EAST WENATCHEE, Wash. — It’s one of hundreds of small wineries in the state, but Martin Scott Winery may be unique when it comes to spectacular settings and view.

Nestled in a ravine and a high bluff overlooking the Columbia River south of East Wenatchee, the winery is in its 16th year of production with just 3 acres of vineyard and its own facilities where all 1,000 cases of wine per year are made.

Flowers adorn a wrought iron gate entry. The owners, Mike and Judi Scott, have hosted weddings on the carefully manicured grounds surrounding their home and tasting room.

“We sell locally. We’re not the smallest winery in the state, but we are small and have no design to grow,” Mike Scott said.

His crew hand-picked Pinot Gris the morning of Sept. 10 and turned to pressing and the start of fermentation.

Harvest is earlier than usual throughout Central Washington because of a mild, dry winter and warm spring.

“We started picking Sauvignon Blanc on Aug. 12 in the Yakima Valley. That’s our earliest start on record,” said Kevin Corliss, vice president of viticulture for Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, the state’s largest wine producer.

The company’s prior earliest start was Aug. 15, 1987. Labor Day to Halloween is the industry’s normal harvest window.

With such an early start, vineyard operators are hoping for an early ending, but winemakers want that full month of October for leeway in choosing optimal picking times on each variety to maximize flavor, Corliss said.

The Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers, in Cashmere, estimates the crop at 231,192 tons. That’s up from 227,000 in 2014 and would be more if not for prolonged, excessive heat in June and early July, said Vicky Scharlau, association executive director.

“The heat impacts different varieties differently but it definitely has an impact. Growers and winemakers say it provides concentrated flavors which is a good thing,” Scharlau said.

Flavor profiling and targeting the style of wine is a “science and art,” she said. “Growers like to get grapes off the vine, but winemakers are looking for that certain kind of flavor.”

The dry season helped hold down fungal diseases, and drought in the Yakima Valley hasn’t had a huge impact on wine grapes, Corliss said.

“Maybe a few growers have had things a little drier than they wanted, but wine grapes are pretty durable on water stress,” he said.

Washington is second only to California in wine and wine grape production. Washington has 350-plus growers, 53,355 bearing acres and more than 850 wineries producing 12.5 million cases annually. Winery revenue is estimated at $1 billion annually by the state wine commission.

The state Department of Ecology is behind on a schedule it outlined at the association’s annual convention in February to regulate waste water discharge of wineries, Scharlau said.

The department planned to release a preliminary draft of permit regulations in July and a final regulation in November that would be adopted in March 2016. Now the draft may be ready in December, Scharlau said.

“It’s important to us that if Ecology does this they do it with a great deal of understanding of the industry,” she said. “You can’t just take what happened in California and Oregon and slap down a similar permit and think it works the same.”

The vast majority of Washington’s wineries are tiny and have a great variety of systems, structures and locations, so a cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work, she said.