Washington state is the second-largest wine-producing state in this country (after California) but its wines aren’t easily found in New York restaurants or wine shops. The city’s drinkers are notoriously Euro-centric, and wines from the Pacific Northwest—particularly Washington—don’t show up in many places here in Greater New York.

Perhaps that was why some Washington producers were a bit trepidatious when Paul Arena, co-owner of the New York wine distributor Welkin Vines, approached them about selling their wines in New York. “They didn’t know what we wanted to do with them, if we maybe wanted to sell their wines in bulk,” Mr. Arena recalled. (Selling wine in bulk is synonymous with unloading cheap stuff.)

Nothing was further from the truth, of course. Mr. Arena and his partner Charlie Keyser founded their Manhattan-based company a year ago with the intention of bringing great Pacific Northwest wines to the oenophiles of New York.

Why Washington state wines? I asked the partners when we met this week in the Pacific Northwest wine section of Astor Wines & Spirits in Manhattan. Astor’s section is quite large by New York standards with some 80 Oregon and Washington wines on the shelves and a particularly generous selection of Oregon Pinot Noirs. (Many New York shops have only a handful of Oregon Pinots and perhaps one or two wines from Washington, usually from Chateau Ste. Michelle, the state’s largest producer.)

Mr. Arena showed me the four Welkin Vines selections that included a Sauvignon Blanc and a Cabernet Sauvignon from Savage Grace, a Washington producer I knew well and liked. The Savage Grace Sauvignon Blanc “is like an Old World Sancerre,” said Mr. Arena, naming one of the most popular wines in New York. (It may have been a salesman’s pitch, but it was true—I’ve tasted it myself.)