Cougar Vineyard & Winery is not our first home winery venture. Over 17 years ago we started making wine in Texas. Making good wine in an 85 degree room (yes, the air conditioner was on) isn’t easy. Even though the conditions weren’t optimum for wine making, we managed to pull off some drinkable wine. We bottled under the Ironstone Winery label.
An opportunity to move to Seattle was met with smiles after the blistering Texas heat. There we began making wine from grapes obtained from Eastern Washington. We stepped up the wine making operation from a small closet to a cellar dug into the hill below our home (yes, we replaced the supports to the house with two 400-lb beams just to make this room). The temperature and the grapes were much improved. During our stay in the always green city of Seattle, we made several trips to Buhl Idaho to visit our friend Terry White. One such occasion we helped him plant an acre of Chardonnay grapes which started us thinking about a vineyard of our own.
Cougar Vineyard & Winery is not our first home winery venture. Over 17 years ago we started making wine in Texas. Making good wine in an 85 degree room (yes, the air conditioner was on) isn’t easy.
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