American Lawyer 6/2009

Barrel Fever
by Russ Todd

When Paul Beveridge, a partner at Heller Ehrman, took a buyout from the firm in fall 2007, there was no doubt where he would invest the proceeds.  Beveridge is a Washington winemaker who, until that time, bought fruit from vineyards across the state.  The buyout helped him fulfill the dream of owning a place to grow his own grapes.

Luckily for Beveridge, his vines have outlived his old firm.  His vineyard now sits on a plateau just outside of Washington's Yakima Valley, two-and-a-half hours east of his Seattle home.  But Seattle this is not.  The site is sunny more than 300 days per year and averages only 16 inches of annual precipitation.  "It'll make a nice tax-deductible vacation home if the business tanks, " Beveridge jokes.

He planted about ten of the 85 acres with 22 grape varieties from Italy, France, and Portugal.  Beveridge is finding out which varieties perform best, picking yeast strains to pair with each pressing during fermentation, and deciding what type of barrel to age them in.  Even now, almost two years after the first vines were planted, he gets poetic as he reels off minutiae about the vineyard.  "It's got these big pillows of volcanic bedrock with depressions filled with loess--that comes from the German word for windblown soil, "he says breathlessly.

The vineyard's sun exposure is east and southeast, "like Burgundy," he says.  The echo of a premier French wine region delights Beveridge.  His first foray into wine-making came in the late 80's, when he made a French-style reds in the cellar of Madrona Bistro, a restaurant in Seattle where his wife was the chef.  Then just an associate at Heller, "I figured if he's a senior partner and he's got time to have four barrels in his garage, I should have at least one," he says.

The restaurant closed in 1994.  By then, Beveridge was a partner at Heller, specializing in environmental law.  He and his father-in-law continued making the house wine, pressing Washington grapes into small vintages under the Wilridge label.  The winery has grown, and now produces about 1,500 cases of wine a year that range from $16 for a bottle of Pinot Grigio to $29 for one of the label's reds.

With the wine business falling off about 30 percent from a year ago, Beveridge has continued to spend about a quarter of his time practicing law to pay the bills.  "If I had known it could work like this, I would have left 15 years ago, " he says.  (He was at Heller for 22 years.)  As a solo practitioner, Beveridge says he actually takes home more money per hour than he did at Heller, albeit now without associates to take on the grunt work or a secretary to answer the phones.  And he can mix document review with a few early afternoon barrel tasting.  With a spit bucke handy, of course.  "Your lose you palate if you start swallowing too early," he says.

So, which of Beveridge's wines is his favorite?  It's a little bit like asking parents which is their favorite child, he says, before allowing that "it depends on what I'm having for dinner" If he's eating steak, he goes for a bottle of his Cabernet.  If it's salmon, he grabs a bottle of his Nebbiolo, a Northern Italian red that's gotten 91 points from Wine Enthusiast.  And in summer, he likes to sip on rose while sitting on the porch of the vineyard's farmhouse.

-Ross Todd
-Photo by Amanda Koster

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