said.

A market assessment finished in 2021 showed such a project could be financially viable, Hall noted in the recent council agenda; the only budget cost to the city will be staff time to administer state funding.

Once completed, the facility’s operations could “substantially” increase the city’s tax revenue, Hall said this week, depending on its customer base.

“If I were to guess, and this is a wild guess, I would say conservatively, over time, this would add at least in the six figures easily,” Hall said.

Business Oregon, the state’s business development arm, agreed the project is a good idea and awarded a regional infrastructure fund $500,000 for equipment and another $635,000 for a portion of the proposed project’s more than $1,200,000 estimated tab.

Oregon placed a March 31, 2024, completion deadline in its terms.

Sharing resourcesThe future date started getting serious attention about a year ago with the vision of Cornett, Brown and Donahue to rent part of the already existing building that once housed the Sykes call center. They would create a space to be shared by a number of individual winemakers.

It’s not reinventing the wheel, Brown said, but following long-successful models of the same in the Willamette Valley.

And that was with the original plan to retrofit about 17,000 square-feet of the Sykes building into the new winery studio, Cornett said.

But, like wine itself, the situation has stayed fluid and changes were needed to their early ideas, he said this week.

For example, the concrete floors in the defunct call center, now owned by businessman Kenneth Jenkins, are flat.

Which is ideal for office space but not for processing fruit, Cornett pointed out.

Making wine requires floors to slope toward drains to accommodate run-off.

“Every aspect of winemaking involves water, from cleaning grape bins to cleaning barrels after they’re used. What they say is, water use is around 13 gallons per gallon of wine, including irrigation and making.”

A new thought grew out of working around existing challenges: Why not build from the ground up on a site adjacent to the existing building?

That not only takes care of sloped floors, but will provide a 17,000 square-feet footprint to add more value to the building’s users and future visitors, Cornett said.

“This will have 20-foot ceilings and a tasting room on the north end on a second level.”

An outside deck will face the Blue Mountains and the Valley and a bank of windows into the production room will let people watch the processing take place.

The plans also call for space for continuing credit and community classes.

Eventually, Cornett said, the idea is to add more visitor-friendly options to the nine-acre campus, including eateries, a stage for theater and music and RV plug-ins, to form a destination spot for a wide range of travelers and residents.

Evolving plansMuch of the concept is not yet set in stone and is subject to being reconsidered as needed, the partners emphasized.

The project will draw its labor as locally as possible, from plumbers to architects. As for the wine itself, the city has followed Oregon’s lead to let makers share crush lines, storage, presses and retail space if they so choose, Cornett added.

This allows more winemakers to tap into Milton-Freewater’s Rocks-centric designation. That can lead to careers in the industry and owning a business, in ways not available in all aspects of agriculture.

“In a winery, you can climb your way up,” Cornett pointed out.

The proposed facility breaks down some of the entry barriers to the wine industry, Andrew Brown agreed.

The studio founders are taking care to work closely with city officials, especially on the pieces that will rely on existing infrastructure. Take wastewater, Cornett said.

“We don’t want to inundate the Milton-Freewater sewer system.”

Brown added that a specialized septic system will be installed to handle the grape waste, per industry standards.

The support already in place for the Milton-Freewater Winemakers Studio plan is solid, the partners said.

The Oregon Wine Board and American Wine Association have shown enthusiasm, as have local businesses and organizations, Cornett said.

If the Milton-Freewater City Council adds its approval to the proposal, everything is at the starting line.

For now the studio’s founders are moving as swiftly as possible to the March 31 goalpost, he said.

“I was a project worker at Boeing, I’ve had worse deadlines. I’m an optimist and I’m a hard worker.”