The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

At the launch of Paul Gregutt's Waitsburg Cel- lars, tasters were offered a small ribbon-bound booklet describing the elements of the new wine label's logo. The image contains many symbols - all elements of what inspires winemaker and critic Gregutt and his wife, filmmaker Karen Stanton Gregutt, about being artists in Waitsburg.

"Our sense of time both slowed and expanded," Gre- gutt wrote about the couple's transition to life in Waitsburg, which started about eight years ago. "The century-old trees grounded us. The Milky Way overhead brought a sense of the infinite to our backyard. The wind in the wheat fields, the setting sun's reflection on the grain eleva- tors, the smell of a just-baked apple pie brought to us by a shy neighbor touched our hearts and fed our souls."

Book & Notes

At the base of the "W" is an open book generating a stream of musical notes. The symbol stands for music, filmmaking and writing, the "focus of our lives long be- fore we met," Gregutt writes. Living in the country, with its "enhanced and extended sense of time and leisure," he continues, "has allowed both of us to ramp up our commitment to artistic pursuits."

The Rose

At the right foot of the "W" floats a rose, a rich tradition in the history of eastern Wash- ington cottage gardens. "Our cottage rose gar- den is planted with several dozen varieties of such heritage roses, all on their own root stock - insurance against the deep freezes that occur every few winters," according to Gregutt's booklet. "And just as own-rooted grapevines have been both an asset and a unique feature of Washing- ton viticulture, these heritage roses bring some of the same hardy, disease-resistant, pioneering strength to our garden."

The Grapevine

Embracing the left stem of the "W" is the grapevine, symbol of Gregutt's fond- ness for wines from old vines, which began with his love for zinfandels made from the century-old vineyards of California. Wash- ington State is blessed with vineyards as old as a half- century which still produce abundantly. "For our Aro- matics series of white wines, we expressly sought out the oldest plants of chenin blanc, Semillon and Riesling we could find," Gregutt writes.

The Moon

Or, if the logo was more than black and white, this symbol would be a blue moon - a rare phenomenon that occurred when the 2012 grapes for the Waitsburg Cellars wines were being picked last fall. A blue moon, which is the second of two full moons in one month, happens only every three years, but during harvest, it's even more rare. According to Gregutt, "a very good sign I believe."

"One of a kind"

Woven around the "W" is Waitsburg's motto. The town is the last and only town in the state still governed by the original Territori- al Charter. Waits- burg's population is the roughly the same as it was a century ago and its principal economic pur- suit is still wheat farming. But a lot has changed, Gregutt suggests. In place of apple orchards, asparagus fields, canneries and a famous wheat flour mill, a new wave of tourism, "borne on a tide of wine and food-friendly establishments," has come in across the Walla Walla val- ley in recent decades. In its wake, Waitsburg, its people, its art, gardens and now the wines it inspires remain unique - "one of a kind."