Vincent Wine Company

Vincent Fritzsche was a writer and editor who started making wine at home, worked harvests at Evesham Wood, Belle Pente, and several vintages with Grochau Cellars, and launched his own label in 2009 with 216 cases. He began in Portland as part of the Southeast Wine Collective, arguing at the time that the city needed urban wineries the way it had breweries and food carts. He eventually moved production out to the Eola-Amity Hills.

The name works on three levels: his own, his uncle’s and maternal grandfather’s, and Saint Vincent of Saragossa, the fourth-century patron saint of vintners adopted long ago by the Burgundians.

He owns no vineyards. Fruit comes from some of the best sites in the valley — Temperance Hill, Zenith, Royer, Cortell-Rose, Armstrong, Silvershot — all sustainably farmed at minimum, many organic or biodynamic. Vincent belongs to the Deep Roots Coalition, the group committed to farming without irrigation.

The winemaking is deliberately restrained: native fermentations, no additions beyond sulfur, no filtering. Production runs around 2,000 cases across Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris. Since 2022 he has also made old-school Napa Cabernet under a separate label, Fritzsche, leasing rows from a Napa grower and bringing the fruit north to vinify in Oregon — an homage to a childhood family trip where he first smelled a barrel cellar.

The pricing is the part people notice. Entry-level Willamette Valley Pinot lands around $20, single-vineyard bottlings from Temperance Hill and Zenith in the $50 to $60 range. For the sourcing and the care, that’s remarkable value.

Tastings are private, by appointment, in a working facility that is essentially a garage down a back road. Bring a jacket. Bring a snack.