Winery Overview
Wine has brought actor Kyle MacLachlan back home to the Pacific Northwest, to Walla Walla to craft small lots of limited production reds and rosé that speak of the promise of its special terroir. Growing up in Yakima, Kyle was connected to the earth beginning with his father’s ambitious gardens and gentle caretaking of gnarled fruit trees, lucky sentinels of the former orchard where their home stood. Kyle’s interest in wine began in the mid-1980s. After moving to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career, he frequently returned to Yakima to visit his father and explore the burgeoning wine scene. Later, inspired by friends in Napa Valley, the notion of making his own wine took hold. Shortly after, a chance meeting with Walla Walla winemaker Eric Dunham led to a simple handshake that launched Pursued by Bear in 2005. In 2008, Eric passed the winemaking baton to Daniel Wampfler who crafts Pursued by Bear wines with the same care that Eric inspired. Kyle has become an advocate and evangelist for the unique properties and flavor profile of Washington wine and is personally involved in every aspect of Pursued by Bear winemaking. The name, Pursued by Bear, is an homage to perhaps the most famous of all stage directions, “exit, pursued by a bear,” from Act III, scene iii of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.