Scatter Creek Winery started out in Andrea and Terril Keary’s garage nearly 13 years ago and now on Sunday, Dec. 17, they will have their grand opening for the addition of their …
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Scatter Creek Winery started out in Andrea and Terril Keary’s garage nearly 13 years ago and now on Sunday, Dec. 17, they will have their grand opening for the addition of their brewery.
Terril works for the state of Washington and has always enjoyed brewing craft beers and wines. He started off making them for friends and family, and eventually enough people told him that he should sell his wares that he started to take them seriously. He and Andrea decided to open up a winery out of their garage. He always had the dream of someday adding a brewery.
“We were just this couple that had nothing to start with. He made really good wine and really good beer,” Andrea said.
Unfortunately, when it came time to get the licenses the Keary’s were told that they could not have a winery and brewery on the same joined premise. Thus only part of the dream was achieved and Scatter Creek Winery was born thanks to the popularity and trend of boutique wineries at the time.
They had the vision, but did not want the added hassle of investors so for six years they worked out of their garage on the occasional weekend, using the revenue to buy various pieces of equipment and eventually had enough saved and decided to move out to their current location in downtown Tenino.
“We truly started from the bootstraps up. We were a true grassroots start,” Andrea said. “It was a real steady, gradual grow.”
According to Andrea when it came to garage wineries, especially in the area, they had the market cornered, but she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. They were different, but starting out they were not sure if different was necessarily good.
“It was weird, it was different, but people really like us,” Andrea said. “Walking into that world we were the black sheep.”
Six years later, Scatter Creek Winery has been in the running for several awards and accolades. In 2017 they placed third in KING 5 TV’s Best of Western Washington for wineries and won Best Winery for Seattle A-List.
About a year ago in January the Keary’s heard that it would now be possible to have both a winery and a brewery on the same premise if they followed the correct paths and procedures. On Nov. 22, the day before Thanksgiving, their brewery license was approved and Scatter Creek Brewery was born.
Similar to their winery, they plan to give the brewery a different sort of edge from the current popular trend of microbreweries. Terril will be brewing Irish, German and European-style beer using old-school, traditional recipes. He will also have a somewhat-typical IPA on tap with his own personal spin.
For their grand opening there will be five beers on tap: a pale ale, key lime IPA, an authentic German Hefeweizen, a porter and a stout.
There will be feedback cards that are able to be filled out. If the customers have suggestions Terril is willing to tweak the recipes to make them better. The more honest the better Terril said, otherwise it is going to be the same beer week after week.
Terril also pointed out that since he does have a full-time day job he does not have the time to bottle beer, so it will only be available at Scatter Creek. This also ensures that he can stay near to his customer base and the business won’t grow to be too large.
“I still want to be connected to my customers from the ground up,” Terril said. “If you want my beer you gotta come here.”
Despite having a solid customer base thanks to the winery Andrea is still quite nervous.
“Beer is a different crowd,” Andrea said.
While Andrea may be nervous, her wine divas (front of house employees) believe the grand opening will go over just fine. Susie Canas has been working at Scatter Creek Winery for about a year, but she has been a customer since the beginning when Andrea and Terril were working out of their garage.
“I think the beers will go over better than she thinks they will. She’s worrying for nothing,” Canas said.
She admitted to not being an avid beer drinker, but she enjoyed almost every beer during their tasting.
For the grand opening Andrea has prepared 250 goody bags for customers and will be providing complimentary snacks.