Local wineries, breweries, and microbreweries will begin offering tastings at the West Seattle, Magnolia, and Pike Place farmer’s markets starting on September 1, as part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature last session.

Don’t get too excited. As with everything the comically cautious Washington State Liquor Control Board regulates, moderation is key. For instance, only one brewery, microbrewery or winery can offer samples per market, per day. Those samples must be two ounces or less. Customers must be 21+ and can have no more than four ounces, which they must consume while corralled off from polite society by rope, fence, or tangible wall of shame.

Wine and beer vendors must also offer food or be next to a vendors preparing food. And as always, WSLCB agents will be patrolling the participating farmer’s markets to ensure that no one is having fun compliance.

The pilot program will run September 1, 2011 through November 1, 2012. Then: “We’ll return to the legislature and tell them if there are any problems and they’ll ultimately decide if it’s successful,” explains Brian Smith, the communications director for the WSLCB.

Four breweries and 47 in-state wineries (.pdf) were deemed qualified to participate in the pilot program.

Full list of participating farmer’s markets beneath my folds…

For the pilot program, the WSLCB contacted 50 eligible farmer’s markets around the state—eligibility defined, among other things, as markets where farm sale revenues exceed that of crafts vendors—and then narrowed their list down to 10 pilot markets, including the three Seattle markets. “We’d be willing to work next year to expand the definition of ‘farmer’s markets,'” says Smith.

Here’s the list:

· West Seattle Farmers Market, 4400 S.W. Alaska St. in Seattle
· Magnolia Farmers Market, 2550 34th Ave. W. in Seattle
· Vancouver Farmers Market, 605 Esther St. in Vancouver
· Everett Farmers Market, Inc., 1600 W. Marine View Drive in Everett
· Vashon Farmers Market, Village Green, 17511 Vashon Highway S. in Vashon
· Liberty Lake Farmers Market, 1421 N. Meadowwood Lane in Liberty Lake
· Proctor Farmers Market, N. 27th St. between Proctor and Madison in Tacoma
· Pasco Farmers Market, Fourth and Columbia in Pasco
· Pike Place Market; Street Farmers Market, Pike Place, between Pine and Steward Streets, in Seattle
· Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market, Columbia Street between First and Palouse in Wenatchee

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...

8 replies on “Beer and Wine Tasting Coming to Select Seattle Farmer’s Markets This Fall”

  2. Strange list of tiny wineries. Bainbridge Island Winery isn’t even operating. This might make more sense if the wineries also grew their own grapes, to tie it in with the whole “farmers market” concept, but I don’t see much evidence of that.

  3. Some might say it is ridiculous to require a fence for every outdoor drinking venue, but I think we have to be careful about these things.

    Imagine if prisons didn’t have fences. The inmates would just walk out! Likewise, if we don’t put up fences for sampling beer, toddlers & tweens will be guzzling beer IN A HEARTBEAT.

    I don’t know about you, but the thought of loud, obnoxious drunken toddlers staggering, barfing & generally wreaking havoc on farmer’s markets scares me to death.

  4. @2,

    Does that mean vendors shouldn’t be able to sell bread at farmers markets if they didn’t grow the wheat themselves?

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