What makes FIGGINS Estate wine taste like Walla Walla? The answer begins with one hillside, not one grape variety.

FIGGINS Estate sits northeast of Walla Walla at approximately 1,500–1,750 feet, on a south- and southwest-facing slope of fractured basalt covered by windblown loess. The elevation creates a long, slow growing season, while sharp swings between warm days and cool nights help preserve freshness in the fruit. Strong air drainage reduces frost risk, and the slope allows cold air to move away from the vines.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8H4As-NDOH4

That combination gives the site a distinct growing environment for its Bordeaux-inspired blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. The wine is concentrated but not heavy, structured but not rigid, with dark fruit, cedar, graphite, savory character, and the lift that comes from cool nights.

At FIGGINS, the grape varieties are the lens. The hillside is the subject.

When we sat down with Chris Figgins, CEO and Winemaking Director of Figgins Family Wine Estates, we were not simply discussing a bottle. We were talking about the decisions, and the family call, that made this sense of place possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSGQuw2f1FE

Taste FIGGINS Estate

The clearest way to experience the site is through FIGGINS Estate Red, a Bordeaux-inspired blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot.

https://spokenwines.com/wines/figgins-estate-red#order-list

Select your shipping region to be connected with the appropriate distributor.

For U.S. readers, the verified current path is also available directly through store.figginswine.com. The 2019 vintage is sold out on the winery’s site, so this links to the current 2022 release.

The wine works especially well with grilled beef, lamb, wild mushroom risotto, or even mushroom pappardelle. The food should complement the wine’s structure without overwhelming the freshness that makes the estate distinctive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvnH0U-78iQ

For us at Spoken Wines, this story is also personal. Chris and I share more than a love of wine. We share roots in the soil, both sons of farmers. Both studied horticulture at Washington State University. Both once young men pulled between the horizon and home.

But our stories diverge at one pivotal moment, a moment that shaped the rest of our lives.

The Call That Changed Everything

For Chris, it was a call home.

He had set out on a different path, architecture, structure, design. He was drawn to geometry, building, lines, the creative, structural side of making things. But there came a moment when he realized the office, the screen, would not satisfy him. He didn’t want walls; he wanted rows. He didn’t want to draw blueprints; he wanted to shape landscapes.

So he picked up the phone and called his dad, Gary Figgins, founder of Leonetti Cellar. He asked if he could return, shift his major to horticulture. He wanted to farm, to grow, to shape with his hands.

With that “yes,” Chris joined the family business in 1996. That one call set in motion what would become his own imprint on the family’s legacy. The family’s story of continuity and craft echoes a similar spirit at Dunham Cellars, another Walla Walla winery shaped by the people who stayed and carried it forward.

For me, that call never happened.

I grew up on a thriving potato farm in the Netherlands, countless generations of hard work, weathered hands, and family dinners that revolved around harvests and seasons. Like Chris, I studied horticulture. Like Chris, I loved working outside, the smell of the air, the feel of soil in my hands.

But I never made that call.

And because of that, our farm, our legacy, ended. It’s something that still stirs deeply when I stand in a field and smell freshly turned earth. There’s both pride and pain in that memory, of knowing what was lost, and what was built in its place.

I called Dad and asked what he thought about creating an estate vineyard and giving me the opportunity to work in the family business.

The hillside Chris Figgins could not ignore

When Chris returned to Leonetti Cellar in 1996, he learned the family business from his father, Gary Figgins. But he was also looking for a site that could carry his own vision.

One day, he saw a “for sale” sign going up on a south-facing slope above Mill Creek. He pulled the sign out of the ground, loaded it into his truck, and drove home. He was not necessarily looking for land. He simply recognized something in that hillside.

The site offered the ingredients he wanted: elevation, exposure, fractured basalt, loess, air drainage, temperature variation, and enough rainfall to create a near-dry-farmed feel. This same combination of stone, elevation, and mountain air shapes wine across the wider Walla Walla region, as we found when we met Christophe Baron and the volcanic cobblestones of the Rocks District.

Chris knew immediately:

“This is the perfect site.”

He proposed it to his parents. They hesitated, they didn’t want to expand Leonetti further. But with their blessing, and under his own label, he acquired it. That hillside northeast of town became FIGGINS Estate, where Chris crafted a Sense of Place.

“The Perfect Site”

Why FIGGINS does not put the grape first

The FIGGINS Estate Red is a Bordeaux-inspired blend, primarily Cabernet Sauvignon with Merlot and Petit Verdot. But Chris does not want the grape variety to be the first thing the drinker notices.

“Varietals are just a lens to see a site,” he says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWSMWrmIdbI

That idea explains the wine’s character. Cabernet Sauvignon provides structure and dark fruit, Merlot adds texture and generosity, and Petit Verdot contributes color, spice, and depth. But none of those grapes tells the whole story on its own.

The place does.

The estate’s elevation and nighttime chill slow ripening and preserve acidity. The fractured basalt and loess create a challenging, well-drained root environment. Together, those conditions help the wine feel powerful without losing energy.

This is why FIGGINS Estate Red tastes concentrated yet refined, structured yet elegant. It is not simply a Washington Bordeaux blend. It is a blend built to express one Walla Walla hillside.

You can taste the altitude and nighttime chill through its vibrancy, the slow ripening that gives fruit both power and grace. The soil whispers through the glass, a quiet minerality, a kind of tension that reflects its place.

The winery itself is elevated both literally and spiritually above the valley floor, built into the hillside where 80% of the footprint resides, with caves carved into solid rock beneath the vineyard. It feels more like a continuation of the land than a structure upon it.

Chris holds the legacy he’s built not as a fixed heritage carved in stone, but as a canvas for future generations, “not cemented in permanence,” he says. He hopes his daughters, and those who come after, will feel welcome to add to the story: to bring their own ideas, learn from mistakes, and grow what has been planted. That same long-term thinking about purpose and stewardship runs through L’Ecole’s new era of purpose and precision, another Walla Walla winery balancing legacy with what comes next.

Closing Reflection

At Spoken Wines, our mission is to connect the family who makes the wine with the family who drinks it.

In Chris’s story, we found something more, a connection between two farmers at heart, bound by the same soil and separated only by a single, life-defining phone call. Both paths shaped who we became. Chris carried forward his family’s story by returning to it. I found mine by migrating to the United States and pursuing a career in agriculture and now, through Spoken Wines, giving voice to others who, like him, let the land speak through them.

His estate, carved into the hillside, stands as living proof that when you follow your calling, literally, you can create a sense of place so strong, it becomes eternal.

The wines carry the voice of that place: concentrated yet refined, structured yet elegant.

“I love when people come to the winery, overlook the vineyard…and as you drink the wine you recognize the place.”