Swick Wines Malbec Cinq A Six Columbia Valley

A 5th generation Oregonian, Joe Swick is making some of the purest, freshest and unadulterated wines in the United States today. He caught the wine bug while working at his local organic specialty food store in Portland. Soon after he landed at Owen Roe as a cellar hand, the beginning of a nine-year, fifteen vintage journey that took him to wine regions around the globe, before returning home to start his own winery.

Joe believes wines should be made simply and authentically, having nothing added or subtracted and most importantly, expressing a clear sense of place and vintage. Swick sources fruit from vineyards in the Pacific Northwest that farm organically or biodynamically and rarely uses sulfur at bottling. His wines are never filtered or fined.

His ability to produce wine this way comes from his vast experience and pragmatic approach. He uses a small percentage of new barrels every vintage in order to avoid Brett which is commonly found in older barrels purchased from conventional producers. Creating his own stock of neutral barrels helps ensure their cleanliness and allows his wines to mature without the need to add sulfur.

While he works with the variety most commonly associated with Oregon, Pinot Noir, Joe is helping to break down the Burgundian monolith by producing exceptional wine from less common grapes such as Graciano and Nebbiolo. Both varieties are perfectly suited to the cool weather and pine forest of Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Washington's Columbia Gorge.

The resulting wines are supremely enjoyable, fresh, complex, and a pure reflection of the rugged and wild landscape from which they hail.