Maryhill Winery

Since 2009 in the Goldendale cellar

Richard Batchelor tastes for site before he talks about style. As winemaker at Maryhill Winery in Goldendale, he works from the vintage inward, asking what the fruit carried into the cellar and what should remain visible in the glass. That habit has a long track behind it: study at Lincoln University (NZ), then cellar and winemaking roles that moved from enology to full authorship before he took the post here in 2009.

Richard Batchelor came to Maryhill after serving as enologist at St. Francis Winery & Vineyards from 2000 to 2003, winemaker at HALL Wines from 2003 to 2008, and consulting winemaker at Paraduxx from 2008 to 2009. The sequence matters because it reads less like a résumé than a widening of the hand: laboratory precision, cellar repetition, blending decisions, grower conversation, and the discipline of letting each vintage set its own terms. His own phrasing stays close to that method: “What drives me is the wine itself, where it came from, what the vintage gave me to work with, and whether the person drinking it can taste the difference.”

More than 50 wines from Washington fruit

Maryhill’s scale gives Batchelor a broad bench. The winery produces more than 50 wines from over 30 grape varieties, drawing on Washington vineyards and working across still red, still white, and still rosé. Zinfandel, Grenache, Chardonnay, Albarino, and Petite Sirah sit inside that range, with the Columbia Gorge AVA giving the place its immediate frame. The house's production philosophy is sustainable, and its program spans many varieties, many vineyard sources, and repeated decisions about what each lot can carry.

His named wines at Maryhill include Cabernet Sauvignon, Proprietor’s Reserve Lot 14 Red Wine, Proprietor’s Reserve Grenache, McKinley Springs Vineyards Syrah, and Classic Syrah. Those bottles give the cellar a map of weight and tone, from reserve blends to vineyard-named Syrah. Batchelor’s stated attention to “every vineyard visited, every conversation with every grower, every handful of soil” puts the work where it belongs, before the pass through barrel or bottle, in the contact between fruit, grower, and season.

The bluff above the Columbia River

The tasting room and restaurant sit on a bluff above the Columbia River, with vineyard and gorge views pulling the eye outward while the wine stays at the center of the table. The room is warm rather than hushed, built for conversation, flights, and the steady movement of glasses across the counter. Terrace seating, grottos, waterfalls, and tournament-quality bocce courts make the property unusually expansive for a cellar visit, and the winery draws over 75,000 visitors annually.

That scale can flatten a place if the cellar loses its line. Here, Batchelor’s job is to keep the hand present across the range: the tasting room may open toward the gorge, but the discipline still returns to the bottle in front of you. Proprietor’s Reserve Grenache is the venue’s concrete thing.