Grapes, of any type, are not native to Washington State. The closest you will find and any native grapes would be in southern California. All the grape vines you see have been brought in by humans. That’s not to say you might see a grape vine that looks like it’s wild in the woods somewhere, but they are all descended from grapevines imported from somewhere else.
Grapes were probably first introduced to Washington at the time of the first white settlers around the 1820s probably at Fort Walla Walla. They quickly realized that the climate here was very favorable to growing grapes of all types, but there is no record of the settlers making wine back in those days. They probably grew them for eating. There is some evidence they started making wine around the 1860s.
Wine grapes were first planted in the Puget Sound region on Stretch Island by Lambert Evans in the late 1870s. He was a homesteader seeking his own place after the civil war and was set on planting a vineyard for wine. He planted Island Belle (aka Campbell’s Early) which is a grape like Concord and is used mainly as an eating grape. Eventually, hundreds of acres of Island Belle were planted in and around Stretch Island/Grapeview Washington. Many thousands of cases of wine were produced then came prohibition. There are still vestiges of those vineyards on Stretch Island if you visit today and the St. Charles winery still stands as a museum. You can see some of the vineyards in this aerial photo taken early in the 20th century.
Modern wine grape growing in the Puget Sound area can be traced directly to Gerard Bentryn of Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery when he planted European wine grapes in the late 1970s. Gerard decided he want to reproduce the vineyards he saw in Europe when he was stationed with the US military in the 1960’s. After much research he settled on Bainbridge Island and planted many different grape varieties suggested to him by growers he met in Europe. Through trial and error he found a handful that worked consistently year after year. Gerard grew grapes and made wine until about 2010 when he and his wife retired. The winery was reborn as Bainbridge Vineyards with Betsey Wittick at the helm. Gerard was responsible for creating the Puget Sound AVA in 1995 and pushing for recognition of the AVA as the flood of Eastern Washington grapes came to Western Washington. He inspired many people (including me) to start a winery and vineyard.
Starting in the late 1990s, Gary and his team spent several years doing research on what grape varieties would work the best in Western Washington. From 2000-20009 the WSU Mt. Vernon Research center, mostly led by Gary Moulton studied wine grapes and rootstocks for western Washington. It was a bright time for grape growers. The wine industry was booming. New people were planting vineyards. WSU had a lot of funding for fruit research and it spurred many people to become interested in growing grapes west of the mountains. That money has since dried up and interest seems to be waning.
The research spun off several research papers that were published and are still a good resource to help you get started. Gary was instrumental for finding some unique grape varieties that do exceptionally well in the Puget Sound AVA climate. He and his team were responsible for saving hundreds of vines from a research center in British Columbia and bringing them down to Mt. Vernon and running trials on them. IMHO, his biggest find was the Pinot Noir Precoce clone (Fruhburgunder) which thrives in our climate. He inspired many people to plant vineyards in the backyards or go to a commercial sized vineyard.
Today, there is still a lot of interesting in growing grapes in the region. The number of wineries and commercial vineyards have stabilized over the years. Grape growing in the Puget Sound region has never really taken off on a large scale like in Eastern Washington and Oregon’s Willamette Valley because of a couple of factors. The main factor is the price of land, the cities of Tacoma/Seattle/Everett and their environs have chewed up large quantities of potentially prime vineyard land, much of it suitable for wine grape production. The other issue is farm labor. Due to the ever-shrinking farming industries in western Washington, it is hard to find suitable labor to help tend vineyards. The last There is still plenty of decent land available in the northern, western and southern areas of the Puget Sound basin but as time goes on and more people settle into formally rural areas, fewer acres of grapes will be planted. My guess is that the Puget Sound AVA will always be an outlier compared to the other regions in Eastern Washington.