O’Neill details plans for Washington’s Substance Wines

On July 1^st, Cal­i­for­nia-based O’Neill Vint­ners & Dis­tillers pur­chased Wines of Sub­stance, one of Washington’s largest wine brands. The acqui­si­tion was O’Neill’s first for­ay into the state.

Here, O’Neill exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, wine­grow­ing Kryss Spee­gle, M.W. dis­cuss­es the company’s invest­ment in Wash­ing­ton, what made Wines of Sub­stance attrac­tive, O’Neill’s inten­tions for wine­mak­ing in 2024, whether Sub­stance will remain a Wash­ing­ton-focused brand, and oth­er topics.

Spee­gle has worked for O’Neill for over 13 years. She start­ed as a pro­duc­tion wine­mak­er and sub­se­quent­ly became direc­tor of wine­mak­ing. She then worked on the sales side of the busi­ness as senior direc­tor and ulti­mate­ly vice pres­i­dent of the company’s busi­ness-to-busi­ness efforts. Spee­gle returned to pro­duc­tion ear­li­er this year, head­ing up O’Neill’s wine­mak­ing and grape sourc­ing teams as well as main­tain­ing over­sight of busi­ness-to-busi­ness sales.

The inter­view has been light­ly edit­ed for clarity.

What was appeal­ing to O’Neill about Wines of Substance?

We’ve been inter­est­ed in Wash­ing­ton for a long time because of the qual­i­ty of wines made there. There are some points of ref­er­ence with Cal­i­for­nia, obvi­ous­ly, in terms of the grape vari­eties and some sim­i­lar­i­ties in cli­mate, but it’s also quite dif­fer­ent. The struc­ture of the wines is dif­fer­ent, the vast diur­nal tem­per­a­ture shifts, a lot of the soils are different.

From a winemaker’s point of view, I would say there’s some­thing to appeal to the Old World, clas­sic wine drinkers because of that firm struc­ture that Wash­ing­ton often has. Then there’s also that sense of nov­el­ty and new­ness that a lot of younger con­sumers are inter­est­ed in. So from that point of view, Wash­ing­ton real­ly has some­thing for everyone.

We were look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be involved in Wash­ing­ton in a way where we could add val­ue, so a brand that was excit­ing and had a lot to offer but also aligned with what we could do well. We think [Wines of Sub­stance] is it.

Will Sub­stance wines be made in 2024?

We’ll be mak­ing wine this year. No changes there. We have [wine­mak­er] Bren­non Leighton con­sult­ing for us. He’s obvi­ous­ly made a great name for him­self and does a fan­tas­tic job. (Editor’s Note: As vice pres­i­dent of wine­mak­ing and vine­yards at House of Smith, Leighton over­saw Wines of Sub­stance pro­duc­tion. He left House of Smith this spring.)

Then there’s a tal­ent­ed assis­tant wine­mak­er and viti­cul­tur­al­ist named James St. Clair. He was with Sub­stance before, and he’s come on board. So there’s a lot of con­ti­nu­ity with the wine­mak­ing style and also with com­mu­ni­ca­tion with growers.

For the sake of build­ing rela­tion­ships and keep­ing things going with the same style and qual­i­ty, those two will be real­ly instru­men­tal to that effort. Then our senior wine­mak­er, Adam Popp, who’s based in Cal­i­for­nia, he’ll be involved as well.

For the full inter­view, vis­it https://www.northwestwinerepor…