Wine, a Winery Lawn, and a Ferrari 365 GTB/4: Inside Woodinville's Avants Classics on the Green

Sunday, July 12th brought the 6th annual Avants Classics on the Green to the amphitheatre lawn at Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, Washington — a car show that has spent the last five years quietly building a reputation as, in the words of its own marketing, "the premier automotive event in the Pacific Northwest." From 1 to 6 p.m., ticket holders wandered a winery lawn set up with rare and vintage automobiles, working through a commemorative wine glass and two drink tokens between cars, with live music and food vendors filling the gaps.

The event started in 2021, founded by Adam Cramer with a stated goal that was almost comically direct for the notoriously damp Pacific Northwest: "We wanted to bring a little bit of Pebble Beach to the Pacific Northwest," Cramer told Sports Car Digest at the time — and, fittingly, the inaugural show got exactly that, staged under a heavy mist that stood in for Monterey's marine layer. Hundreds of car enthusiasts and wine drinkers showed up anyway, to see a lineup that read like a raffle no one could believe was real: a 1956 Maserati A6G/2000 Zagato, an Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato continuation car, the actual 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona that Dan Gurney and Ron Yates drove to victory in the original Cannonball Run, a McLaren Senna in Marlboro livery, a Ferrari Enzo, a LaFerrari, a Porsche Carrera GT, a Jaguar XJ220, a Lamborghini LM002, a Ligier JS P320 LMP3 prototype racer, a Porsche 924 art car, a Morgan three-wheeler, and — parked somewhere in the middle of all that Italian and British money — a Soviet-built Lada Niva and a Fiat 126.

Six years on, the show has grown into a fixture with real institutional backing: recent editions have drawn support from sponsors including Avantia, Ferrari of Seattle, One Drivers Club, the Petersen Automotive Museum, Pycar Automotive Logistics, Quality Auto Center, and Vintage Underground. Tickets for this year's show ran $100 pre-order ($80 for members) or $125 day-of ($100 for members), with children five and under admitted free alongside a ticketed adult.

The wine and the cars have always been in service of something specific: a portion of every ticket sold goes to Seattle Children's Hospital's uncompensated care fund, the same charitable structure the show has run since its first year under the mist in 2021. Five annual editions later, the formula hasn't changed — rare cars on a winery lawn, a charity check written on the way out, and a standing bet that Washington wine country can pull off a little bit of Monterey without the twelve-hour drive.