Charles Smith has touched down the ground in Georgetown with the opening of Charles Smith Wines Jet City. The new Urban Winery is now considered as the largest urban winery on the west coast.
An increasing number of local winemakers are now collectively known under an official tag as Seattle Urban Wineries and are setting down roots right in the city. With over 20 wineries from Green Lake to South 95th Street exist under the name, including Georgetown's OS, the Industrial District's Cloudlift, Ravenna's Eight Bells, SoDo's Bartholomew, and West Seattle's Northwest Wine Academy. "I don't want to be out there," Cloudlift Cellars' Tom Stangeland told The Seattle Times via Seattle Eater, "waving a hand toward the wide-open spaces east of the Cascades where his grapes are grown. 'I want to live in the city.'"
And just to keep the wine tasting adventure, even Charles Smith sets up what's expected to be the largest urban winery in the country in Georgetown. According to Heels First Travel, Charles Smith Jet City is the latest addition and the winery's known third location. Many people are seemingly having fun because of its open and funky vibe where the actual wine facilities could double as a dance floor. The $20 reserve tasting at the winery and the Sixto Chardonnays is labelled as out of this world and quite a few from the K line garnered points of 94 and even 100.
The now billed as the largest urban winery on the West Coast occupies a 32,000-square-foot former Dr. Pepper processing plant in the Georgetown district of Seattle. "Buying this building was purely about winemaking," Smith told Wine Spectator.
The K Vintners and the other high-end bottlings will also be produced at the winery starting off with the 2015 vintage. Smith also added, "Before, we were making wine in three different facilities in Walla Walla. I've always needed to consolidate everything I was doing in Walla Walla, and then I realized it made sense to move it all to Seattle, where we could reach 100 times the number of people we could in Walla Walla."
Meanwhile, the plans are for the winery and tasting rooms to be open to the public during Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. And now that Charles Smith's Jet City has finally debut, many wine lovers are naming Georgetown as the next hotbed for wine in the Pacific Northwest.
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