The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - The top-ofthe hill Main Street building that was once home of Patit Creek Cellars will be entirely devoted to wine again this fall, giving Dayton two winetasting venues by the end of the year.

Owners Paul and Marcene Hendrickson have leased the 1,100-square-foot building at 507 E. Main to Abacus Wine Llc of Pasco, which will operate the location as "Dayton Wine Works" and targets casual wine drinkers and travelers.

In May, Dayton resident and former winemaker Reggie Mace announced he will

INDEX open a winery at 250 E. Main Street by Christmas.

With Spring Valley Vineyards and Couvillion in Spring Valley southwest of Waitsburg, Dayton Wine Works will bring to three the number of wineries in the Touchet Valley west of Waitsburg.

The third, Dumas Station Wines, is about halfway between Waitsburg and Dayton. Visitors to Walla Walla can now put together a halfday wine-tasting itinerary going north and than east on Highway 12.

"It's a natural for us to have that over- flow from Wa l l a Wa l l a and have Dayton Wine Works as an addition to our community," said Lisa Ronnberg, director of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce.

"So many people were used to going to Patit Creek Cellars, when they moved it Walla Walla we had lots of them asking about it," she said.M

arcene Hendrickson said she and her husband, Elk Drug's longtime owner/phar- macist, could have rented the building to others but held out for a wine business to stay in synch with the "whole feel of the valley" and because the structure is specificallyset up for it with a dedicated tasting, barrel room and fermentation room. Abacus is owned by Dr. Charles Cramer, a cardi­ologist in Texas who has put his brother Carl Cramer in charge of its day-to-day oper­ations.

Abacus has a winery at the Port of Pasco, where it produces Cable Bridge Wines and Private Labels Vitners - both branded for hotels and restaurants.

Carl Cramer has been in­volved with the Washington state wine industry for several years as a distributor's sales representative and marketer based in the Tri-Cities. He has represented labels such as Hedges, Goose Ridge, Longshadows, Basel Cellars, Reininger and Kiona.

Dayton Wine Works, which will be a tasting room only, has submitted its appli­cation

to the state and expects to get it fairly quickly be­cause the building has been used for the purpose before, Cramer said. By fall, Dayton Wine Works is expected to be open Thursdays through Sundays and, weather permitting, will offer patio seating with oc­casional

live entertainment at its grounds just above down­town Dayton. The Hendricksons started Patit Creek Cellars more than a decade ago, using grapes from Walla Walla. After eight years, they sold the wine business to Ed Dudley and Karen LaBoute who moved it to the Walla Walla airport.

Hendrickson said Cramer will be a great addition to Dayton because "he's inter­ested

in our whole valley" and, as a marketer, "has bet­ter ideas than I did."