MATTAWA — Surrounded by vineyards, orchards and the otherwise barren, desert landscape of the Wahluke Slope, the industrial presence of Mattawa’s two bulk wine production plants seems oddly out of place.

Looking more like refineries than wineries, the plants squeeze and transform thousands of tons of grapes into millions of gallons of wine each year. Mechanized harvesters are now mowing through thousands of acres of ripe vineyard, shaking plump bunches of grapes from the vines and dumping them into a lineup of waiting trucks. The machines can go through an acre an hour, about 4 to 6 tons of grapes.

When full, the trucks rush their loads to the plant for immediate pressing and crushing. Sweet juice flows through thick hoses to fill dozens of stainless steel tanks — most hold between 16,000 and 36,000 gallons each — where fermentation begins and the juice becomes wine.

It’s an industrial approach to producing world-class wine from the Basin’s sprawling vineyards that thrive in desert sand and blistering-hot summer heat, given the addition of abundant water and technical know-how.

The two mega-wineries — J & S Crushing, LLC and Wahluke Wine Co. — together will produce more than 6 million gallons of wine this year, enough to fill 30.5 million wine bottles or 2.54 million 12-bottle cases. That’s a lot of wine, more than 20 percent of all that’s produced in Washington, the nation’s second-leading wine producing state. And very good wine it is.

The Wahluke Slope American Viticultural Area (AVA) and its soon-to-be-approved neighbor, the Ancient Lakes AVA around Quincy, also produce top-quality grapes for hundreds of smaller award-winning wineries around the state. Combined, the two areas have about 10,000 acres in vineyard with a lot of room to grow.

“We had no clue this would happen. I thought I’d plant 200 acres of grapes and then retire,” said Butch Milbrandt, who planted those first grapes in 1998. Now, at age 67, Milbrandt and his younger brother Jerry are busier than ever, farming about 2,300 acres between Mattawa and Quincy. Jerry Milbrandt and partner Ryan Flanagan recently finished planting the 180-acre Spanish Castle Vineyard near Trinidad.

Milbrandt Vineyards started out selling most of its grapes to Chateau Ste. Michelle. As the number of small wineries in the state exploded in the past decade, many started coming to Milbrandt for their grapes. Each winery was assigned rows of the grape varieties they wanted. Each row was farmed specifically to suit their needs. At one time, Milbrandt was growing grapes for nearly 50 of the state’s most prestigious wineries. They’ve cut back to about 30 other wineries more recently, with more of their grapes used for their own line of wines.

“When we saw how well those wines were doing with the name of our vineyards on their bottles, we thought we should start making our own wine,” Milbrandt said. They built Wahluke Wine Co. in 2005 as a custom-crush operation, tailor making, storing and often bottling wines for dozens of smaller wineries.

The winery expects to process 10,000 tons of grapes this year. It can store up 3.3 million gallons. Former Chateau Ste. Michelle winemaker Josh Maloney now directs Wahluke’s winemaking.

In 2007, the brothers launched their own label, Milbrandt Vineyards. With more than 50,000 cases distributed last year, Milbrandt has quickly become North Central Washington’s largest winery, even though that’s only a tiny part of Wahluke Wine Co.’s total production.

J & S Crushing — just a mile to the west on Highway 243 — is owned by the Jack Jones and Dick Shaw families. It’s expanded its storage capacity from 2.5 million gallons to more than 3 million gallons and will crush about 14,000 tons of grapes this year.

Victor Palencia, head winemaker, fashions dozens of different wines mainly from vineyards farmed by the Jones and Shaw families, but also other growers between Mattawa and Quincy. The wines are mostly sold to Chateau Ste. Michelle and their associated wineries. A much smaller part of the production is custom made under the family-owned Jones of Washington label. Jones was named this year’s Washington Winery of the Year by Wine Press Northwest. Their wines have won numerous gold medals, including from the North Central Washington Wine Awards by Foothills Magazine.

Like the Milbrandts, Jones started planting grapes for Chateau Ste. Michelle in the late 1990s. The family has about 1,600 acres of vineyard now between Mattawa and Quincy.

“It may seem strange to think of wine made thousands of gallons at a time, but the quality is phenomenal,” said. Palencia. There are few places where wine can be produced with such quality, quantity and consistency, he added.

“It seems huge, but we’re still a small winery by philosophy. We do the same things here that a small winery does, but on a much larger scale,” he said. “The future of the wine industry is here. There’s still lots of room to grow.”

A third bulk wine plant near Grandview also processes thousands of tons of Columbia Basin grapes into wine. There are a few others. Much of Washington’s wine, in fact, is produced on a large scale. The state’s five largest wineries, led by Chateau Ste. Michelle, produce at least 70 percent of Washington’s wines. The next 30 largest wineries produce about 25 percent, leaving only about 5 percent made by about 700 small wineries, according to Washington wine industry report published earlier this year.

And yet, Washington wines are known for their quality, rather than their quantity. Butch Milbrandt will tell you that’s largely due to Eastern Washington’s unique soils and climate.

Before the arrival of irrigation the Columbia Basin, with its sandy ancient flood-eroded volcanic oils and scant annual rainfall, could barely grow sagebrush. Water arrived through canals stretching from the Grand Coulee Dam as far as Quincy in the early 1950s. It didn’t reach Mattawa and the Wahluke Slope until 1968. Water transformed the basin into one of the nation’s most productive farming regions.

Early farmers like the Jones, Flanagan and Milbrandt families learned the land, given water, could produce almost anything: wheat, corn, beans, alfalfa, potatoes, onions — an almost endless list of crops. By the 1970s, Washington’s world-famous apple industry started making a move from small family-run orchards in Chelan and Okanogan counties to large corporate orchards in the Basin.

By the late 1990s, farmers learned what’s good for other crops was also good for wine grapes. Seeking to expand its wines, Chateau Ste. Michelle offered long-term contracts to basin farmers willing to plant grapes. Looking for stable annual returns, Jones and Milbrandt started planting. So did experienced tree-fruit growers like Mike Wade, Mike Mrachek, Mike Scott and others, wanting to diversify as apple returns plunged due to oversupply.

The Wahluke has two very different types of soils that lend themselves to different grape varieties and different flavor profiles, said Milbrandt. Ancient floods scoured the area depositing layers of silky loam and calcium-rich soil on higher shelves. Lower areas consist of several feet of sandy loam over about 200 feet of gravel. The sandy soil requires lots of water, although grapes take far less water than other crops.

“It’s almost like growing grapes hydroponically,” he said.

The basin had already proved it could produce world-class apples, so why not grapes, said Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers. She’s the former head of the Washington State Apple Commission and Washington Horticultural Association. Once the vines were planted, it didn’t take long for Columbia Basin grapes — particularly those from the Wahluke — to establish a reputation as some of the best in the state.

“People recognize the quality of fruit that comes from that area,” Scharlau said. The two companies were very strategic to set up their crush plants at the center of what has become one of the state’s leading grape growing regions, she said. “Their grapes and wines are helping Washington elevate its ranking in the world. Compared to other wine-producing areas, we may be small, but we produce great wines.”

Rick Steigmeyer: 664-7151

steigmeyer@wenatcheeworld.com