A Washington state transplant who pursued a love of winemaking plans to front the latest winery to set up shop in Prosser’s Vintners Village. It’s a step forward in its journey to become an all-estate grown wine label.

Enodav Wine Co. is co-owned by David Rodriguez and two family members and named for the combination of the prefix for wine, “eno,” with a shortening of his first name, “David.” Rodriguez is the winemaker and self-described face of the company.

He got into the business after pursuing an education in enology about 10 years ago in Argentina. Originally from the San Diego-Tijuana region, he returned there with his degree and was introduced to Washington wines at an event held by a wine commission.

“First of all, I didn’t know Washington made wine,” Rodriguez said. “I was completely, completely out of the loop and here Washington was No. 2 (for volume) in the whole country.”

Rodriguez found, in his experience, Washington didn’t get the notoriety it deserved because most of what was produced locally was also purchased locally.

“Up until 2017, 2018 was when things started to change, and the market started to become more saturated with wine from the state of Washington and there became more reminders of the significantly more volume produced inside the state,” he said.

Seeing this interest growing, Rodriguez came for a visit in 2017, which also happened to be a harsh winter, especially for a southern California native.

“There was snow on the ground in May, so I thought I wasn’t even going to last a year. I said, ‘This is not my plan. This is too much.’ But I fell in love with the wine industry and the people here.”

Part of that included the experience he got working with growers in Zillah, including Patrick Dineen of Dineen Vineyards, and Matthew and Patrick Rawn of Two Mountain Winery.

Six years later, he’s laid down roots beyond the vineyard and wants to keep cultivating that success. Rodriguez served as winemaker for Dineen Vineyard from 2020 through early 2023, while also working on his own label.

Rodriguez, his father and stepmother, whom he calls his second mom, recently closed on a deal to buy two acres in the Port of Benton’s Vintners Village, valued at $138,000.

It’s part of an overall expected investment of just over $1 million to build a tasting room in the business park visible from Interstate 82 that’s home to wineries, restaurants and shops, including Thurston Wolfe, Wine O’Clock Bar & Bistro and Sister to Sister boutique.

Rodriguez had eyed the property prior to the pandemic when his own wine label was just a couple years old and growing but had no money coming in due to the delay between bottling and selling.

He began making wine under Enodav in 2018 with 50 cases, growing to an expected 3,000 this year. It’s a rapid jump and double the production from just last year.

“The demand has been great and now we’re at that point where we are able to start thinking about building something,” Rodriguez said. “We started exploring in 2019, but then we had to put it on hold because we didn’t know what was going to happen. During the pandemic, we said, ‘If it is still there when we come back, we’ll be ready to buy.’ And now in 2023, we’re definitely ready to start building a chip into the community.”

The Port of Benton is just as excited to continue to grow this hub for local and regional tourism.
“It confirms for us that Prosser is a great location for these types of expansions to occur,” said Diahann Howard, executive director for the Port of Benton. “It adds to a mix that’s already there and thriving, and we want to continue to see Enodav and others develop and continue to be a destination.”

The port is actively in talks with the cruise lines that service the Columbia River to create excursion opportunities that take visitors to Prosser while a boat is docked in the Tri-Cities.

To capture some of that potential new business, Rodriguez hopes to break ground by the end of this year to be open by the beginning of summer 2024, but permitting and construction timelines could always push the project into the fall.

Enodav Wine hopes to capitalize on the canopy offered by a neighboring nursery to provide additional landscaping outside for people to sit and kids to run around. The tasting room will be within the same building as Enodav’s production facility with a capacity to put out 7,000 cases of wine.

“My thought process on making wine is a very European one; I probably am guilty as charged on that,” Rodriguez said. “I make my wines to pair them with food. I don’t make my wines to be enjoyed by themselves. I mean you can, sure, but my vision is to always pair them with food, whether it’s a sandwich, oysters, lamb or pasta. They’re very versatile wines.”

The current lineup of eight wines includes reds, whites and rosé, ranging in price from $22 to $55.

“I focus mostly on varietals, especially from the Yakima Valley. I don’t do a lot of blends, so I just want to portray the varietals and on some special wines, the more expensive ones, I do single vineyard,” he said.
Rodriguez expects to offer small plates of food for purchase, like charcuterie boards, but also will encourage people to tote food from neighboring restaurants to his tasting room to pair with his wines.

“The better my neighbor does in business, the better I do also,” he said.

Wine mentoring

Looking to the future, Rodriguez hopes to one day offer the kind of assistance to an up-and-coming winemaker in the same way he was treated so generously by the Rawn brothers of Zillah’s Two Mountain Winery, who offered a mentorship and much more.

“I am eternally grateful to them. They always encouraged me to start my own company. When I came in and talked to them about making some wine, they were just like, ‘Let’s do it. You can do it here. You don’t have to pay for crushing. You don’t have to pay for anything. Just buy your fruit and we will crush it for you, and you’ll be here working and use whatever barrels you’re bringing,’” he said.

The Rawns allowed him to age the wine in their facility as well.

But the generosity didn’t end there. Rodriguez recalled when he arranged to buy his first ton of Syrah grapes from a vineyard owned by Two Mountain.

“I came into the office with Patrick Rawn, and I said, “What do I owe you for that ton?’ And he said, ‘You don’t owe anything, don’t worry about it.’ And so they literally gifted me the whole first ton. It kickstarted the company. So, then and there, I pledged that if I ever became successful enough, I would definitely do the same thing.”

For him, that success would include being 100% estate grown, making wine exclusively with grapes on land owned by the wine company. Right now, he’s at 25% and expects it to take five to seven years to reach this goal, with wines produced and sold out of the building he and his family look forward to opening in 2024.

Enodav Wines: 114 Grandridge Road, Grandview; www.enodav.wine.