Winemaker Rusty Figgins

Berle "Rusty" Figgins, Jr. grew up in a winemaking family in Walla Walla, Washington.  He cut his winemaking teeth at Leonetti Cellar, one of Washington's most respected wineries.

This experience led to a position at Château Palmer in Bordeaux, France during the harrowing and wet 1987 vintage.  While there, he learned of a college in Australia that had earned a reputation for their progressive teaching programs in grape-growing and winemaking. After completing a university education studying Viticulture and Enology in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, he returned to his hometown in 1991 to manage vineyards and start his own winery, Glen Fiona, which specialized in his newfound love, Syrah.

Achieving great success and high scores, Figgins attracted the corporate world and was promptly hired away from his own business in 2002 to lead the newly built NorthStar Winery, one of the many properties that are collectively called Saint Michelle Wine Estates.  Two years later, in 2004, the recruitment continued, and Figgins found himself in central Washington at the helm of Cave B Estate Winery, near George, where he claims to have made his most interesting and varied range of wines.  From his first dry white wines, sparkling wines, and on to many highly structured red wines and finally the sweet dessert styles of late harvest and ice wines, it was an interesting, challenging and rewarding time.  Having sufficiently trained his assistant at Cave B, Figgins made plans for the next steps in his career: consulting on matters concerning quality in the vineyard and winery and also, crafting distilled spirits.

Today, he owns and operates the consultancies of VitiNorthwest Viticultural Services and EnoVative Winery Solutions in Walla Walla, and he serves in the capacity of Master Distiller at The Ellensburg Distillery in Ellensburg, which he co-owns.  He has attracted media coverage by Good Fruit Grower magazine and was given the ‘Western Innovator’ award by the Capital Press newspaper for his consultancy work, and Seattle Magazine dubbed him an ‘Influential Act.’  He has already won notable accolades for his grape brandy, the first bottling to be released by the distillery.  With his wife, a naturopathic physician, he is currently co-authoring a book that discusses the relationship between health, longevity and the moderate consumption of red wine. The book, entitled A Drink of Wine Saves Nine: how moderate red wine consumption adds years to your life, will see completion in late 2011, and will be published by Abbeville Press.

A natural-born educator, Figgins is a certified specialist of wine and how it became that way.  He has extensive bud-to-bottle expertise and he authoritatively dispenses sage advice on matters of style and quality, and also excels in label design and brand-building.  Always seeking new adventures along the wine route, he has recently accepted the role of Winemaker and Director of Wine Education at Veranda Beach in Oroville, Washington, site of America’s most northerly winery at the heart of its most exciting appellation, the Okanogan Valley.