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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

MonteScarlatto Estate Winery plans to open downtown Spokane tasting room

A Red Mountain winery is slated to take over the space previously held by Patit Creek Cellars in downtown Spokane.

MonteScarlatto Estate Winery is planning to open its Renegade tasting room in early October.

This will be the first tasting room for the winery outside of its Benton City estate, which includes a 10-acre vineyard with grapes such as cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, barbera, merlot, malbec and petite verdot.

Vines were planted in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The Benton City tasting room opened in 2013.

Owner, grape grower and wine maker Joel Mackay is hoping to have the Spokane tasting room open in time for First Friday in October.

“We’re doing some extensive remodeling,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll be open in the next month or two.”

Meantime, the space is being painted, among other work.

“The look we’re going for is clean, blacks and whites,” Mackay said. “I don’t know if you’d call it modern or not, but it’ll be a really clean look, a classy look.”

The Renegade tasting room is slated to carry all of MonteScarlatto’s wines. The winery specializes in Bordeaux-style wines. But barbera, an Italian varietal, is one of MonteScarlatto’s signature wines.

“My mom’s heritage is from that area,” Mackay said, noting barbera is a staple grape in northern Italy. Here, “it’s unusual. And it’s really good.”

It’s also the wine to which MonteScarlatto customers seem to gravitate, he said.

Mackay lived in Spokane during college. He graduated from Eastern Washington University in 1989 with a degree in math. He grew up on a farm near Eltopia and attended Connell High School.

He spent weekends here last summer working behind the bar at Left Bank Wine Bar in downtown Spokane. That experience helped him decide to open his own tasting room here.

“With only 10 acres of vineyard, it will probably be the only other one I have,” he said.

Look for Renegade by MonteScarlatto at 822 W. Sprague Ave., Suite 101, this fall.

On the web: www.montescarlatto.com.