The Winery At Manzanita

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.

Portland Wine Bar 

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.