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| Mike Miller, Marc Miller and Lori Stevens take flight at Airfield Estates. Photo courtesy of Mike Miller. |
PROSSER, Wash. – Step through the doors of the Airfield Estates’ tasting room in Prosser, and you step back in time to the 1940s. Swing-era jazz filters in from hidden speakers while wall space is dedicated to photos of World War II military planes. One photo, dated 1942, shows a line of planes in front of a 70-foot water tower, hangars, barracks, and a weathered mess hall. Airfield Estates owner and WSU alum Mike Miller grew up in that mess hall.
Miller is full of stories about the former airbase that gave the family wine business its name. But equally important to him is the history of four generations of Millers who farmed around Prosser and the family’s Cougar tradition.
Bringing water to the valley
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| The Airfield Estate water tower. Photo by Nella Letizia, WSU College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences. |
Miller points to a black-and-white photo of his grandfather, Howard Lloyd Miller, taken in 1938. In it, the elder Miller stands in front of a canal tunnel near Ellensburg Canyon, just before the new Roza Irrigation District started delivering water to the Yakima Valley. Today, the district provides irrigation water to 72,000 acres.
Lloyd, as his family knew him, was the first Miller to own and manage farmland in Sunnyside at the turn of the century. He was a visionary, seeing the promise of agricultural wealth in the Yakima Valley. He worked tirelessly to bring a second irrigation canal to the lands northeast of the Yakima River.
It was also because of Lloyd that an airbase came to be on Miller land. In 1941, Olympia Air Transport Company leased nonfarming land from Lloyd to build the airbase as a training ground for military pilots. After the war ended and the base shut down, the site and buildings reverted back to Lloyd, who converted them for use in agricultural production.
“These unique buildings became the headquarters of the Miller family’s farming operations up to today,” Miller said. “Over time, many of the buildings began to deteriorate, but two of the original hangars still exist, and we continue to use them as workshop and storage facilities.”
WSU and wine
WSU history for the Millers started even before farming. Miller’s uncle, Howard, was the first in the family to attend and graduate from Washington State College in the early 1930s. Miller’s father, Don, attended WSC for two years but left as a junior to join the Army Air Corps during WWII. After the war, Don returned to Sunnyside and joined the Airport Ranch operation until he retired in 1990.
Miller followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the U.S. Navy in 1967. After his discharge, he attended WSU, graduating with an agronomy degree in 1974.
While Miller was in the military and at WSU, Don began planting wine grapes at Airport Ranch. In 1968, inspired by WSU horticulturist and “Father of Washington Wine,” Walter Clore, Don started with an experimental vineyard of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Riesling. By 1971, he took the plunge and planted 10 acres of commercial wine grapes, selling the first yields in Canadian markets.
Two events marked Airport Ranch’s full immersion into the Washington wine industry. In 1977, the U and I Sugar Company announced it would close all Washington sugar production plants, thereby eliminating the farm’s primary market for its sugar beets. At the same time, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Washington’s biggest winery, wanted wine grapes from outside producers to meet demand.
“The technical support that we received from Chateau Ste. Michelle was invaluable in our education as growers,” Miller said. “Today, we are still heavily involved with the company.”
Solo flight
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| Airfield Estate wine racks. |
In 2007, after three decades of supplying grapes to the state’s largest wineries, Miller decided it was time to fly solo. The fourth generation of Millers son — Marcus, head winemaker, and daughter Lori Stevens, marketing director — had joined the family business, each gaining experience in winemaking and wine marketing locally as well as in New Zealand and Australia. Airfield Estates began offering its own estate wines in the spring of that year and held a grand opening of its Prosser tasting room in July.
“And that’s been pretty much the end of Cougar football for me,” Miller joked. But not the end of expanding his Cougar family. Lori’s husband, Aaron Stevens, an enologist for Chateau St. Michelle in Paterson was raised a Cougar, thanks to his father, Jim, and grandfather, Blair, both WSU alums.
In the last five years, Airfield Estates has increased production from 2,300 cases to 30,000 cases, some under its Lone Birch label. In addition, Miller opened another tasting room in Woodinville, Washington, in April 2010. The Airfield Estates’ barrel room, with a storage capacity of 600 barrels, is full, Miller said. Plans are in the works to build a second storage facility in a year.
Visitors to Airfield Estates winery office in Prosser can certainly enjoy the premium wines, but the myriad reminders of the family’s ties to aviation are equally appealing. A huge water tower with the word “Airfield” can’t be missed from Interstate 82.
“The tower is a two-thirds-scale model of the original at 45 feet, per Prosser regulations,” Miller said with a smile.