On March 16, 1987, judges at a wine tasting in New York award their top overall score to a 1983 Cabernet Sauvignon from Paul Thomas Winery in Bellevue. The winning wine, crafted by winemaker Brian Carter with grapes grown at Sagemoor Vineyard near Pasco, prevails in a blind tasting that pits 1983 Cabernet Sauvignons from Washington against several top 1983 wines from Bordeaux in France, including the legendary Chateau Lafite Rothschild. "That helped put Paul Thomas on the map, put Washington on the map," said Carter, who since 2004 has been running his own winery, Brian Carter Cellars, in Woodinville.
Paul Thomas: '60s Rebel
Paul Thomas, born in Wenatchee in 1939, began playing around with home winemaking in 1968, first with vinifera wine grapes and then with fruit and berries. By 1979 "he'd gotten serious enough to go commercial, and as a marketing decision, chose to sell only fruit wines" ("Paul Thomas Winery"). In 1980, Thomas hired young winemaker Brian Carter (b. 1953), and by 1986 the winery in Bellevue was producing 15,000 cases of fruit wine and 7,000 cases of grape wine. Thomas was a high school teacher, and during busy times at the winery he knew where to look for extra help. "We'd have his old students come by and help at the winery," Carter recalled. "The students all raved about him" (Carter interview).
For a brief window in the late 1980s, when production soared to 30,000 cases, Paul Thomas Winery was second in sales behind only Chateau Ste. Michelle in Washington. In a November 1986 story in the Los Angeles Times, wine columnist Robert Lawrence Balzer portrayed Thomas as "an overage hippie" whose rhubarb wine was "adored by some of the country's most discriminating palates" ("From Rhubarb to Riesling ..."). Wrote Balzer:
"Thomas was born into a farming family whose forebears had pioneered the Pacific Northwest. But Paul Thomas was a rebel. He had ideas about social change, and after he had finished high school, he struck out for Europe to attend college in Paris, where his real passion for wine and food was born. When Thomas returned to Washington state, he began a 14-year stint as a teacher of history and urban affairs. Thomas' students may not have been aware of it, but their teacher had had an interesting past. Thomas says that the FBI maintained a file on him because of his early interest in the People's Republic of China and possibly because of his visit to Vietnam as a civilian in 1968" ("From Rhubarb to Riesling ...").
Thomas, Balzer noted, had played a significant role in putting Washington wines in front of a national audience. He helped establish the Washington State Wine Institute in 1981, and in 1983 Thomas went before the state legislature to argue, successfully, that the state should allocate $300,000 to support the marketing of Washington wines.
Brian Carter: "A Winemaker to Watch"
Brian Carter was raised in Corvallis, Oregon. The gift of a microscope at age 12 fueled his childhood fascination with microscopic organisms; by age 14 he was watching yeasts crawl around in his own homemade blackberry wine. Carter earned a microbiology degree at Oregon State University and then attended the graduate wine program at the University of California-Davis. His winemaking career began in 1978 at Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains. By 1979 he was working in the Napa Valley at Chateau Montelena, where history had been made in 1976 when Montelena's 1973 Chardonnay won the grand prize at a prestigious wine competition in France – a stunning victory for California wines that came to be known as the Judgment in Paris.
In 1979, Carter visited Washington wine country and saw tremendous potential. "I had expected to go back to Oregon," to continue his wine career, he recalled, "but I make a trip up to Washington and was really excited about the wine diversity here. I didn't want to live in Eastern Washington, but I spread the word around King County that if anyone was looking for a winemaker, I was looking for work up here. Paul Thomas came down to Calistoga, where I was working for Chateau Montelena, and hired me. I got up here in August 1980. There were only 16 wineries in the state at the time" (Carter interview).
Making both fruit and grape wines for Thomas, Carter "quickly became a winemaker to watch" ("Brian Carter Cellars: The Right Blend"). In 1983, he used grapes grown by Jerry Bookwalter at Sagemoor Vineyard to make a few hundred cases of a Cabernet Sauvignon that earned rave reviews when it was released in late 1985 or early 1986. Balzer wrote in the Los Angeles Times in November 1986 that the Paul Thomas wine was "truly worth searching for. It's a 1983 Washington Cabernet Sauvignon ($12) that you can put up against any claret of comparable age, and it's almost certain to be the one you'd like best" ("From Rhubarb to Riesling ..."). Carter recalled that making the award-winning wine was routine.
"It was fairly standard winemaking procedures ... crush the grapes, add yeast, pumped over, put through malolactic fermentation, use French oak barrels. I can't remember the exact percent of new oak, but I think it was about 40 percent. The fact that it did so well in that competition was probably as big a surprise to me as the rest of the world" (Carter interview).
Judgment in New York
While Paul Thomas was active in the Washington Wine Institute in the mid- to late-1980s, Simon Siegl served as the organization's front man. Funded by member wineries, the WWI was created in 1983 to advocate for the industry at the state capital in Olympia; Siegl became its executive director in 1985. Two years later the state legislature created the Washington Wine Commission, and for a period of time Siegl served as executive director of both WWI and the Washington Wine Commission.
One of Siegl's most visible promotional efforts was an annual Washington wine week in New York City. In 1987, the event began with a blind tasting of 1983 Cabernet Sauvignons from Washington and Cabernet-based wines from Bordeaux. The judging was followed in subsequent days by tastings, meals, and appearances by winemakers from Washington. "We decided it was time to show off our cabernets," Siegl told The Seattle Times. "After all, Oregon pinot noirs have proved themselves in similar tastings against the French. Now it's our turn" ("Washington Wines Top Bordeaux ...").
The judges were prominent: Howard Goldberg, wine writer for The New York Times; Barbara Ensrud, wine columnist for the New York Daily News; and Harriet Lembeck, author and nationally published wine critic. The results of their tasting resoundingly favored the wines from Washington: After the Paul Thomas Cabernet, the judges listed, in order of preference: Quilceda Creek, Columbia Winery (Red Willow Vineyard), Woodward Canyon, Kiona, and Chateau Ste. Michelle – all from Washington. Next were Cos-d'Estournel (Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux), Arbor Crest from Washington, Chateau Lafite Rothschild (Paulliac), and Chateau Langoa-Barton (Saint-Emillion).
After
Carter recalled that production of the 1983 Paul Thomas Cabernet Sauvignon was limited to "300 or 400 cases" (Carter interview) and that most of the wine had been sold before the New York tasting. Some positive press helped bolster future sales, although Carter didn't stay around to enjoy the proverbial fruits of his labor. He left Paul Thomas in 1988 to work as a consultant, and in 1990 became a fulltime winemaker at Washington Hills Cellars in Sunnyside. "His rise in the wine world continued, attracting the attention of young wineries needed a consulting winemaker, among them McCrea Cellars, Hedges Family Estate, Soos Creek, Silver Lake, and others" ("Brian Carter Cellars: The Right Blend").
Thomas said he couldn't recall how much of the 1983 Cabernet had been sold before New York, but he did recall that the wine was being served at Windows of the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center. He found out when "a smartass childhood friend of mine from Wenatchee (married into the Rockefeller family) was having dinner one evening at this restaurant. He called me during dinner, 'Paul, the restaurant must have made a mistake. One of your wines is on its list'" (Thomas email).
Thomas's time in the wine business ended after 11 years when he sold the winery to John Stoddard, a former student of his, in 1990. Columbia Winery bought out Paul Thomas Winery in 1993. The winery was sold again a few years later. The Paul Thomas brand was subsequently discontinued, but Paul Thomas himself continued to live a rewarding life. "I can become bored easily," he said in 2024. "So, I decided to go to Washington D.C. and open the city's first espresso store at L'Enfants Plaza. After that successful but brief experience, I moved onto Russia for 10-plus years exporting Washington state fruit and much more from the USA to Kamchatka – one of the most beautiful places I have experienced in my life" (Thomas email).
In 2004, Carter opened his own winery, Brian Carter Cellars, in Woodinville. In 2019 – more than three decades after their stunning victory in New York – he released a Bandol-style blend of Mourvèdre, Grenache, and Cinsault and named the wine in honor of Paul Thomas. "Paul really likes European wines," Carter said. "I gave him a bottle and fortunately he likes it." ("Brian Carter Cellars: The Right Blend").
