STONE CUTTER SERIES
Columbia Winery's Stone Cutter Series pays tribute to Winemaker Kerry Norton's twin passions, winemaking and lapidary work, which is the cutting and polishing of stone. In Kerry's case, the stones that intrigue him are the unusual ones he finds when he is in our vineyards checking on the grapes."For me, polished stones are objects of beauty, all the more because they are natural and created by chance, making each one is unique. I get tremendous satisfaction in uncovering the beauty in the ordinary that lies all around us. The stones tell a story and I try to figure out what it is - what is the rock, where did it come from, how was it formed?" said Norton.
Many of the Columbia Valley vineyards are planted on the silt and gravel deposits from the cataclysmic post-Ice Age Missoula floods, which repeatedly covered eastern Washington about 15,000 years ago. Scattered throughout the vineyards are glacial erratics -- stones that the glaciers plucked from the mountains of southern Canada and that were floated to their present locations on icebergs during the floods.
In his vineyard treks, Kerry has found granite, schist, gneiss, marble, quartzite and quartz deposits of glacial erratics as well as local rocks indigenous to the region, including basalt, petrified wood, opal, agate and serpentine. He cuts these stones and then polishes them to reveal their incredible beauty.
This limited-production series of wine are produced exclusively for the Cellar Club at Columbia Winery.