Barreca Vineyards

Barreca Vineyards

From Vine to Wine since 1986

About

Vineyard LogoForty years ago when I had just moved “back to the land” in Northeast Washington, I picked fruit in the fall to support my family.  I saw tons of fruit, often the ripest and tastiest fruit, go to waste because it would not ship well, was in an abandoned orchard or was only used for pollination.  Finding ways to save this bounty got me started making wine.  These “country” wines tasted good and were popular with my friends.  But they required adding sugar to make them sweet enough to ferment fully.   If the wines themselves were too sweet, you could easily drink too much and wake up with a headache.

When I moved to Rice, Washington, in 1986,   I got some grape plants from a friend and started a vineyard.  I discovered that I loved growing grapes.  You make wine out of grapes because they get twice as sweet as most fruit.  Not only do you not need sugar, it is considered very bad form to add it to grape wine.  Over the years I have come to believe that refined sugar is a poison.  I also found that nearly all of the chemicals often added to wine, or used to control pests and weeds in the vineyard are both unnecessary and poisonous.  So I learned to grow grapes and make wine organically and without sulfites.

Soon I also realized that I was making a lot more wine than our family could drink.  So I went through an incredible series of bureaucratic hurdles to license Barreca Vineyards as a winery.   Our winery is not a micro-winery.  It is more like a nano-winery.  We have  6 or seven varieties and blends of mostly red French Hybrid wines.  They are all pure, simple and made from our own grapes.  But we don’t suggest that you buy them because they are politically correct.  We invite you to try them and buy them because you like them.

I love growing grapes. We have around 30 varieties.  Many are seedless table grapes and we sell young grape plants started from these.  But most are wine grapes that get a lot of attention before and after they are picked.   We invite people to try our wines and hopefully buy them, but we also invite you to grow your own grapes and make your own wine.  No two wine makers will agree on everything.  There is always a lot to learn and to talk about.  We are no longer open Saturdays but you can always call to make an appointment for a tasting for yourself, friends and family, 509-738-6155.

You can get here using the following map: Map to Vineyard.

Joe Barreca, Owner

3 Responses to About

  1. Karen:

    My email is joe.barreca@gmail.com.

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  2. Hello my name is dan i was referred to you from a common friend. I posted in face book that i was looking for some grape seeds to start some grapes to see how they would grow here in Nespele
    . I only got into gardening last year and wanted to expand my foods on my one acre peice of land. I do not drink alchohol but still am interested to grow them. My question today is do you by chance sell organic grape starts? I am looking for a couple to begin with.

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    • Hi Dan: Grapes are very good at starting from seed. But they are very bad at developing a plant with the same characteristics as its parents from seed. So we clone all of our organic grape starts from cuttings. We grow at least 30 different varieties of grapes and make starts for most of them. For descriptions and advice on planning a vineyard, check out our grape catalog here: https://barrecavineyards.com/Downloads/GrapeCatalog2020.pdf. BTW This is July and the ground is dry. If you have a secure vineyard with a trellis and watering available, you can plant in the Fall when the ground is wet again. Most people plant in early Spring. Call us any time of year to arrange a tour of our vineyard and learn more about growing grapes.

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