Jay DeWitt of Dumas Station Wines
Photos Courtesy of Dumas Station Wines
When 4th generation farmer Jay DeWitt was growing up in Walla Walla, he never imagined he would have a career in the wine industry. There was no wine or alcohol of any kind in the DeWitt household, except on New Year's Eve. It wasn’t until Jay was working as a crop consultant in CA that he had his first taste of wine. He remembers that first sip well. It was a 1976 Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon, and the experience changed his life. He had never tasted anything so good, and he has had a glass of wine every day of his life since that first sip. He and his wife moved back to Walla Walla, and Jay made hobby wine in their dining room, using a trash can as a fermentation vessel. In 2003, he and a friend decided to make wine commercially, and Dumas Station Wines was born.
There’s a lot of history behind the brand name and the tasting room/winery site several miles south of Dayton, WA. In the 1890s, the winery property was an apple orchard owned by James Dumas. Two freight railway lines passed through the property and right by Dumas’s cold storage shed built in 1909 and another building built in the 1950s and used for apple sorting and packing. That building was completely renovated by Jay and his partner Doug, and is today the winery and tasting room. Railway maps still show the site as Dumas Station, hence the name of the wine brand. Visitors will find mostly Bordeaux style red wines, and lots of train related décor. Even the wine bottles have labels depicting old train photos. Dumas Station Wines is a wine and train lovers must-visit destination place.
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