Winery will move to Uniontown

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Dec 25, 20140

The Uniontown Community Development Association’s Vollmer Building is fully rented for coming years.

After a two-year restoration and remodeling project, the UCDA has signed Wawawai Canyon Winery to a five-year lease for the storefront space.

The operation will also take the back end and side area of the former 1889 mercantile. For the past two years, the back was a production facility for Grandma Lela’s Oatmeal.

Wawawai now will use the restored building for wine bottling, wine tasting and retail space.

“We’re very pleased to have them in the community,” said UCDA President Dale Miller. “They fit right with our objective of bringing in a business with locally produced products.”

Wawawai Canyon is owned and operated by Bob and Stacia Moffett and their son Ben.

The operation, which began in 2004, will move from its existing space on the Moscow-Pullman highway, in a former dairy barn which the owner has decided to put up for sale.

The Vollmer Building consists of three rooms, including a 10,033 square-foot long, side garage which the Moffetts plan to use as a cellar area, with room for an entertainment space, opening to the street by double garage doors.

“Eventually we plan to remodel the space that way,” said Stacia Moffett. “We might have barrel tasting too, that kind of thing.”

In the rear is the 1,390 square-foot commercial kitchen area that was formerly occupied by Grandma Lela’s.

“We will use it as a work area, bottling area, then maybe later as a commercial kitchen,” Moffett said.

The front 742-square-foot space will be for retail.

The Moffetts first began in the wine business in 1998 after buying property in Wawawai Canyon, later growing grapes on six acres.

Their son Ben joined the operation after graduating from Walla Walla Community College in its Enology and Viticulture program – the study of wine and growing of grapes.

The Moffetts now raise two major varieties of white grapes and four varieties of red.

They produced between 700 and 800 cases of wine in 2013 with 2014’s production still in barrels and tanks.

At the Vollmer Building, the Wawawai Canyon will offer five wines in the tasting room, along with four others to be released next year.

Wawawai Canyon sells all its wine retail. The product is not available in stores.

For the tasting room, the Moffetts plan to build a new bar.

“We may just put a slab of wood between two barrels and open that way to begin with,” Stacia said.

The business will be open five days per week in Uniontown, Wednesday to Sunday from noon to 5:30 p.m.

After signing the lease in October, the Moffetts have aimed for an opening in January.

“For sure by the end of the month,” Stacia said. “We’re looking forward to it. We think there are so many interesting things going on in Uniontown. We hope to make it even more of a destination for people.”

The total cost of the UCDA’s Vollmer Building project was $167,903, including $39,750 the group paid for the building in 2012.

Two grants supplied much of the funding, including a Whitman County .09 grant for $60,000 and Washington State Community Economic Revitalization Project (CERB) for $98,750. In addition, $3,500 came from the Avista Foundation and $10,000 in private donations.

The Vollmer Building was last run as a grocery store in the 1980s by Dick and Ella Wittman.

In 1995, it was remodeled and updated for I.S.R. Technology, which made parts in it for two years, until it outgrew the space.

The building later went into foreclosure before the 2012 auction.

The UCDA is a public, non-profit group appointed by the Uniontown City Council. Its previous projects include buying and restoring the Main Street building which houses Sage Baking Co. and the project to restore the Dahmen Barn.