Dave Guest had a 10 year plan.

It just got interrupted in year six.

Guest, who lives in Black Diamond, was a news editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when it ceased putting out a daily newspaper. He had worked for the company for 25 years and was in the process of starting his own business when the paper closed in March 2009 after more than a century of reporting the news.

“Working at the P-I for 25 years, I knew someday that would come to an end,” he said.

He and his wife, Dina, started Illusion Wines in 2002.

“It kind of started as a hobby,” Guest said. “In my mid-20s I started making beer. Then I got interested in wine.”

Being a native of the Puget Sound region — he was born in Seattle and graduated from Kentridge High — he knew he could get grapes from Washington state growers to make wine.

“At some point, I got the bug,” he said. “If I’m going to start a business for myself, a winery would be kind of an interesting way to go. Over the years it festered and I decided I had to do it.”

Guest had a 10 year plan for the winery, but, with the economy taking a nose dive and the P-I closing, his plans were accelerated.

They bought an undeveloped piece of property in Eastern Washington for the winery. They’ve planted some grapes there, but, for now they’re too young to make anything with, Guest said, so they get grapes from three other growers in the state.

“The interesting thing about wineries, we all do the same basic thing, but we do it just a little bit differently,” Guest said. “In the fall, the grape growers pick the grapes for us, we usually consult with them about when the grapes are ready. Once they’re picked… they come back to the winery.”

From there, they make red and white wines.

With red wine, Guest explained, the grapes are crushed and fermented in vats with some yeast thrown in.

For white whines, the grapes are immediately crushed and the juice is removed to be fermented to get that white color.

Then it goes into the barrel to be aged, with reds spending a year and a half to two years in the barrel while whites spend about a year.

“White wines can be opened pretty quickly after they’re done fermenting and go to the bottle,” he said. “It can be a week to 10 days (to ferment). It’s kind of temperature dependent.”

There a number of differences between whites and reds, Guest explained.

“In some ways, whites are a little harder,” he said. “You need to use tighter filtration. People want everything crystal clear. You want to crush the grapes and press the juice as quickly as you can so it doesn’t oxidize.”

The location of the winery, Guest said, helps because it’s cooler in the fall and it works out well because he has to use less equipment to manage the temperatures so “it’s right where I want it to be naturally.”

Making wine has kept their weekend schedules chock full, particularly since they bought the land near Lyle and the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. They built the winery themselves and spent most weekends there from 2005 through 2008 working in the spring and summer.

“We built the winery from the concrete up and we did that on weekends,” he said. “I would work until midnight at the P-I on Friday then get up at 6 a.m. on Saturday.”

In the fall when grapes are harvested, it was even more labor intensive because they would go and pick up a couple tons of grapes, then get down to making wine. Once they get into bottling, things get easier because the timing isn’t as critical as it is early in the process.

Guest has spent a great deal of time learning about the process.

“I’m self-taught,” he said. “I did have an uncle that did have a winery and spent my college years in the cellars. You do as much reading as you can. It’s just reading and picking of brains of those who have done it for a while.”

With wine, he added, you only have one opportunity each year to do it and get it right.

“Passion is one thing, it’s more about commitment,” Guest said. “You have to remind yourself you made a commitment to get it done so you have to push forward and get it done.”

At Illusion Wines, they offer currently a cabernet sauvignon, a syrah and two red wine blends, as well as a chardonnay, a riesling and a pinot gris.

Their products are sold at QFC stores in Enumclaw and Maple Valley, Fred Meyer in Bonney Lake, some times at local wine stores, Lake Sawyer Grocery, outlets in Eastern Washington and Mama’s Steak and Pasta in Black Diamond.

“She was our first customer,” Guest said of Ginger Passarelli, who owns Mama’s, “and she still sells our wine.”

And now locals can get their hands on Illusion Wines at the Maple Valley Farmers Market every Saturday morning at Rock Creek Elementary School.

Market organizers invited the Guests to be vendors during the inaugural season in 2009, but, they just weren’t quite able to make the commitment at that point.

This year, though, Guest was spending much of his time at the winery during the market season while his wife, Dina, was home on weekends so it seemed a good time to get involved.

“Being at the market is fun,” Guest said. “She loves the market and she’s good at sales.”

Even though everything didn’t go according to plan for Illusion Wines, it seems like everything is working out pretty well in the long run.

For more information about Illusion Wines, log on to www.illusionwine.com.www.illusionwine.com.