By Nick Tomassi Nick Tomassi teaches wine appreciation at Olympic College in Bremerton, Wash., and writes a wine column for The (Bremerton) Sun. Nick is a regular contributor to Wine Press Northwest. This article originally appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of Wine Press Northwest magazine The Belle of Washington Andre Ranieri Looking at a little history: Bill Somers inspects a six-decade-old bottle of sauterne-style wine from St. Charles Winery. Bill's father, Charles, started the winery in 1933. Today, the building is a museum for the winery and Puget Sound maritime history. Grape growing in Washington State is said to have begun in the 1860s. The earliest record of wine production is in 1876 from a winery in Eastern Washington near Walla Walla, operated by Frank Orselli from Lucca, Italy. At about the same time, in 1872 in Western Washington, Lambert B. Evans rowed his flat-bottomed skiff through the quiet waterways of Puget Sound, looking for his ideal place. Evans was a Confederate Army Civil War veteran from Florida recently released from prison. He is said to have walked most of the way from Florida to Southern California, then to Puget Sound. Bill Somers, son of St. Charles Winery founder Charles Somers, says Evans was thought to have raised grapes in Florida. Evans homesteaded and planted vines on Stretch Island starting in 1872. His homestead eventually claimed ownership of the northern 172 acres of the 365-acre island. His vineyard was planted along the shore on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, gradually growing to cover a substantial portion of his property. Evans reportedly rowed his flat-bottomed skiff 20 miles to Olympia to sell his grapes. Stretch Island gets its name from Gunners Mate Samuel Stretch, a member of explorer Charles Wilke's expedition, which arrived in Puget Sound in 1841. The expedition was sent, in part, to support the U. S. Government's claim to the Oregon Territory. Wilke also was intent on verifying and completing Commander Vancouver's nautical charts of the area, which he found very accurate. In addition he sent out parties from his ship to explore and survey the area. When they returned to the ship, Wilke named the geographical areas after the crew members who did the work. Thus we have Case Inlet, Carr Inlet, Budd Inlet, Hartstene Island, Pickering Passage, Dyes Inlet, Agate Pass and Stretch Island. Adam Eckert from the Chattaqua Grape Belt area of New York visited Evans' log cabin about 1890. When Eckert saw Evans' vineyard, he sent for more native American vines from New York. Eckert experimented with these varieties. Continued cross-breeding of the concord-type vines eventually produced a variety that was well suited to the Eckert vineyards on Stretch Island. They became the most widely planted variety in the Puget Sound area, and he called it "Island Belle." This variety spread to other nearby islands in Puget Sound and to the mainland. A village was founded called Grapeview, which exists today by Stretch Island. The story of how the Island Belle grape got its name came from a chance meeting with a lady I met at the winery, a descendant of the Eckert family, who was picking Island Belle grapes from the remaining vines. She told this story: "The Island Belle was named after my grandmother, Lottie Eckert. The Eckert children were Walter, Leana, Harry, Sammy, Lottie and Ruth, in addition to twins who died in infancy. Lottie married Clarence Dabill. She was my grandmother, and lived in Bremerton, Wash., until she died in her 70s. Lottie's only child was my mother, Virginia. I'm her only child, so we're running out of great grandchildren. "Lottie attended a dance on Stretch Island. She was a lovely young woman, one of the prettiest at the dance, and the 'belle of the ball.' Shortly after that, she went to the Pacific Grape Growers Association Convention in San Francisco with her parents and sister Ruth. "Adam Eckert, at that point, had developed a strain of grape and had been pondering what to name his successful grape creation. According to family history, he was going to introduce it at that convention, and that evening, while dressing for the convention, he is said to have exclaimed, 'I know what I'll call it. It will be the Island Belle!' " The grape still is grown there today. Hoodsport Winery, on the west side of Hoods Canal, usually has sufficient fruit from vineyards on Stretch Island to make an Island Belle wine and an Island Belle-merlot blend. The Somers family, originally from England, settled in Pittsburgh. The family moved to Washington in 1903 and was in the real estate business in Seattle. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Seattle real estate agent Charles Somers and son C. W. "Bill" Somers started the St. Charles Winery on Stretch Island. The winery was named for St. Charles and because Charles is a traditional name in the Somers family. This became the state's bonded winery No. 1. By 1937, there were 42 bonded wineries in Washington, including three on Stretch Island. Bill Somers talked about his father acquiring the Stretch Island property from the Evans family: "Grandfather liked the San Juan Islands, but Dad liked Stretch Island because of the soil conditions. One reason the grapes grew well here is that it is what is called a 'warm early location,' 10 degrees warmer than Seattle, and surrounded by the saltwater of Case Inlet. Adam Eckert told Dad about 'this place.' Lambert Evans passed away about 1917. He had lived on the place until he was 75 years old, when he got married for the first time. Dad bought the place from his widow in 1918. There was no bridge to Stretch Island at that time. "Adam Eckert told Dad to buy the place because it was a wonderful place, and he did. Adam Eckert came out from New York in 1889 on a visit. He saw Evans ripening Concords here in October. Eckert was very impressed and bought 40 acres from Evans at that time and moved his family out the next year. "They had a large nursery and experimented with different varieties of grapes. There was a controversy whether they developed the Island Belle or whether it was a "sport," a vine that becomes very vigorous out of a field of plants." The nursery was on the north end of the Island. An aerial photo of Stretch Island taken in the winter of 1936 still hangs on a wall of the old winery. It shows the Grapeview store, the bridge across to Stretch Island and the vineyards and wineries. At that time, Stretch Island had three wineries, all with prime vineyards, and two grape juice factories. The other two wineries dissolved in the early 1960s because the old-timers retired and sold out to summer people not interested in farming. Some of the vineyards have been abandoned, but Bill's son, Harley, still has a nice vineyard on the island and a small vineyard on the site. Harry and Mary Branch purchased this vineyard in 1975, by which time it was neglected and choked with blackberry vines and scotch broom. Harry, then a recently retired insurance executive, was an unlikely grape grower. But he decided to rescue the old vineyard and produced a fair crop in three years. He sold to U-pickers, as had been done since the wineries went out of business. In 1981 the Branches had a bumper crop. Mary writes, "After a week, we still had about two-thirds of the vineyard unpicked. Then one day, Dick and Peggy Patterson from Hoodsport Winery came by. They looked at the grapes and offered to buy the whole lot." The Branches agreed to sell but wondered how the grapes would be harvested. Dick told him they would all be picked by noon that Saturday. Harry was a little doubtful, but on Saturday the vineyard "blossomed with jolly pickers." When asked where the pickers came from, Peggy Patterson replied, "They're shareholders." That started the picking party that continues to this day and concludes with a huge lunch shared with all the pickers and winery personnel. The Branches decided to give up their property on Stretch Island after the winter of 1992 and sold it to Harley Somers. The vineyard continues to supply Hoodsport Winery with Island Belle grapes. Harley lives in the original Eckert home next to the vineyard, a remodeled three-story waterfront home on Case Inlet. The old winery lab and some of the original machinery still exist. Lab work was done by Bill's brother, Howard E. Somers, who was a chemical engineer by profession. After St. Charles closed, Howard became winemaker at American Vintners, the predecessor to Chateau Ste. Michelle. A number of old St. Charles wine bottles remain in the lab. Some, like the sauternes, still have wine. There is quite a collection of other old bottles from the era on display in the lab, including bottles from the other two Stretch Island wineries. Ancient winery machinery can be found throughout the winery building. They have a machine called a garolla from Italy. A stemmer-crusher downstairs pumped grapes upstairs to the garolla, which gave a gentle press to the grapes for free-run juice. Juice was gravity-fed to a fermenting tank. Pulp was dumped into an open fermenter so they could make white and red wine at the same time out of the same grapes. Bill believes the garolla was used for high-quality wines in California. The winery closed in 1965 because there was not enough grapes "on this side" to support production and importing them from the Yakima Valley became too expensive. At its zenith, the winery reached a production of 100,000 gallons. Go to Wine Press Northwest Online | Go to the Washington Wine Archives Online