Sineann

A small winery founded in 1994 by Peter Rosback and David O’Reilly, producing roughly 10,000 to 12,000 cases annually. Rosback began making wine as a hobby while working as an engineer, experimenting with Pinot Noir in 1985 and old-vine Zinfandel from The Pines Vineyard the following year. He and O’Reilly worked harvests together at Elk Cove before launching Sineann with a first release of 125 cases of old-vine Zinfandel. O’Reilly later left to found Owen Roe; Rosback has continued with Sineann. The name is pronounced shuh-NAYN.

Rosback works two harvests a year, one in each hemisphere, and has said that sourcing is the single most important part of a winemaker’s job. Almost all bottlings are single-vineyard designated, drawing from sites across the Willamette Valley, Hood River Valley, Columbia Valley, Columbia Gorge, California, and New Zealand. The range spans Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Sauvignon Blanc, plus dessert wines including a limited-production Zinfandel icewine. The house style is dense and richly flavored, built on deliberately low crop levels to concentrate fruit. Nearly all wines are sealed with glass closures rather than cork.

The tasting space is a working lab with a bar rather than a designed hospitality room, which is much of the appeal — you’re standing where the wine is made, talking to the person who made it. Rosback also produces wine for the Medici label in a more restrained style.