On San Juan Island in northwestern Washington, where ancient apple trees still bear fruit from the state’s agricultural past and the Salish Sea shapes every vintage, Shaun and Amy Salamida are crafting something remarkable at Madrone Cellars and Cider. Representing more than just another Pacific Northwest beverage producer, their winery and cidery is a love letter to place, process and the profound connection between the land and its fruit.
The Madrone story begins in 2014 at Churchill Coffeehouse in Friday Harbor, where Shaun and Amy spent four weeks connecting over a deep love of travel. Shaun, who was already passionate about winemaking, was destined for Lake Chelan to work as an assistant winemaker at Hard Row to Hoe Vineyards, while Amy was returning to Bellingham for school. Their courtship, which was only just beginning, reads like something from a romantic novel. The day before Shaun moved, Amy secretly left a letter on his car window expressing her desire to continue their connection despite the distance.
After a year of long-distance dating and Amy’s move to Lake Chelan in 2015, the couple married in spring 2016. Since then, the duo has traveled the world together. However, it was during a two-month journey through the wine regions of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal in 2018 that shaped their approach to winemaking. “This is the trip that taught us about European winemaking, bio-dynamic farming and the importance of letting the soil, farming and grape varietal shine in the glass,” Amy says.
After growing homesick for San Juan Island, the couple moved back to Amy’s family home, where they established a winery in her parents’ garage in 2017. They derived the name Madrone from arbutus menziesii, the Pacific Madrone tree that flourishes throughout the San Juan Islands — a symbol of their chosen home and the place where their story began.
Their first vintage consisted of just six barrels of red wine, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and a red blend called Croissance (a French word meaning growth). But cider entered their story through serendipity when a friend approached them about creating a dry cider for her wedding — something unlike the sweet varieties dominating the market and more like traditional dry ciders from Europe that the husband-to-be preferred.
“Shaun had made some cider at Hard Row to Hoe in Lake Chelan and [he] gave it a try,” Amy says. “It was a hit and it got our wheels turning. Cider is often forgotten when it comes to food pairings, depth and flavor profile. And that in itself is a tragedy. So we started playing around with making pétillant naturel ciders. They were dry, sparkling and aged in bottle.”
Producing wine and cider on an island presents unique obstacles that most mainland producers never face. In their early years, sourcing grapes from Eastern Washington required Shaun to make grueling eight to 10 hour journeys with a truck and trailer, often sleeping in his vehicle to ensure he made ferry connections. “No sleep when he got home though,” Amy says. “The grapes need to be processed as soon as possible, so, whenever Shaun made it home, we would spend the next four to six hours processing fruit.”
Yet these challenges proved to be transformative. By 2024, Madrone had made the complete transition to island-grown fruit, partnering with Saltwater Farm on an organic and biodynamic vineyard collaboration. Inspired by their admiration for Champagne and Alsatian wines, they planted the classic Champagne varieties — Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay — with the goal of creating sparkling wines that tell San Juan Island’s story. They also work with Siegerrebe, a grape with Alsatian ancestry that has been grown in the San Juan Islands since the 1970s. This year marks their first small batch of 100 percent island-grown sparkling wine — a milestone years in the making.
“We’ve always been drawn to cool-climate wine regions,” Amy says. “In our travels through Europe, we sought out regions that mirrored the climate on San Juan Island and Champagne and the Alsace regions of France are that.”
In fact, geography is key for Madrone. San Juan Island sits at the same latitude as Champagne and it shares a crucial soil component: limestone. This geological similarity allows them to craft wines and ciders with the bright acidity and full-bodied characteristics that define great sparkling wines.
“The terroir of San Juan Island is unique because we live in a very geologically diverse archipelago,” Shaun explains. “The islands we live on today are what’s left of an ancient mountain range that was filled in by the sea as the glaciers retreated.” The Salish Sea’s moderating influence creates a cool climate that limits grape varieties to the earliest-ripening types. This constraint has become Madrone’s strength.
At the heart of Madrone’s approach lies a commitment to natural winemaking that borders on the philosophical. Both Shaun and Amy believe in minimal intervention, allowing wild fermentations to occur using only the yeasts present in the air and on the fruit itself. “A farm that is organic, no till, has natural pest protection, wildflowers, etc., has a healthy environment and healthy organisms breed healthy yeast,” Amy says.
This approach extends to every aspect of their production from zero filtration and no sulfite additions to complete fermentation that results in wines and ciders with zero residual sugar. The only exceptions are the dessert wines and cider vermouth, which achieve sweetness through fortification with brandy distilled from Madrone’s own products by San Juan Island Distillery.
“Wine and cider are natural agricultural products,” Shaun says. “Once the fruit is pressed into juice, it will spontaneously ferment into wine without any intervention from man. So I see my role in natural winemaking more as a guide of this natural process.”
For their ciders, Amy and Shaun turn to the century-old apple trees that dot the San Juan Islands. They now work with about 15 local farms and orchards to source heritage varieties including King, Twenty Ounce Pippin and Gravenstein. Some trees remain unidentified mysteries, their genetics lost to time, but their fruit still contributes to Madrone’s distinctive ciders.
In 2022, they began collaborating with Madrona Murphy, who started the Island Fruit Heritage project on Lopez Island, personally planting more than 45 heritage apple trees at their estate orchard. Varieties like Brown Crab, Jersey Black, Everlasting and Winter Banana now grow alongside more familiar names, ensuring these genetic treasures survive for future generations.
Innovation at Madrone extends to their zero-waste piquette program, an ages-old technique where pressed pomace is re-fermented with water to create a naturally low-alcohol wine or cider. After a month-long fermentation and six months of aging, the spent pomace becomes compost that nourishes the very orchards and vineyards that produced the original fruit.
“We love the full cycle for this product, as the compost nourishes and promotes the next year’s harvest,” Amy says, embodying their commitment to sustainability that extends from vineyard practices to waste management.
Patience also lies at the heart of Madrone’s operation. Red wines age two years in barrel plus an additional year in bottle before release. White wines spend eight to nine months in stainless steel followed by six to 12 months of bottle aging. Ciders undergo eight to nine months in steel, then a secondary fermentation in bottle using the pétillant naturel method that takes another four to six months.
“All our products are a bit of a long game,” Amy says. “Nothing is rushed during fermentation and aging. We find this imperative due to the wild fermentation. If you rush a wild fermentation, you could be shutting down key aromas, flavor profiles and potentially setting yourself up for spoilage.”
This patience extends to their business model. The operation remains intentionally small with only Shaun, Amy (who also works full-time at a local coffee shop) and one year-round employee, with seasonal help during busy summer months. Yet they offer something unique — educational tastings with Shaun under century-old apple trees, where visitors can sometimes sample wines still aging in barrel.
Today, Madrone Cellars & Cider stands as proof that geographic isolation need not limit ambition. Their commitment to place-based production, natural processes and sustainable practices has created wines and ciders that could only come from the San Juan Islands. And in every bottle of Madrone wine and cider lives a piece of a larger narrative — the romance of two passionate individuals, the resilience of island life, the wisdom of natural processes and the patient cultivation of something beautiful, sustainable and uniquely their own.
