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Directions to the winery: Take State Route 3 from Bremerton to Allyn. Just south of Allyn a short bridge crosses a little bit of Case Inlet. Just past the bridge look for a left turn to Grapeview Loop Road. Travel past Fair Harbor on Grapeview Loop Road. At the stop sign by the Texaco Station, turn left on to Stretch Island Road and cross the bridge to Stretch Island. Turn right to Stretch Island Road South and follow the yellow line past the Mysty Isle Vineyard which grows grapes for Hoodsport Winery. Shortly after, on the right is a sign that says "The Old Winery, bottles, Ship Museum, grapes". That's the place. Drive in, circle around the white building to the left and park.

Grape growing in Washington State is said to have begun in the 1860's. The earliest record of wine production is from a winery in eastern Washington near Walla Walla, operated by Frank Orselli from Lucca, Italy in 1876.

At about the same time, 1872, in western Washington, Lambert B. Evans rowed his flat bottomed skiff through the quiet waterways of Puget Sound, looking for his ideal place. Evans was a Confederate Army Civil War veteran from Florida, recently released from prison. He is said to have walked most of the way from Florida to Southern California, thence to Puget Sound. Charles William (Bill ) Somers, Son of St. Charles Winery founder Charles Somers, said Evans was thought to have raised grapes in Florida.

Evans homesteaded and planted vines on Stretch Island starting in 1872. His homestead eventually claimed ownership of the northern 172 acres of the 365 acre island. His vineyard was planted along the shore, on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, gradually growing to cover a substantial portion of his property. Evans reportedly used to row his flat bottomed skiff 20 miles to Olympia to sell his grapes.

Stretch Island gets its name from Gunners Mate Samuel Stretch, a member of explorer Charles Wilke's expedition which arrived in Puget Sound in 1841. The expedition was sent, in part, to support the U. S. Government's claim to the Oregon Territory. Wilke was also intent on verifying and completing Commander Vancouver's nautical charts of the area, which he found very accurate. In addition he sent out parties from his ship to explore and survey the area.

When they returned to the ship Wilke named the geographical areas after the crew members who did the work. Thus we have Case Inlet, Carr Inlet, Budd Inlet, Hartstene Island, Pickering Passage, Dyes Inlet, Agate Pass, and Stretch Island named for Lt. Case, Lt. Carr, Lt. Budd, Lt Hartstene, Naturalist Charles Pickering, Assistant Taxidermist John Dyes, Artist's Assistant Alfred Agate, and Gunners Mate Samuel Stretch.

Adam Eckert, from the Chautauqua Grape Belt area of New York, visited Evans' log cabin about 1890. When Eckert saw Evans' vineyard he sent for more native American vines from New York. Eckert experimented with these varieties. Continued cross breeding of the concord type vines eventually produced a variety which was well suited to the Eckert vineyards on Stretch Island. They became the most widely planted variety in the Puget Sound area, and he called it "Island Belle". This variety spread to other nearby islands in Puget Sound, and to the mainland. A village was founded called Grapeview, which exists today by Stretch Island.

The story of how the Island Belle grape got its name came from a chance meeting with a lady I met at the winery, a descendant of the Eckert Family, who was picking Island Belle grapes from the remaining vines. She told this story:

"The Island Belle was named after my grandmother, Lottie Eckert. The Eckert children were Walter, Leana, Harry, Sammy, Lottie, and Ruth, in addition to twins who died in infancy. Lottie married Clarence Dabill. She was my grandmother, and lived in Bremerton, Washington, until she died in her 70's. Lottie's only child was my mother Virginia. I'm her only child, so we're running out of great grandchildren."

"Lottie attended a dance on Stretch Island. She was a lovely young woman, one of the prettiest at the dance, and the 'belle of the ball'. Shortly after that she went to the Pacific Grape growers Association Convention in San Francisco with her parents and sister Ruth. (They served Champagne and Ruth, Lottie's younger sister, thought it was grape juice, drank quite a bit of it and got tipsy. My grandmother, Lottie, was so embarrassed.)"

"Adam Eckert at that point had developed a strain of grape and had been pondering what to name his successful grape creation. According to family history, he was going to introduce it at that convention, and that evening, while dressing for the convention he is said to have exclaimed, "I know what I'll call it. It will be the Island Belle!"

The grape is still grown there today. We watched as a number of people picked the grapes from the small remaining vineyard next to the old winery. Other vineyards on Stretch Island continue to grow the grape. Hoodsport Winery, on the west side of Hoods Canal, usually has sufficient fruit from vineyards on Stretch Island to make an Island Belle wine and a cab island belle blend.

The Somers family, originally from England, settled in Pittsburgh, PA. The whole family moved to WA. in 1903 and were in the real estate business in Seattle. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Seattle realtor Charles Somers and son C. W. "Bill" Somers started the St. Charles Winery on Stretch Island. The winery was named for Saint Charles and because Charles is a traditional name in the Somers family. This became the state's bonded winery No. 1. By 1937 there were forty two bonded wineries in Washington, including three on Stretch Island.

Bill Somers talked about his father Charles acquiring the Stretch Island property from the Evans family:

"Grandfather liked the San Juan Islands, but dad liked Stretch Island because of the soil conditions. One reason the grapes grew well here is that it is what is called a 'warm early location', ten degrees warmer than Seattle, and surrounded by the salt water of Case Inlet. Adam Eckert told dad about 'this place'. Lambert Evans passed away about 1917. He had lived on the place until he was 75 years old when he got married for the first time. Dad bought the place from his widow in 1918. There was no bridge to Stretch Island at that time."

"Adam Eckert told dad to buy the place because it was a wonderful place, and he did." Adam Eckert came out from New York state in 1889 on a visit. He saw Evans ripening Concords here in October. Eckert was very impressed and bought 40 acres from Evans at that time, and moved his family out the next year. They had a large nursery and experimented with different varieties of grapes. There was a controversy whether they developed the Island Belle, or whether it was a "sport", a vine that becomes very vigorous out of a field of plants. The controversy continues to this day.

The nursery was on the north end of the Island. An aerial photo of Stretch Island taken of the winter of 1936, still hangs on a wall of the old winery. It shows the Grapeview store, and the bridge across to Stretch Island, the vineyards and wineries on the island. At that time Stretch Island had three wineries, all with prime vineyards, and two grape juice factories.

The other two wineries dissolved in the early 1960's because the old timers, farmers, retired and sold out to summer people not interested in farming. Some of the vineyards have been abandoned, but Bill's son, Harley, still has a nice vineyard on the Island , and a small vineyard on site. This is the vineyard that Harry and Mary Branch purchased in 1975 when it was neglected and choked with blackberry vines and scotch broom.

Harry Branch, then a recently retired insurance executive, was a very unlikely grape grower. But he decided to rescue the old vineyard and did so, producing a fair crop in three years. He sold to U pickers, as had been done since the wineries went out of business.

In 1981 they had a bumper crop. Mary Branch writes, "After a week we still had about two thirds of the vineyard unpicked. Then one day a couple, Dick and Peggy Patterson from Hoodsport Winery, came by. They looked at the grapes and offered to buy the whole lot for the same price as we'd been getting from U pick." They agreed to sell, but wondered how the grapes would be harvested.

Dick Patterson told him they would all be picked by noon that Saturday. Harry was a little doubtful, but on Saturday the vineyard "blossomed with jolly pickers." When asked where the pickers came from, Peggy Patterson replied, "They're shareholders." That started the picking party that continues to this day and concludes with a huge lunch shared with all the pickers and winery personnel.

The Branchs decided to give up their property on Stretch Island after the winter of 1992, and sold it to Harley Somers, Bill Somers son. The vineyard supplies Hoodsport Winery with Island Belle grapes to this day. Harley lives in the original Eckert home next to the vineyard, a remodeled three story waterfront home on Case Inlet.

The old winery lab, and some of the original machinery, still exists. The lab retains some of the equipment from when it was operational. Winery lab work done by Bill's brother Howard E. Somers, who was a chemical engineer by profession. After St. Charles closed Howard became winemaker at American Vintners, the predecessor to Chateau Ste. Michelle.

Bill Somers remembers making wine there, including a wine called Alicante. The label on an old bottle reads "Caliante". Bill's explanation was that the people in the taverns where they sold the wine couldn't pronounce "Alicante", so they renamed it "Caliante". These were made from the blood red grapes we saw in the estate vineyard between the winery and the water. They are blended in many California wines for the color. The grapes tasted very bitter.

A number of old St. Charles wine bottles remain in the lab, some like the sauternes, still have wine. There is quite a collection of other old bottles from the era on display in the lab, including bottles from the other two Stretch Island wineries.

Ancient winery machinery can be found throughout the winery building: They have a machine called a Garolla from Italy. A stemmer crusher downstairs pumped grapes upstairs to the Garolla, which gave a gentle press to the grapes for free run juice. Juice was gravity fed to fermenting tank. Pulp was dumped into an open fermenter, so they could make white and red wine at the same time out of the same grapes. Bill believes the Garolla was used for high quality wines in California.

They shipped in a lot of grapes from Eastern WA. also, and let them sit to get up to 18 20 percent by fermentation. Dextrose (sugar) and yeast was added to the process, to boost the alcohol content. The winery closed because there was not enough grapes "on this side" to support production, and importing them from Yakima became too expensive, according to Bill Somers. The winery closed in 1965 having reached a production of 100,000 gallons at peak production.

There is a controversy concerning the Island Bell grape that continues to this day. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), which licenses wineries, is at odds with Hoodsport Winery on the naming of the Island Belle grape, and wines from it. Currently the winery is allowed to use the name Island Belle, and the Puget Sound Appellation on its label.

PUGET SOUND MUSEUM
The old St. Charles Winery building has been turned into The Puget Sound Museum by the lone efforts of C. W. "Bill" Somers, who has been collecting its contents for over 30 years. The Museum chronicles the history of the Mosquito Fleet in Puget Sound.

The mosquito fleet was a group of small passenger and freight steamers which sailed from the Coleman dock in Seattle to all over Puget Sound. Maps on the walls of the Museum show the routes the steamers traveled throughout Puget Sound, and no bridges anywhere: Bainbridge Is., Poulsbo, Southworth, Whidbey Is, Tacoma, Gig Harbor, Stretch Island, etc. Steamer service was provided all the way down Hood's Canal to Union City. The wall maps also show there was mosquito fleet service on Lake Washington, and the places where they landed.
These ships were the life's blood of the area, providing transportation before there were roads and bridges to the many places for which they provided access. They carried the mail, newspapers, freight and passengers. Maps lining the walls of the Museum show individual docks where the steamers landed. Passengers didn't need cars because they could walk to the docks to board the boats, and walk to the places where they worked at their destinations.

The Mosquito fleet operated until about 1938. By that time autos and roads had improved, and auto ferries began coming in to replace the fleet. It’s interesting to note that the trend towards “foot-ferries” is reminiscent of the days of the “Mosquito Fleet”.

Somers delights in giving tours through the Museum. Memorabilia exists from Mosquito fleet, ferries, and Navy ships. There is a tape of ferry boat whistles. Ships bells can be rung; steam whistles run on CO2 can be activated; an old Navy signaling searchlight can be illuminated. This is a hands on museum, which Somers allows kids to operate, as schools take tours through the Museum. The kids especially love the "Man Overboard Drill", a very loud siren. The school kids ask what they did for a woman overboard, so Somers gave them a sickly sounding man overboard siren. He said "Got into lots of trouble over that one!"

One room has photos and drawings of the Lusitania, Titanic, Leviathan, Mauritania, and the ships United States, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth and other nautical photos and paintings.

Another wall is hung with "Shadow Box" pictures interesting lighted, three dimensional pictures drawn by Rudolph Allen, a commercial artist from Seattle. One is of the stern wheeler Bailygatser, nicknamed the "Barely Gets There", later rebuilt to be the first auto ferry on the Bremerton Seattle run. There are models of old ships built by Carl Anderson and Willard Johnson, Tacoma, hobbyists, and old pictures of the ferries. The Kalakala in Kodiak, Alaska as a fish cannery can also be seen.

The Museum is a real treasure. No one else has the depth of knowledge that exists in the Museum except Somers, who is now in his 90s. I approached Channel 5's Backroads Northwest on doing a documentary to preserve the history of the Museum, but they seemed uninterested. In 2004, Channel 9, KCTS, aired a documentary on the Museum that captured the essence of what Somers has developed there.

Nick Tomassi teaches wine- and beer-appreciation classes.
E-mail: info@tomassiwinecabinet.com.
Website: www.tomassiwinecabinet.com.

Nick Tomassi is a Contributor to WineSquire.com

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