Chateau Ste. Michelle explores selling Woodinville winery

Change could be coming to one of Washington’s most outstanding wineries.

Chateau Ste. Michelle is looking at promoting its extensive Woodinville property — residence to the winery’s tasting home, banquet rooms and summer concert house — as it consolidates wine production east of the Cascades.

A organization statement Tuesday mentioned Chateau Ste. Michelle is “considering all options” and cautioned that the idea is continue to in the early levels.

The winery is aspect of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, which describes by itself as the largest winery in the Pacific Northwest and also sells wines less than labels these as 14 Palms and Columbia Crest.

Chateau Ste. Michelle has lengthy split its creation, generating white wines in Woodinville and reds in Jap Washington. Setting up with this year’s harvest, the organization ideas to consolidate that generation to Japanese Washington, nearer to its vineyards in the Columbia Valley, in accordance to the statement.

“Producing wine in Woodinville so far taken out from our Japanese Washington vineyards has resulted in a long time of transport hundreds of thousands of gallons of white wine to our Woodinville facility and burning approximately 75,000 gallons of diesel through in excess of 1,600 freight outings every 12 months,” the corporation said.

Provided that transform, the corporation explained it was “evaluating how to best make the most of the facility heading ahead, including checking out a potential sale of our Woodinville assets, or maybe a portion of it.”

The business serious estate business CBRE detailed the web-site for sale previously this thirty day period, promoting 118 acres of “flexibly zoned land” that is “primed for redevelopment,” according to Washington Wine Report, which initial claimed the opportunity sale. 

The listing does not look to be publicly offered on the internet, and CBRE declined to remark or validate the listing. 

The Chateau is a fixture in Woodinville, a suburb that has become a attract for tourists and neighborhood homebuyers alike. The median one-relatives residence in the area marketed for $1.3 million very last thirty day period.

The doable sale will not have fast consequences. The vineyard claimed it nonetheless programs to present its 2022 summertime concert sequence and host people today in its tasting home. “This course of action is however in the exploratory period and could take several years to put into action, if at all,” the statement reported.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates was bought for $1.2 billion final 12 months from tobacco corporation Altria to the fairness organization Sycamore Partners. Even in advance of the pandemic shuttered tasting rooms, consumers had been turning to possibilities, and the state’s wine sector manufactured a surplus of inventory. Ste. Michelle’s functioning money went from a $50 million earnings to a $3 million decline from 2018 to 2019, in accordance to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.