Washington winery wins platinum award

One winery in Washington winning big, Echolands Winery Riesling. Look at that beaut right there. Granted a platinum award for the 2026 Decanter World Wine Awards. Making it, okay, these stats. Just one of two Rieslings that get this recognition in the United States and the only white wine to win from Washington. Not only that. The grapes that made the winning creation, they have an interesting connection to Super Mario Brothers. We're going to be talking about that here now is winemaker Brian Rudin with Echolands Winery. First of all, congratulations. Thank you. And thank you for being here today. This is great. Oh, we're so glad that you're here. Okay, so talk to me about this Riesling. What makes it so special, aside from that beautiful award? We were so glad and surprised to get the award at all. There was so many great wines. Yeah. But for me, as a person who grew up out here in Washington State, it just makes me so proud that we can grow grapes of this quality because really a wine like this did go against some of the top white wines and some of the other wines in the world. And I think that's so cool. You can do that here in Washington State. That's so amazing. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Decanter Awards and really any award that is received by a winery? I mean, how does that make the entire organization feel? How do you feel, because I know that you guys are doing hard work, good work, putting out beautiful wines, but to get an award, my goodness. It's crazy. There are so many wineries in the United States, there's more than 10,000, and so you send out your wines to all the different reviewers who could do it, the Wine Spectator, the wine enthusiast, Decanter in this case, they're based out of the UK and have a lot of influence in Europe where wine has originated. And so that one, It's cool the way that they do it because there are so many people that review all the wines that come in. There's about 17,000 wines. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's intimidating. There's so many and so much good stuff too. They go through round after round and tasting the wine over and over. So we didn't really know that we were going to get this award until maybe like two or three weeks before it dropped for us. And at that point, we realized, okay, gosh, we've cleared the first couple hurdles. Amazing. Had our fingers crossed and really glad to get it. And here she is looking lovely. Okay, I love a trivia moment, right? So as we enjoy the look of this beautiful and award-winning bottle of wine, I want you to tell me a little bit about how Super Mario's namesake sort of had What has a connection here? So this part's crazy. And so the man who Super Mario is based after is Mario Segale, and he was the son of two Italian immigrants who moved to King County, I think in the 40s. And so he grew up down in Tukwila and ended up buying a lot of land, building up his family business. His parents sold farm goods at the Pike Place Market in the early days. And Mario ended up being the landlord for Nintendo USA, it was a Japanese company, and they were developing the game Donkey Kong, and Mario was their landlord, and he would come around the warehouse where Nintendo was based, and he got to know everyone there, and they nicknamed him Super Mario, I think for a lot of reasons, he's a really cool guy, but he said super a lot. And so, It was almost a joke, like an inside joke, and then later Donkey Kong went big, and then they ended up launching Super Mario Brothers, and they had based the Donkey Kong character after the way that Mario looked. And it's kind of funny, his father, Louis, was the archetype for Luigi. And so the family would come around, and they were always really interested in all the properties and who was there. And so it was just kind of a fluke, but Mario and his son, Mark, later went out. I bought this amazing piece of ground out in the middle of nowhere in eastern Washington and planted grapes out there. And so we've been, I've been working with that vineyard since 2011. And with Echolands, this was our first year with the Riesling. And this site, I just have to tell you, there's no place like it on the planet. When you're standing up there, you can see several hundred miles any direction. You have this gorgeous high elevation perch. And the grapes like it up there too because you get this cool... clean air with lots of airflow. You know, you get no mildew, no ponding of water, therefore like no humid conditions. And it's just it's a wonderful place to grow grapes and a really cool, a really cool connection. If the grapes like it, I like it too. And before we let you go, I do want to make sure that I mentioned that your Cabernet Franc also won an award this year for the second time. So you guys are just doing good work out there. It's yeah, we feel very lucky. There's so many wineries doing awesome stuff and we're glad we caught the attention of Decanter. Oh, absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. And once again, congratulations. Thank you.