Blessed by copious amounts of freshly brewed beer and recently roasted coffee, Capitol Hill has only a couple liquor distilleries. It has even fewer wineries. Aluel Cellars won’t exactly change that. But the new business slated to open this summer on E Thomas just off Broadway will give Capitol Hill a tasting room for one of the city’s best urban wineries.
Partners in love, life, and now wine, Samuel Hilbert and Alex Oh are teaming up to open Aluel in the newly built Westside off Broadway building. With a cutesy name to give you warm feelies, the new project will create a tasting room a block from Broadway featuring the fine works of SoDo winemaker Bart Fawbush of Bartholomew Winery.
“We want when people walk in for it to feel like they’re in a winery tasting room,” Hilbert tells CHS. Aluel Cellars will feature 10 to 15 of Fawbush’s creations along with Aluel “private label” choices. You can stop in to taste — and, hopefully, buy. Aluel will also feature cheeses and chocolate pairings and the loft space in the new street-level commercial berth in the six-story development can be used for events and meet-ups.
“It was really a blank slate that we could create into something unique and interesting,” Hilbert said of the new building. The first-time retail business owners hope to be open by August.
Capitol Hill’s wine retailing beyond the aisles at QFC and Safeway got an upgrade in February when Revolution Wine opened on E Pike. Also, the neighborhood did have an urban winery, of sorts, for a time as the CorkHouse business evolved at 10th and Union.
At Aluel, they’re working on finalizing a design for the space and nailing down Aluel’s look and feel with a logo and marketing.
They’re also noticing an interesting change in the winemaker. The partnership with Fawbush came about because Hilbert and Oh were a fan of his work and his winery was turning out great wines and creative blends. Fawbush’s Bartholomew Winery continues to grow in stature but the coming of the Aluel Cellars project has had a fortunate unintended consequence for Hilbert’s own wine consumption. “He’s making more wine in the style I like,” Hilbert said.
Aluel Cellars is planned to open at 801 E Thomas later this summer. A website and more is in the works. For now, you can keep track of announcements by following @AluelCellars.
A fun day getting some amazing wines ready for their Capitol Hill debut! #capitolhillseattle #wawine #seattlewine pic.twitter.com/oTViQJJH3p
— AluelCellars (@AluelCellars) June 9, 2016
