Meet the Staff

Rick Small

We think that we have a pretty special staff and therefore we will feature some of our folks. Of course, we should start with Rick.

At fifty-three, Rick is an energetic optimist who has a wide variety of interests and who doesn’t do things halfway. In the last twenty years, he has been pursued creating stained glass windows, guitars, running, riding motorcycles, collecting muscle cars and golf. His current interests are bicycling, both road and mountain bikes and bread baking. Since June, he has rode approximately 1,609 km, often with John Abbott of Canoe Ridge Vineyard, and it is not unusual for him to ride the 20.9km to the winery from home in Walla Walla.

Bread baking, which obviously involves fermentation, is a natural for a winemaker. Using organic flour, Rick makes a basic French bread and walnut, herb and olive breads, as well as great pizzas. At home, they are baked in a wood-fired oven, as they soon will be at the winery when a larger wood-fired oven is completed.

This last interest is one that we all heartily approve of and we are also thankful that winemaking remains his primary focus.

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Marie Thumann

We were very fortunate to have Marie Thumann as an intern for the last nine months through Experience International. Marie is the third Experience International intern that we have had at Woody, and it has been very beneficial to all of us.

Marie received her Diploma of Oenology at the University of Burgundy in 1999 and was employed in Beaujolais and Champagne before coming to us last March. She worked with the production team in all facets of winemaking and had primary responsibility for lab analysis and yeast and nutrient additions during crush. Marie is a petit woman, but heaved barrels and hoses around with gusto.

While here, she hiked, biked, skied and traveled the western U.S. She also broke her elbow in a fall off of a ladder. But in true Marie-style, she refused to follow doctor’s orders to stay home and rest after surgery to repair the bone. Instead, she became quickly accomplished in the lab using only one arm. Marie also became Woody’s “cheese police”, making sure that everyone at lunch cut the cheese properly – no gouges out of the middle even if you are starving! In exchange for teaching us cheese manners, she was taught to eat jalapeño and habeñero peppers and got very good at it by the time she left. Marie left us after sharing Christmas dinner at our home and touring California wine country, returning to Champagne to work in mid-January.

We have also had a student from Purpan University in Tolouse completing a foreign stage with us for the last 8 or 10 crushes. This year Yann Clos Versaille joined us. Like the other students, he arrived in August and left in October. These students live at our home and help in the cellar and during crush. While many do not intend to work in the wine business, they come from agricultural backgrounds and fit in very well.

These exchanges have become a wonderful experience for us, both personally and professionally; and it is something that we intend to continue. In fact, we will be receiving Celine sometime in February through Experience International and we are completing the arrangements for another student from Purpan. The entire family is also looking forward to seeing Marie and Yann in France this summer, as well as some of the other past interns, as they have kindly offered to return the hospitality.

Gilles
Gilles, a native of France, graduated from the University of Avignon with a degree in Viticulture and Enology. After working in Champagne and the Côte du Rhone in France, he came to the U.S. with Experience International in 1994 to work at Staton Hills Winery in the Yakima Valley of Washington State. Returning to the U.S., after a year in the French military, he came back to the Yakima Valley, working in vineyards, and on to Woodward Canyon as an enologist in 1996. Gilles moved to Hogue Cellars in the Yakima Valley and worked from 1998 to 1999, serving as Assistant Winemaker. He then returned to Woodward Canyon as Associate Winemaker in July of 1999. This year he has received the title of Co-Winemaker to reflect his expanding responsibilities and skills.

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With Gilles training in France, he broadens our approach to winemaking beyond just the new world. It has brought a realization that there is so much more out there that adds new dimensions to the process.

Gilles’ wife Marie Eve, also a native of France, is the winemaker for Gordon Brothers Cellars in the Pasco area, 30 miles to the west of us. They live halfway between the two wineries with their dog, Salsa. They are avid hikers and enjoy camping in the mountains and Gilles also enjoys his motorcycle.

Gilles has brought Bastille Day to Woodward Canyon, as well as raclette and a variety of other French goodies. Besides being an upbeat, all around nice guy, Gilles is a man who loves his food. In fact, we have not yet found a food or type of cuisine that Gilles doesn’t enjoy!

Rob Chowanietz

Rob Chowanietz, our Cellar Master was born in the U.S., but raised in British Columbia, Canada. Like a typical Canadian, his early passions were playing hockey and skiing. He planted trees in reforestation projects and fished commercially for a while. After attending Walla Walla College, majoring in Health Science, Rob worked as a bartender (or as he calls it “wine-pourer”) at the Walla Walla Country Club. While still working at the Club, he was hired by Canoe Ridge Vineyards winery in Walla Walla on a part-time basis. He went full time to Canoe Ridge during the 1996 harvest, ending there as the Cellar Supervisor before coming to Woodward Canyon in 1999. Rob’s work as Cellar Master primarily involves laying out the cellar, managing the barrels, racking the wines and participating in blending trials. He has also lately begun representing us on market trips.

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Rob enjoys spending time with his wife Jeannie, who is the Sales and Marketing Director an Office Manager at Cayuse Vineyards in downtown Walla Walla, and their three-year-old son, Colton. They host frequent blind tastings at their home and are currently into Rhones. Rob says that he could eat sushi everyday of his life, as evidenced by the bill from the Floating Sushi Boat when he traveled to California with the Taste of Washington. Rob is also our specialist in HOT, really HOT, spicy food. There is often a jalapeño or habañero pepper, which goes on just about everything, sitting next to Rob at the table. He thoroughly enjoys offering tastes to the unfortunate, new French interns (“oh, it’s not very hot…”) – hopefully there is a large glass of water nearby. When he brings some of Jeannie’s great Asian food to our lunches, it is usually a toned-down version for the rest of us. Apparently it is genetic, because Colton thoroughly enjoys his wasabi and seaweed.

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Felicita Gonzales

If you have ever called Woodward Canyon, ever had wine shipped to you, or ever been into the tasting room, chances are that you have dealt with Felicita Gonzales. Felicita has been with us for fifteen years. She originally started working part-time in the tasting room, while still working across the highway at a seed processing plant. Over the years, she has taken on more hours and more responsibility. She is now our Tasting Room Manager, in charge of tasting room sales, packaging and shipping , training of tasting room help, and a myriad of other details that keep the place operating smoothly. Her husband Alfonzo, who also worked at the seed plant for 25 years, has been helping out unofficially and officially for ever, and now has been with us full-time for almost two years. Al works on the production crew in the cellar, maintains the winery and grounds and is the guy that you go to when you need to find something like the Christmas decorations and have no clue which of four buildings they might be in. Al is always back in less than five minutes with whatever you need.

Felicita’s other unwritten job is to mother everyone, especially the French interns. As a part of that, she helps cook for the crush team and her home-made tortillas are to die for.

Felicita and Al are native Texans who have been here in Lowden for about twenty-five years. They have been married for thirty-five years and have raised four children who have blessed them with eight grandchildren. They represent us at various tasting events and Felicita represents us at the tasting bar and on the phone every day. We think that they do a great job at it and can’t imagine Woodward Canyon without them.

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Darcey & Jordan Small

Finally we are featuring the authors of the columns. Darcey, General Manager, and Jordan, high school student, have shared writing and editing tasks for this project.

Darcey came to Walla Walla in 1978 from the Puget Sound for a job as a land use planner, all the while planning to get a few years of job experience then head back to sailboats and evergreens. She met Rick before there was a winery, but there were dreams and plans even at that time. In fact, their second date consisted of bottling homemade chardonnay in Rick’s basement. The tour of the “vineyard” Rick had planted at that time revealed seven rows of sticks surrounded by milk cartons and topped by screens to keep out the grasshoppers. It took some squinting to see the vision, but she did. They were married in 1980 and bonded Woodward Canyon Winery in 1981. Until last year she continued working as a planner, serving as County Planning Director for the last five years. After a couple weeks of rest, she began as General Manager at the winery.

As GM, she produces marketing materials, coordinates with events and tastings, oversees the tasting room, keeps Rick on track (not an easy task), serves as the Vice-President of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and as Chair of the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation Design Committee (can’t get that meeting thing out of her blood), is chief gardener and is chief cook, fly-swatter and gopher during crush. She is very happy with her new position, but wonders sometimes what happened to the “part-time” idea.

Gardening, cooking, reading and just hanging out with family and friends are her joys.

Jordan is a senior in high school and is filling out her college application as this is being written. She serves as Editor in Chief of the high school newspaper, President of French Club, Vice-President of a service club and has volunteered at the Downtown Foundation’s Farmers Market and concert for the last three years (she obviously has inherited the meeting thing). She considers herself a “foodie”, loves to travel, has had articles published in several newspapers, rides mountain bikes with her father and harasses her younger brother.

Jordan has the distinction of being the first child born in the Valley that has been involved with a winery from the beginning. She is a crush baby whose first car trip was to the winery to visit Dad and who was carried in a backpack as vines were pruned. The last several years, she has spent summers bottling, labeling and working in the vineyard, besides carrying cases and running glasses during wine release weekends. After visiting France and enjoying wine wherever she went, she has the idea that wine brats, such as she, should be granted a “tasting permit” so that they can have wine when out with their parents even though they aren’t twenty-one. That may be a tough sell to the lawmakers.