BY margaret Laliberte, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

We don’t think of western Washington as prime grape-growing country today. But during Bellevue’s early years as a farming community, seven different families grew grapes between about 1912 and the 1940s. The Kelfner farm was located at the intersection of today’s SE 8th St and 108th Ave. N.E., near where Surrey Downs Park now stands. North of it, R.T. Reid’s farm lay where the new light-rail station at 1112th and Main Street is nearing completion. On the north side of the community, between today’s Bellevue Way and 100th Ave. N.E., the eastern slope of Clyde Hill was covered with vineyards owned over the years by the Clarke, Loughran, Hennig, Simpson and Borg families. Some of the farmers sold the grapes fresh, others made grape juice, and Borg’s Summit Winery sold wine, once Prohibition ended.

Photos from the time and ads in local newspapers touted the sale of “Island Belle” grapes, suggesting that they were special in some way unknown to us today. And in fact, they were. Island Belle was Puget Sound’s very own grape variety.

2002.147.008 - Kelfner produce stand with sign announcing Island Belle grapes for sale.

The Island Belle story begins on little Stretch Island in Case Inlet on the western shore of southern Puget Sound. In 1890 Lambert Evans settled there and began experimenting with grape cultivation. He was joined on the island in 1899 by Adam Eckert, a New York grower, who developed a variety by crossing the Concord grape with a native North American grape. Named Island Belle after Eckert’s elder daughter, the belle of a ball held on the island, the variety does well in the Puget Sound climate. Very hardy, it withstands Fall frosts and can be harvested into December. It’s a versatile variety, making delicious juice and jelly. Stretch Island eventually became the center of what was hopefully known as “Puget Sound’s grape belt,” including Harstine Island and the lands along Pickering Passage. In 1918 the Island Belle Grape Growers’ Union was founded to market the area’s grapes in what was hoped to be, according to an article in Olympia’s Washington Standard newspaper, “a new Puget Sound industry.” Island Belle became the most widely grown grape variety in Puget Sound country. The record harvest in 1920 returned $1,000 per acre (over $13,700 in today’s dollars). In 1928 California’s Oakland Tribune paper ran the story that Grace Mason had been crowned Miss Island Belle at the Island Belle Grape Grower’s celebration in faraway Shelton. By 1930 Stretch Island supported two grape juice plants, owned by Eckert and a Charles Somers, who had bought the Evans property in 1918.

So it’s not surprising that Bellevue’s grape growers grew Island Belle grapes as well, although the harvest here typically began two weeks later than further to the south, where the climate was slightly more moderate. John Kelfner bought his initial stock from a grower on Vashon Island and propagated his vines on his farm. When John Clarke began farming below Clyde Hill in 1919, he planted Island Belle and eventually opened Bellevue’s first grape juice plant. (He later sold his land to the Hennig and Loughran families.)

The Depression years caused western Washington’s grape industry to crater, and it never fully recovered, although Robert Borg continued to grow his Island Belles on Clyde Hill into the 1940s. A small remnant of the story remains alive today. In 1978 Dick and Peggy Patterson founded their Hoodsport Winery on Hood Canal, the 16th winery to be licensed in the state. They bought up virtually the entire harvest of Island Belle grapes from the Stretch Island vineyards, for which there was virtually no market at the time. Over the years they expanded to create wines from other grapes as well. In 1994 the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms announced it would drop Island Belle from its approved list of wine grape names and rename the grape the “Early Campbell.” But the Island Belle is tenacious. Hoodsport Winery is still in business, and among the offerings of varietal wines on its website is “Island Belle,” “a red wine bursting with flavors of fresh raspberries and cherries. A perfect wine for picnics and barbecues.”

2011.025.003 - Vineyard on the Loughran property in Bellevue, circa 1930.

Resources

Knauss, Suzanne, Culinary History of a Pacific Northwest Town, Eastside Heritage Center, 2007

McConaghy, Lorraine, ed., , Lucile McDonald’s Eastside Notebook, Marymoor Museum, 1993

Nick Rousso, Grape Farming in Washington, HistoryLink Essay #21302

Jack Swanson, Puget Sound: Island Belle grape on endangered list, Kitsap Sun, April 19, 1994, https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1994/04-19/292256_puget_sound__island_belle_grape.html (retrieved October 18, 2021

Richard Bell, Island Belle Story, activerain.com/blogsview/790969/the-island-belle-story (retrieved October 18, 2021)