THIS IS OUR STORY
Welcome to Orcas Island
THE BEGINNINGS
An Island Wine Shop
Doe Bay Wine Company was founded in 2016 as an online wine club and cellar consulting company.
A brick and mortar bottle shop and tasting room was added on Orcas Island in 2017 and a second location will be opening in Seattle in 2022.
Our shops are filled with wines, beers, and ciders found during our adventures, and we hope that you find something among our shelves that sparks an adventure in you.
A Dynamic Environment
CREATED FOR YOU
The founder of Doe Bay Wine Co., Cole Sisson, has brought together a diverse group of team members to create an organization which combines elements of hospitality with education and experimental fun.
Our bottle shops and tasting rooms offer the opportunity to explore and learn in intimate environments while our private cellar consulting arm brings the discoveries to the comfort of your own home.
EXPLORE ORCAS ISLAND WITH US
Small Producers, Legendary Wines
We'd love to tell you move about our world and share our passion as we explore endeavors together. Especially those that involve wine. Life goes quick and we believe in enjoying every minute.
Shoot us an email below or stop by and say hello.
A NOTE OF HOW WE CAME TO BE-
From the mind of Cole Sisson
But when corporate management asked me if I’d like to run the wine program for Restaurant Michael Mina at The Bellagio in Las Vegas I figured why not? Life goes quick....
So I went and lived between the Aria and The Cosmopolitan on the 35th floor of the Veer Towers and walked the strip to work. I managed a Michelin starred program at one of the most iconic luxury properties in the world. It was a wild chapter. Many adventures. I have some good stories and made some great friends. I spent a lot of time in Southern Utah and came to appreciate the rocks and the desert. I'd go to Mexico City to relax. But you can’t take me too far from the water before I grow restless.
Ok, almost there.
The last stop before returning to the island was working for my good friend Laine Boswell and the Perez-Cuevas family of Bodegas Ontañon in Rioja Spain. I was their national sales and marketing manager and we had a blast. I spent most of my time on the road exploring our country, opening distribution networks and working on building out a US presence. Our clients included Delta, MGM International and The Jose Andres Group and we worked hard to share the story of Rioja Baja, Ribera del Duero and Rueda. There was so much learning.
2016 found me living in Seattle with my now ex-wife and building Doe Bay Wine Company as a part-time consulting business. in 2017 we quit our jobs, moved to Orcas and opened the brick and mortar version of the business. Full circle! It hasn’t been easy coming home. I was gone almost twenty years and didn’t expect to be back here quite yet. The island is my heart, and the love is strong, but we still go at it some times, as old lovers do. We’ve shared a lot of blood, sweat, tears, love, laughs and sorrow over the years. Memories. We will see what the future holds.
I currently live in a tiny home on my property in Doe Bay. I’m about a four minute drive from Mt. Pickett where I grew up. And where both sets of parents and my brother still live. I’ll build a house over the next couple of years. I opened a coffee shop (Roots!) in the middle of Eastsound with my best childhood friend Shea and expanded our collaboration label “The Orcas Project.”
My passion is still, and always will be, experiences and adventures. I work to live. I love Oaxaca, Mezcal and Mexico City. Not sure in which order.
I started a mezcal brand down there during the middle of the pandemic. I keep going back to Vietnam and Japan. Pho, cheap beer and scooters or ramen, sake and fast trains? I’m a big baseball fan. I dig hammocks. I read voraciously. I’m stuck in a world of Ten, Blond on Blonde and Animals. I’m super close to my siblings who are all crushing life. I really, really love good food. If it’s delicious I want to eat it.
I’m spending time back in Seattle now where my girlfriend and I have an apartment on Phinney Ridge. I lived in the building next to Sully’s Snowgoose Tavern during college so it feels like a return to the neighborhood. The second location of Doe Bay Wine Company should open soon. The road goes on forever…
Thanks for being here on this ride with me. Let myself and my team know what we can do to help support you in living your best life.
I love Orcas.
I was born and raised on the island. My parents moved to the island in their mid-20’s and raised our family on the side of Mt. Pickett out in Doe Bay. We had goats and chickens. There was a lot of reading. I was homeschooled until eighth grade and graduated from Orcas Island High School as part of the largest class in OIHS history. Just under fifty students. I began working in restaurants at the age of fourteen (Bilbos’s!) and was later mentored by the Orchid’s at Christina’s Restaurant where I returned from college each summer to work.
I majored in Political Science at the University of Washington. I was kicked out of the dorms. Three of them. At one point I studied Arabic and applied to exchange programs in Cairo and Beirut. It was 2001. The timing was poor. Instead I took a six month sabbatical to Europe. I rode the rails, worked in hostels and met a few other crazy people from all walks of life. Hobo life 101. Months of eating and drinking around Spain, France and Italy changed my entire perspective on life. I came home having decided that financial security and American sensibility were overrated and that I would chase a career in wine. I’ve second guessed a lot of decisions in life but most days I’m still comfortable with this one.
In my early 20’s my friend Jeff Lindsay-Thorsen (now the owner of W.T. Vintners) and I were working together at Cascadia in Belltown when he suggested that if I was serious about wine it might make sense to pursue it in a more academic and regimented manner. Reading the room. Super advice! I enrolled in sommelier classes at South Seattle Community College with instructor Shayn Bjornholm and upon finishing promptly moved to Vail Colorado to live it up and also to work at Restaurant Kelly Liken. I started traveling as much as possible. Most years I’d work for eight months and then backpack around random countries for the remaining four. I found that lifestyle to be quite exciting and agreeable to my constitution. My early goal was to travel to forty countries by my fortieth year. I sped happily past that goal several years early. I'm a fan of epic adventures and constant celebrations of life.
Upon leaving Vail I booked back to back three month adventures. I spent the first segment hitchhiking around South Africa, Malawi and Mozambique with the Pro brothers and then three months meandering through Central America with the Parkersons. Lots of whacky things happened. I hurried back to Seattle, working first for Maria Hines and Adam Chumas at Tilth in Wallingford, and then took a sommelier job with the John Howie Restaurant Group at Seastar Bellevue while also working a harvest internship with Master of Wine (and true champion) Bob Betz at Betz Family Winery.
Fast forward a couple of years, and some good times at Cavatappi and Hestia Cellars, and I found myself back in restaurants. This time as a sommelier at RN74 Seattle. I loved it. They let me wear a jacket, jeans and sell Grand Cru Burgundy. I had passed the Advanced Sommelier exam with the Court of Master Sommeliers and was having a ball.
