Wine Crush Podcast is hosted by Heidi Moore, a wine enthusiast and winery/agriculture insurance agent with Country Financial. She’s born and raised in Tillamook, Oregon! Thank you to our sponsor, Country Financial.
Join us for the premiere of Wine Crush Season 3! In this episode, we talk with two Oregon local winemakers The first comes from a daughter and mother operation rooted in tradition, adventure and good dirt. The other centers on a family-owned producer of small-lot, handcrafted, estate wines, with a special emphasis on world-class Pinot Noir.
Joe Knox, Winemaker, The Winery At Manzanita & Portland Wine Bar
Erich Berg, Owner & Winemaker, Ricochet Wine
Welcome to Season 3, episode 4 of Wine Crush Podcast! Based out of the Oregon Wine Country, I am your host – Heidi Moore. I talk with local winemakers to share their colorful stories behind the vine. Powered by Portland Radio Project, Wine Crush is broadcasted on the 2nd Sunday of each month at 4:00 pm PST. You can tune in to 99.1 FM in the heart of Portland – or stream from anywhere worldwide online.
In this episode, we uncork two stories from local winemakers. The first tells of the building of a winery experience located directly on the Oregon Coast. And the second holds the creed of, “Low-impact wine-making. High-impact causes.”
Here with us today is Joe Knox, a Sommelier and manager of the Portland Wine Bar. The downtown Portland wine bar is the tasting room for The Winery at Manzanita!
Manzanita is a small, quaint beach town on the Oregon Coast, just 15 minutes south of Cannon Beach and a little over an hour from Portland, Oregon. With 7 miles of uninterrupted, dog-friendly beach, amazing sunsets, cute shops and tasty restaurants, it is a regular vacation destination for Portlanders and Seattleites alike.
Mark Proden, owner and winemaker, founded the winery under the Bodhichitta name and wine label in 2008 while attending wine school, making small batches of wine (10-100 cases at a time) by hand in Salem, Oregon. He became interested in wine during his 11 years in the Air Force as a pilot and engineer, visiting Napa and Sonoma and eventually Oregon as Pinot noir grew in popularity here.
After wine school and a few years in Hawaii developing his line of dry to off-dry tropical fruit wines (passion fruit, pineapple, guava, mango) under the Island Mana Wines label on Kauai, he began looking for a new venue; a location inspired by nature, that would allow for increased production while maintaining high quality. Manzanita came to mind, as Mark had made many trips there with his black lab Pinot, mainly for its long, dog-friendly, leash-free beach and awe-inspiring sunsets.
Mark Proden opened The Portland Wine Bar and Winery Tasting Room in March 2012. They focus on local, small batch wines from other small Oregon and Washington wineries and keep rotating the wines. As a Portland urban winery tasting room, they host a large number of tourists seeking out Pacific Northwest Wines, especially Oregon Pinot noir.