Downtown Spokane is becoming a weekend destination for wine lovers.

In the past several years, the number of tasting rooms here has increased significantly. Now, more than half of the 17 Spokane-based wineries have a physical presence downtown in the form of a tasting room and retail space, or a combined production facility, tasting room, and retail space, the Spokane Winery Association's website shows.

Several wineries not based here also have a downtown presence, such as the newly opened tasting room for Cougar Crest Estate Winery, at 8 N. Post, and five Columbia Valley-based wineries that share space at Nectar Tasting Room, at 120 N. Stevens.

Just 10 years ago, only a few wineries had a presence in the city's core.

Washington state Liquor Control Board regulation changes in the past 10-plus years have allowed tasting rooms to proliferate.

"The liquor board has recognized that they are a viable entity and necessary for a lot of small entities," says Dave Westfall, co-owner of Grande Ronde Cellars, which has operated a tasting room in downtown Spokane separate from its production facility for seven years. "For a small winery, it allows them to taste their wine to the public and sell retail, which is important."

Westfall says Grande Ronde Cellars' separate production facility is located in the foothills of Mount Spokane, making it difficult for visitors to access year-round. Its downtown tasting room, at 906 W. Second, creates a more visible location for the winery.

In 2000, legislation passed that allows wineries in Washington state, like Grande Ronde Cellars, to have two offsite locations that are separate from a winery's main production facility. That measure also allows a winery to distribute samples to customers and to sell bottles of its product at those locations for off-premise consumption, says Anne Radford, a spokeswoman with the state Liquor Control Board.

In 2008, Radford says, a state law passed that allows wineries also to sell their wine by the glass for consumption at an offsite tasting room, in addition to bottle sales and samplings.

Currently, there are more than 150 tasting rooms and more than 730 wineries in Washington state, she says.

The rise in the number of wineries and tasting rooms in the Spokane area mirrors the activity taking place across the state in the wine industry, and that growth is expected to continue, says Ryan Pennington, a spokesman with the Washington Wine Commission, headquartered in Seattle.

"The demand continues to go up, and there is more wine hitting the market every day," Pennington says. "We don't see any slowdown coming anytime soon."

The majority of tasting rooms offer customers a sampling of four or five featured varieties of their wine for around $5, and that fee often is waived if a customer purchases a bottle, says Overbluff Cellars' John Caudill, who owns the winery with his wife, Lynnelle. Overbluff's tasting room is located at 620 S. Washington and opened there about a year ago, Caudill says.

Despite the fact that the Spokane area has experienced growth in the last several years in the number of both new wineries and offsite tasting rooms, winemakers here say that increase creates healthy competition and collaboration rather than hurting their sales.

"I think it's a big plus to have multiple people downtown," Caudill says. "There are plenty of options for them to explore."

Robert Karl Cellars, a Spokane winery that was one of downtown Spokane's first, has been located in a combined production facility and tasting room at 115 W. Pacific for about 12 years, says Rebecca Gunselman, who owns the cellar with her husband, Joe. Since then, the couple has seen the industry here go from a few small operations to what it is now at close to 20, she says.

"Originally there really were only two of us downtown," Gunselman asserts. "The more wineries you have, it creates a critical mass. So if there are more to visit, people put us on their agenda."

Gunselman says most of the downtown wineries and tasting rooms are open on the weekends or in the afternoon and evening, giving visitors an opportunity to walk around and make stops at several in one day.

In addition to offering conventional tastings, several downtown tasting rooms offer a sit-down setting for customers to order by the glass in more of a bar-like atmosphere. Some also offer light hors d'oeuvres and live music during their weekend hours, including one of the downtown area's newest, called the Marketplace Wine Bar.

That tasting room is located at 32 W. Second, in a 1,500-square-foot leased space inside the same building as the newly opened Spokane Public Market. The space is shared by two young boutique wineries here, Emvy Cellars and Bridge Press Cellars.

The owners of Emvy and Bridge Press began making wine together about six years ago under the tutelage of Grande Ronde's Westfall and Mueller, says Valerie Wilkerson, who owns Emvy with her husband, Mark. Bridge Press Cellars is owned by Spokane husband-wife team Brian and Melody Padrta.

Both wineries started out selling and tasting their wines inside Grande Ronde's tasting room and decided to move to the space adjacent to the public market about two months ago because they'd outgrown their previous shared space, Wilkerson says.

She says currently they're in the process of searching for a new downtown production facility that will be located separately from the tasting room. The wineries formerly had been producing their wines at Mountain Dome Winery, located in the foothills of Mount Spokane, and that operation recently was purchased by long-time Spokane winemaker Don Townshend, she says.

Of the growth in the downtown tasting room scene, Wilkerson says, "It's a natural fit to see wine coming here rather than people having to travel to Walla Walla. We're keeping with the times."

Bridge Press and Emvy both source their grapes from Columbia Valley vineyards, she adds, as many other wineries here do.

A number of winemakers participate in three annual events organized by the Spokane Winery Association that are designed to attract people to the local wineries around some major holidays.

Those three yearly events are ValenWine, which takes place on the weekend of or leading up to Valentine's Day; the Spring Barrel Tasting, a Mother's Day weekend event; and the Holiday Wine Festival, which takes place the weekend before Thanksgiving, she says.

Most of the wineries and tasting rooms downtown also participate in First Friday, the monthly downtown art and retail event that's jointly sponsored by Downtown Spokane Partnership and the Spokane Arts Commission.

Another local initiative that recently began to encourage the patronage of Spokane's wine scene is a corkage-free program that a number of downtown restaurants are participating in, says Greg Lipsker, co-owner of Barrister Winery here, located at 1213 W. Railroad. He says that program allows customers to bring to a participating restaurant an unopened bottle of wine purchased on the same day from a tasting room and the corkage fee is waived.

A number of restaurants here allow their patrons to bring an unopened bottle they've purchased elsewhere to pair with their meal, and charge them a fee ranging between $10 and $15 to use the restaurant's glasses, have the bottle uncorked, and the wine poured.