Wine Village Moving into West Richland

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Story Published: May 28, 2008 at 6:27 PM PDT

By Molly Kelleher

WEST RICHLAND - West Richland landed a pretty big wine deal. Just a year ago, they got their first winery. Now a whole wine village is moving in.

The Red Mountain View Wine Village is going to go here along Keene Road in West Richland.

"it's not just about wine, it's about food and what I call a wine lifestyle," said winemaker Charlie Hoppes.

It doesn't look like much now, just farm land. Fast forward to 2009 you'll see a winery. After that, bed and breakfasts, condos, restaurants, entertainment complex.

All this will come from a pair of new comers on the wine scene. They are a Tri-Cities couple who just wanted to get in on the action

"We were standing on a balcony in a winery in Walla Walla and we were looking out to the vineyard. And we turned to each other at the same time and said 'let's do it,'" said Stacie Hamilton.

But that simple decision got pretty complicated once they started to find the right spot.

"We our a very fast track project and other places couldn't meet our schedule," said Russ Hamilton.

They came up against a big hurdle when looking at Benton County. Ordinance 445 is infamous, by now lots of developers know this one by name.

"Benton County has problems with their requirements you have to produce 80% of grapes on the property. We didn't want to do that with this project," said Hamilton.

And that could keep new business out. So I called up Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver, he admits there's mixed emotions on this one.

The point was to preserve something special, but now those restrictions might stop people from coming in.

In the next few weeks, county leaders may tweak the ordinance.

While Benton County's backtracking, it could help West Richland cash in.

"People are really unhappy and we're big believers that more the merrier. We anticipate people will be in the same position we were. There going to look at moving in here because how good it is to work with West Richland," said Hamilton.

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