Rare Rhône-inspired wines, thoughtful winemaking and a community-first ethos distinguish Cairdeas Winery, the passion project of two people who built their lives around wine and each other.
On a frosty fall afternoon at their Lake Chelan tasting room, it is not unusual to find Charlie and Lacey Lybecker pouring wine in matching hot pink outfits while guests study the bottles in their hands. Many of the labels carry bright, slightly uneven drawings made by their kids, nieces and nephews, the kind of artwork that usually lives on refrigerators rather than tasting-room shelves. The effect is warm and disarming. Before anyone hears the story of Cairdeas or learns that its name means friendship in Irish Gaelic, the room already offers a clue. This is a winery built the way the two of them built everything else in their lives: collaboratively, joyfully and with an instinct to include the people around them.
The beginnings of that story reach back to moments that had nothing to do with vineyard plans or business strategy. One began in the Yarra Valley of Australia, where a 19-year-old Lacey went on her first wine tasting tour during a summer abroad. Growing up on a wheat and cattle farm in northwestern Minnesota, she was fascinated by the agricultural side of wine. It felt different from her roots and yet oddly familiar. The other moment unfolded years later in Seattle, where she had moved for a job with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. At a small fundraising event, she met Charlie. When they began dating, their weekends quickly became a string of wine adventures through South Seattle and Woodinville. She noticed how winemakers lit up under Charlie’s barrage of questions. “I’ve always been the curious one, asking a million questions, wanting to understand the why behind everything,” he says. And he noticed her entrepreneurial spark; together, their fascination snowballed into something neither had expected. “It wasn’t one of us pushing the other,” Charlie says. “It really grew out of shared fascination and a sense of ‘let’s see where this could go.’”
When it came time to name the winery, the answer had been hanging in their home for years. On an early trip to Ireland, long before marriage or a winery entered the conversation, Lacey had purchased framed ogham characters, including one for Cairdeas. As they settled into life together, that word kept resurfacing. “We kept coming back to ‘Cairdeas,’” Lacey says. “That word just felt right. Wine is about connection, with people, with place, with the moment you’re in.”
Their first years of winemaking unfolded in West Seattle, where curiosity turned into skill and skill into ambition. But as the wines and their family grew, so did the feeling that something more rooted was calling. In 2012, they moved the winery and their young children to the Lake Chelan Valley. For Lacey, it was a return to the kind of rural community where she had always imagined raising kids. For Charlie, it was a chance to immerse himself in a region still discovering its own winemaking voice. The reward was immediate. Chelan offered the water and mountains they loved about the Pacific Northwest, but with space, community and the promise of building something from the ground up.
It also offered terroir that surprised them. The granite-based soils of the Lake Chelan AVA lend a minerality and freshness different from the basalt-dominated vineyards in much of Washington. Though their estate vineyard accounts for only a small portion of their fruit, being based in Chelan connected them to some of the state’s premier growers, including Boushey, Lawrence and Inland Desert. It created the best-of-both-worlds approach that defines their wines, combining Chelan’s lift with the depth of the Columbia Valley.
Rhône varieties became the heart of their work almost by accident. Charlie still remembers the moment he tasted a Washington-grown Syrah that stopped him in his tracks. “I was completely hooked,” he says. He gravitated toward earthy, savory expressions and dove deeper into the grape’s Rhône origins. Curiosity quickly snowballed into obsession. A later trip to the Rhône Valley confirmed what they had begun to suspect. “We realized our wines could stand confidently alongside those originals,” Lacey says. “That was our aha. It confirmed that Washington has everything it needs to make Rhône-style wines that are truly world-class.”
Today, Cairdeas is known for Rhône-inspired wines that carry Washington character. “We’re Rhône-inspired but distinctly Washington,” Charlie says. “Our wines are elegant, honest and expressive of the vineyards we work with.” Two bottles, in particular, reflect their personal histories. For Charlie, it is Caisléan an Pápa, their Washington take on a Châteauneuf-du-Pape blend. It took years before they could source all five grapes from a single vineyard. “Ever since, Pápa has been first in line for blending trials,” he says. “It gets first pick of its barrels.”
For Lacey, it is Nellie Mae, a Viognier and Roussanne blend named for the women who shaped both of their families. “Nellie is Charlie’s grandmother, who became mine too, and Mae crosses both of our backgrounds,” she says. “It represents some of the strongest and most passionate women we know.”
The Lybeckers have also helped push Washington’s Rhône frontier forward. When planning their estate plantings, they were encouraged to grow something not already widely available. That led them to Picardan, a nearly extinct white Rhône variety. They became the first vineyard in Washington, and one of only four in the United States, to plant it. The nursery program that supplied the vines has since ended, making their planting even more singular. Clairette Blanche soon followed, prompted by Lacey’s discovery of the sparkling wines of France’s Die region. After a long search for examples and a trip to the Rhône to taste through dozens of producers, Charlie finally agreed. Their estate sparkling wines now release each June and disappear just as quickly.
The guiding idea behind Cairdeas, friendship, is not abstract for the Lybeckers. Their winery has always been built through community labor. They remember the friends who took turns on a hand-crank crusher in the early days in their driveway, the ones who helped them move from Seattle to Chelan, the neighbors who stood shoulder to shoulder to plant vines in the summer heat. The philosophy felt especially alive during the pandemic, when uncertainty swept across the industry. Their wine club members ordered bottles just to check in, logged onto livestreams and filled the makeshift driveway tent on reopening day. “It was this beautiful reminder that Cairdeas isn’t just about wine,” Lacey says. “It’s about relationships and how we can all show up for each other, in both challenging and fruitful times.”
Looking ahead, the Lybeckers imagine a future that stays true to their founding principles, even as it grows. They see a family-run, hands-on winery — still experimenting, still refining, still anchored in friendship. They envision terraced vineyard expansions, walking paths and spaces designed for people to slow down and connect with the land the way they have.
cairCairdeas now spans the sunlit slopes of Lake Chelan and an urban tasting room in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood. Yet no matter where someone encounters their wines, the message remains unmistakable: friendship first, always.
