An Italian family’s land, a machinist’s hobby and a winery named for both.

Leonetti Cellar is named for a farm family. HistoryLink, the online encyclopedia of Washington State history, says in a 2024 essay by Jim Kershner that the founder Gary Figgins grew up in Walla Walla as the grandson of Frank and Rose Leonetti, Italian immigrants who reached the Walla Walla Valley in the first decade of the twentieth century and farmed a patch of land southwest of town, growing spinach, alfalfa, grain and, above all, Walla Walla sweet onions. The Leonetti farm also had a few wine grapes, and his grandfather and uncles made them into homemade wine, which is how Figgins first watched wine being made.

Wine stayed a hobby for years. According to HistoryLink, Figgins trained in mechanical engineering and worked as a machinist at the Continental Can Company in Walla Walla, where his father had worked, while he made wine at home from grapes he bought in the Yakima and Columbia valleys. He also met Rick Small in the Army Reserve; the two became close friends and wine partners, and Small later founded Woodward Canyon Winery.

In 1974 Figgins planted his first vineyard on the old Leonetti farmstead, with help from Small and his uncles: a few Riesling vines and an acre of Cabernet Sauvignon. Early red wines made from bought Cabernet grapes convinced him that Washington could grow fine red wine, at a time when the state was better known for whites, HistoryLink says.

In 1977 Gary and his wife Nancy Figgins licensed and bonded the winery as Leonetti Cellar, naming it in homage to his grandparents. HistoryLink calls it the first winery in the Walla Walla Valley, followed shortly by Woodward Canyon and L’Ecole No. 41, and English Wikipedia’s article on the Walla Walla Valley AVA dates the rebirth of the valley’s wine industry to Leonetti’s founding in the 1970s. The winery itself says it was founded in 1977 as the Walla Walla Valley’s first winery and describes itself as family-owned.

A basement, a horse-tack shed and a subscription list.

The business began very small. HistoryLink says the Figginses started making larger quantities of wine in 1978 in the basement of their house, among orchards just southeast of town, and later moved the operation across the lawn into a small former horse-tack shed, which Gary Figgins has called the birthplace of Leonetti Cellar. He kept his day job at Continental Can, and The Seattle Times reported in May 1982 that the couple saw the winery as too small to make a living from. He did not resign until 1988, HistoryLink says.

The change came with the 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon, which HistoryLink says drew national attention to the winery and to Washington red wine. In 1983 Figgins and Small drove the valley to work out the boundaries of a proposed American Viticultural Area, and the Walla Walla Valley AVA was granted in 1984. In November 1994 Wine Spectator ran a cover story by James Laube, “The Merlot Master,” on Figgins’s Merlot and Cabernet, and Merlot became the winery’s second signature.

The way Leonetti sells is part of its identity. The Seattle Times reported in 1995 that the winery had no public tasting room and that nearly every bottle went to members of its subscription list, which people waited years to join. HistoryLink says the compound sits behind locked gates on both sides, and quotes Figgins explaining that visitors need a code and an arrangement in advance.

The buildings grew slowly, without debt where the family could avoid it. A cellar dug in 1985 was insulated with hay bales for two years before a three-storey winery was built over it, HistoryLink says, and the grounds became a set of Tuscan-influenced stone buildings. Figgins did some of the stonework himself, using stone from the nearby Blue Mountains, and the couple’s original house was rebuilt in stone and is known as the Stone House.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Oregon and Washington wineries: Domaine Serene, Cristom, Bergström, The Eyrie Vineyards, Leonetti Cellar, Quilceda Creek and Cayuse Vineyards. Wineries in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family estates that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single wine can be sold everywhere from a mailing list to a restaurant list.

A winery’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually grown, made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Estate vineyards and a second generation.

Over time Leonetti moved from bought grapes towards fruit from its own valley. HistoryLink says Figgins added the Loess Vineyard on the hillside east of the winery in 1999 to the small Leonetti Old Block beside it, and established the Mill Creek Upland Vineyard east of Walla Walla and the Holy Roller Vineyard across the state line near Milton-Freewater, Oregon. The winery’s site today lists five vineyards: Mill Creek Upland, Loess, Leonetti Old Block, Holy Roller and Serra Pedace. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot remain the headline wines, with Sangiovese and Aglianico added later, HistoryLink says.

The winery is still in the family. According to HistoryLink, their daughter Amy Figgins returned in 2007 to take over her mother’s role as manager and was estate manager and partner as of 2023, while their son Chris Figgins joined the day after graduating in horticulture from Washington State University in 1996, became head winemaker in 2001, launched his own single-vineyard label, FIGGINS, and as of 2023 was president and winemaking director of Leonetti and of Figgins Family Wine Estates. Gary and Nancy Figgins officially retired in 2018. Figgins Family Wine Estates describes itself as a collection of wine brands across Washington and Oregon: Leonetti Cellar, FIGGINS and Toil Oregon.

The founders’ standing in the state industry is on record. HistoryLink says Gary Figgins was named honorary vintner of the Auction of Washington Wines in 2005, and that he and Nancy were inducted into the Washington Wine Hall of Fame in 2019, partly for helping to establish the Institute for Enology and Viticulture at Walla Walla Community College.

The name needs care. The brand’s own spelling is Leonetti Cellar, singular, though “Leonetti Cellars” turns up in print, and Leonetti is also a common Italian surname; the winery’s own site is leonetticellar.com.

For a design guide, Leonetti Cellar shows how a family name, a farm and a gated stone winery can carry a brand that is sold mostly to a waiting list rather than on shelves. Compare Quilceda Creek, the Golitzin family’s Cabernet house in Snohomish, and Chateau Ste. Michelle, the Woodinville winery. For this guide we use merlot red, Blue Mountain stone and cellar umber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Leonetti Cellar’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.