Firesteed Cellars

You have to love a winery that works at keeping costs at reasonable levels while over-delivering on value. A winery that produces wine to, simply, go with whatever food you’re enjoying. Wine lover, meet Firesteed.

Owner Howard Rossbach grew up in the Bronx and moved to Seattle in 1973 to attend the University of Washington and get a botany degree. He wanted to follow that with a doctorate in biological sciences, then law school so he could practice environmental law. While an undergrad, his father died and he needed to find a job to pay for school. "I thought it would be cool to work at a wine shop," laughs Howard. "I could get alcohol at a reasonable price and knowing about wine would probably improve my social life." He was hired by Bob Betz (now of Betz Family Winery) at La Cantina.

Photo: Howard with his wines

His interest in food and wine led him to enter that world as a career. He was hired by a small wine distribution company called G. Raden & Sons as employee #10 in 1977. Staying eight years, he worked in many capacities: sales, management, education, purchasing. The company grew from 10-150 employees. Howard left to start his own company, Vintage Northwest, in 1985.

His new company provided sales and marketing services to Northwest wineries. Wine was coming of age and Howard was able to take Washington wines national. He worked with wineries like Barnard Griffin, Hogue, Covey Run and Erath. With his preexisting network of distributors, he discovered products that markets needed/wanted. He took ideas to the wineries and, mostly, they took advantage of his advice. The one idea that no one jumped on was a reasonably-priced Oregon pinot noir. "The Oregon wineries didn’t want to grow and the Washington wineries didn’t want to get involved in Oregon," says Howard. Firesteed was born.

When started in 1992, Firesteed was a virtual winery. "The mistake I made was that I didn’t trademark that term," laughs Howard. A true believer in planning for the worst, he operates on two basic assumptions. 1) Economically, we’ll be in a perpetual recession. 2) Agriculturally, each year will be wet and cold. "Given these two underlying assumptions, how do we make good quality wine, repeatedly, at the right price?" Firesteed remained virtual to keep overhead costs low. "We had all the controls of a normal winery without the overhead," he explains. "It allowed me to focus on growing the business profitably."

Starting in 1993, wine was produced at Flynn Vineyards. Six years ago, Howard purchased the building and equipment and signed long-term leases for the property. "Over time, we’ll probably buy the property as well," he says. The sale made perfect sense for both parties. The Flynn brothers had their own brand, but Firesteed had become 90% of their output. They were in their 70s and looking for an exit strategy. "We had achieved a business size where acquiring infrastructure made financial sense," explains Howard.

In 2006, Firesteed purchased 202 acres about ten minutes from the winery. "We call it Erratic Oaks," says Howard. "The property has 200-400 year old oak trees. As we cleared brambles and poison oak, we found 15-20 big chunks of granite. The closest place you can find this granite is 500 miles away in Montana and Idaho. It’s clear evidence that these are erratics from the Missoula ice age flood and this property has the most prized alluvial soil for wine growing." They moved the granite up on the hillside around the oldest oak tree. The first crop from the original 37 acres planted will be available in 2009; by the end of the year, 160 acres will be planted. Between leased and owned land, Firesteed is now one of the larger wineries in Oregon.

Howard is not a winemaker. If fact, after attempting to make Chardonnay in his basement, he felt relieved that the EPA did not come after him for befouling pipes and killing rats. It was that bad. "It gives my winemaker, Bryan Croft, a great sense of job security," he laughs. However, his 30+ years in the wine business gives him the knowledge of exactly what he wants to make. He and his team do a lot of tasting, reverse engineering and deconstruction to decide just what they want and how to make it, starting with the fruit in the vineyard to the equipment at the winery. "We want people to try our wine and say ‘we got a really good deal here’. We don’t want snooty mystique. Wine is a glorious beverage, but it’s a beverage. It’s meant to go with food and friends and be shared, not genuflected to."

Even the most inexpensive Firesteed wines have won awards for balance, age-ability and taste. "My favorite is to win both the best in show and best value," says Howard. Their restaurant business has expanded as customers look for value-priced wines even at fine dining establishments.

Firesteed wines generally have a lower alcoholic percentage and are well balanced, allowing them to work well with almost any cuisine. They are available in all 50 states, exported to 12 countries, sold on two cruise lines and occasionally on airlines.

Their tasting room and retail shop will be closed in January 2009 during construction. "We’re enclosing the tasting room and retail shop so we can better control the temperature and noise from the bottling line for visitors," says Howard. In approximately two years, they’ll enlarge the winery and further enhance the retail experience. A few current releases as well as occasionally-re-released library wines are only available to wine club members or at the winery.

No matter how successful Firesteed becomes, the original rules apply—keep prices reasonable, over-deliver on value and maintain a rock-solid company that suppliers, employees and customers can count on. That’s our kind of winery!

Connie Adams/January 2009

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