Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery

Real Life For A Local Farmer

Last modified on 2009-04-01 17:19:29 GMT. 1 comment. Top.

Tough Decisions Facing Iconic Bainbridge Island Vintners

Without a doubt Gerard Bentryn of the Bainbridge Island Winery has been perhaps the most local of local Kitsap farmers. He produces his own grapes on the BI vineyard, crushes them and ferments the juice into wine that is by and large marketed locally as well. He has been a fiery voice for local food all of his life and a major force for helping Bainbridge Island growers get a start and prosper.

Despite his lifelong commitment and relative success it has not been a smooth road. He and his wife Jo Ann had to give up part of their vineyards several years ago in order to fund some family needs that were not met with the profitability of the farming and winery operations. Some of that land was taken out of production permanently.

This newspaper article from the Kitsap Sun tells the story that the Bentryns are faced with another decision at the age when they need to face the reality of how they will live in their later years and what might happen to all that they have built and the people that they have helped.

The Bentryn’s story illustrates a lot about local food that is so valuable about local food and our communities and highlights two of the highest hurdles to success in the effort to make growing and eating local food mainstream: farmland preservation and farmer succession.

The Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance is dedicated to this mission. Our task force includes working groups dealing with how to finance farmland acquisition and infrastructure development, how to build communities around individual farms, how to set the right price for local food and local products and how to support new farmers to gain the necessary skills and resources to continue profitable farming operations on existing farms. The Bentryns are not the only Kitsap farmers facing this problem. Anecdotally, I know of up to 20-30 farmland owners or farmers who are facing the same questions about what will happen to their farms when they are no longer able to continue on. Nationally, the average age of farmers is about 57.

This is why it is important that the KCAA grows its membership and capacities to be able to take direct and indirect action to help farmers like the Bentryns. We hope that the task force will evolve and become the seed for future local food networks and systems that will provide on-going work and energy to accomplish these tasks.

How would you help the Bentryns or any farmer get the resources needed for retirement and facilitate the continuance of their farm operations? You can comment below.

Bainbridge Island Wines

Last modified on 2008-12-19 22:28:15 GMT. 3 comments. Top.

Selecting a special bottle of wine or two to go with our festive food fare during the holidays is part of the celebration for many of us.  But you don’t have to go any farther than Bainbridge Island to buy wine directly from the tasting rooms of two excellent local vintners. Both use only their own grapes in their wines and both will have their wines available at the final day of the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market this Saturday as well as other outlets around our area.

Well-known vintner Gerard Bentryn of Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery has been producing wine commercially here for 26 years and all of it has come solely from the grapes in his 32 year-old Bainbridge vineyard. Mike Lempriere of Perennial Vintners began making wine in 1997 as a hobby in his then Green Lake area home in Seattle with rented equipment and grapes brought over from Eastern Washington but he’s now producing wine commercially from grapes grown on his own land plus a little land leased from Bentryn, his next-door neighbor.

“Of all the wineries in the Puget Sound area west of the mountains, Gerard and I are the only ones who make our wine 100 percent from grapes we grow ourselves,” said Lempriere.

Lempriere and his wife, Beth Schoenberg, who met at Evergreen College, followed other careers before pursuing their vineyard dream  – he as a computer programmer and she (until this past year) as an American sign language interpreter.  But they loved wine so much they made about 200 gallons of various hobby wines per year between 1998 and 2002.  Then Mike decided that the only way to truly know and understand wine was to grow your own grapes.

After he purchased grapes from Bentryn in 1999, Lempriere produced his first cool-climate wine (a Muller Thurgau) and became a convert to the delicacy of these wines and the satisfaction of producing wine from local grapes.  By the fall of 2003, the Lempriere family moved to a three acre plot of land on Bainbridge where Mike began planting and growing his own grapes. By 2004, Perennial Vintners had been established as a business, during the summer of 2005 it was bonded as a vintner, and the fledgling winery’s first release was out in March, 2007.

Perennial Vintners is currently producing Muller Thurgau on a half-acre of land leased from Bentryn. These grapes were originally planted in 1981 and produce a light, dry fruity wine which Lempriere says is “an outstanding match” with seafood.  They also offer a Madeleine Angevine and a delightful new Ichigo Strawberry Dessert Wine – it’s a true sipping wine with 19 per cent alcohol content and only 11 cases have been produced.

Lempriere says he couldn’t have created his winery without the help of Bentryn and another neighbor, Betsy Wittick.

“I’m still here because of their wonderful expertise and because they have been so freely giving of it,” says Lempriere.

Visitors are welcome at Perennial Vintners but are requested to call the office at (206) 780-2146 or Mike’s phone at (206) 842-9463 before coming.  A comprehensive web site at www.perennialvintners.com gives more information and lists other locations where wine may be purchased.

Bentryn, 69, is modest about his wine-making accomplishments, deep-seated knowledge of grape growing, and mentor status among other vintners.  He says he’s happy to see young wine makers like Lempriere take an interest in growing grapes and making wine in a small vineyard the old-fashioned European way.  Neither winemaker uses herbicides or pesticides on their estate grown grapes, though the two employ slightly different aging methods.

Bentryn feels strongly about what he feels are violations of ethics of wine making and bottle labeling – he says that some vintners are not entirely honest about their labeling – that they do not reflect the fact that their grapes are not grown on their land and that some even bring wine from elsewhere and put their label on it.

“These wines are not truly “estate grown, produced, and bottled” and this is misleading for consumers, especially those who want to know where their grapes came from,” says Bentryn.

During his early boyhood years, Bentryn spent many happy hours with an old farmer who died at age 94 on his tractor. The young Bentryn was entranced with the stories he told of farming in the 1800’s and became fascinated with traditional farming methods. So when he was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany, he says he fell in love with the agricultural landscape of Europe.  He spent all his spare time there working in farms and vineyards and it was here that his dream to own a vineyard was born.

After return to the U.S. and working for Bell Telephone, Bentryn left that job to obtain his masters degree from the University of Victoria in physical geography, and then went to work for the National Park Service as a water resource planner.  This enabled him to spend time traveling to France, Germany, Austria, and even South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to study grape growing and wine making..

Twelve years later he left that job and purchased the land that would become Bainbridge Island Vintners and Winery for the next 32 years.  He chose varieties of grapes that he thought would grow well in this climate, such as some of the whites from the Loire Valley and Alsace areas.  Originally purchasing 26 acres, he now owns 12 of which nine are devoted to grape growing.

Bentryn and his wife Jo Ann produce an amazing 22 tons of grapes annually on their land and sell about 2000 cases of wine a year.  The winery is currently offering nine wines – including the popular 2007 Ferryboat White, a 2003 Pinot Noir, and a 2006 Pinot Gris. The tasting room will be open from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Friday – Tuesday before Christmas, and will be open again every weekend Fri. – Sun.  after Christmas.  Directions to the winery as well as a description of wines can be found on the Bainbridge Vineyards and Winery web site at www.bainbridgevineyards.com Telephone is: (206) 842-9463