The Great Portland Grape Stomp: Portland Wine Company Celebrates 20 Years

Portland Wine Company marks their 20th anniversary this year! And they’ve decided to celebrate their two decades in business with a good old fashioned grape stomp—The Great Portland Grape Stomp—and they invite you to participate. There are still spots available for teams of four to stomp on grapes in a barrel (register here) at the event on Saturday, October 10.

I recently chatted with Portland Wine Company owners Matt Berson and Angie Reat to learn more about their 20 years, the company, and the upcoming grape stomp. Here’s what I learned.

About Portland Wine Company

For 20 years, Portland Wine Company has made Oregon wine under the Love & Squalor label, growing from a small-batch passion project into an established urban winery.

“I started Love and Squalor in 2006,” explained Matt. “A year later, in 2007, Angie moved up to be with me. She slowly became involved with the business, and now is the co-owner and general manager of Portland Wine Company.” They are married winemakers.

Portland Wine Company’s mission is to “celebrate the connection between place, people and the winemaking process.”

Portland Wine Company Founders, Matt Berson and Angie Reat

I asked Matt and Angie about their previous work in food and their early goals at Portland Wine Company.

Matt

“I sort of stumbled into making wine,” said Matt.

He continued, “I was working in restaurants, moving up the ladder of management, and also running wine lists in San Francisco. When I relocated to Portland, I took a job managing a restaurant and the wine list, and started meeting Oregon winemakers. They would come in and show me what they had just bottled, or what they were looking to sell.”

He added, “In San Francisco, I hadn’t encountered any winemakers. It was all guys in suits unless we went up to tour Napa or Sonoma.”

Eventually, he decided to just start talking with the winemakers whenever they come to town. “I’d tell them to come in on a time when I could sit and chat,” said Matt. “I’d buy them a drink or a meal, and start picking their brains and learning more from them.”

Over time, they’d invite him to come see what they were talking about in person—come down with the winery and lend a hand at an open house, help them pour. He eventually helped with a harvest, which was significant. “I was leaving my restaurant job and was at a crossroads personally, as well as professionally,” he explained. ‘It was a good time to go on a little adventure—I met some great people and they were like, ‘Hey, come and hang out with us!'”

So, he worked at another vineyard, did another harvest, and then on the bottling lines, giving him valuable experience. “Eventually I was in a situation where the winemaker I was working for, Tad Seestedt from Ransom Wine, said “Hey, I’ll sell you a bunch of Pinot Noir and give you some barrels to age it in if you want.’ And that’s sort of how it began—it wasn’t an intentional thing, it was just a natural progression. And I had no idea of being a winemaker at that point.”

He continued, “Doing something I’d never done before, making things with my whole body and my hands—I enjoyed that whole process,” said Matt. Angie added, “And then I met him in 2007 when he released that first vintage, and he was very excited and proud!”

He eventually stopped working for other wineries and devoted his time to his own brand and business around 2010. He worked out of McMinnville for a few years at first, then found their current space in Portland—more on that below.

Angie

“I’m a graphic designer—I did that for 25 years,” said Angie.

She continued, “I was doing graphic design, working for Nike as a freelancer, and he was doing the wine thing. And I was helping it out as best I could on the marketing end. Then in 2014, we started looking for a building in Portland because we didn’t want to make wine in McMinnville anymore. 

“It took us quite a long time to find what we were looking for. We bought the building that we are in now in 2018, opened the tasting room, and moved our entire facility here into the city.

Love & Squalor, To Portland Wine Company

“Love and Squalor is the brand is the wine that I was making,” explained Matt. “Early on, while I was doing some late night googling, I was trying to figure out what to name things, and it looked like ‘Portland Wine Company’ was not taken.”

He continued, “And so I put a pin in it. The next morning, I looked again and did a little deeper research, and saw that it wasn’t taken. I thought it was a great name for my LLC, as the umbrella in which to operate.

“And it was aspirational—I didn’t know I was going to make wine in Portland. I just thought it was a great name.”

Wineries Then and Now

“There were only 350 wineries when Matt started his business in Oregon.” explained Angie. Now it’s around 1,700. “The last time I looked it up, there are more wineries than in Washington State now,” said Matt. “But we don’t sell more gallonage—we don’t make more, but we have more wineries.”

Winemaking in Oregon is in multiple regions of the state: the Willamette Valley, the Columbia Gorge, Tualatin Valley, and Rogue Valley—-and winemaking out east toward the area south of Walla Walla (Columbia Valley AVA).

“A lot of a lot of these wineries are very small,” said Matt. “You can start a winery and make 10 cases of wine or 100, and be a registered winer. That’s that’s how we started—our first vintage was 65 cases.”

“That’s the beauty of Oregon, too,” said Angie. ‘You can really start with a little. You can’t do that in California—it’s really hard to be a winemaker owner there. Here, people really work as a community to help each other out. The small guys, a lot of times, make wine in the same facility. We have two tenants here who are small wineries and they’re using our facility for that. There’s a lot of that happening in Oregon.

“And I think it’s what’s keeping this kind of cute, boutique wine thing going. You could get help from people who are better, you know? We’re definitely part of that scene. There’s a lot of winemakers out there that we have mentored into a real winery.”

Best Selling Wine at Portland Wine Company

I was curious to see what their best selling wine is, and it’s their dry Riesling. “As soon as people drink it, they’re happy; it’s got great fruit and great acid,” said Matt. “And it sort of changes people’s minds about the preconceived notions they might have about Riesling.” This is one of their original wines.

“The wine that we sell most nationwide, distributed in 15 states, is the Garageland Pinot Noir, which is a lower-priced Willamette Valley Pinot Noir,” explained Matt. “And the Motheshucker white blend, which is an aromatic white blend of three different grapes—it’s suggested to be drunk with oysters or seafood. It’s dry and minerally, and has some saltiness on the finish.

“It’s not thin, it’s got nice body, with enough weight to hold up to really salty things or even richer seafoods. Those are two top sellers, partly because of the names.”

“We put the same quality and care into our lower price wines as we do to our higher price wines,” said Matt. “We stand behind everything, and the buck stops right on my tongue—from the the blending trials and the tasting trials. And if something’s not good enough, we take it aside.”

An Urban Winery

“We very much embrace the urban aspect of our business and try not to be too … I don’t know … snooty about the wine business,” said Angie. “When we first opened, people were afraid to walk in the door.”

She continued, “Every time someone would walk in the door, they’d be like, ‘This is my first time ever in a winery.’ And I was like, ‘Well, it’s not your first time drinking wine or walking into a bar.’ So we tried very hard to make this space a community hangout lounge. 

“And it’s definitely worked that way. We want really high quality, delicious product to come to the people—and for people feel comfortable asking questions.” Those include the one about stomping on the grapes like Lucy, and “I don’t see grapes—how are you a winery?”

The latter has to do with the very common misconception that winery and vineyard are the same. I, myself, have fallen for that way if thinkinking. Vineyards and wineries are two different things, though they can be on the same property. In the case of Portland Wine Company, they are not.

More on the Differences Between a Winery and a Vineyard

This is probably the key piece of knowledge I got during out conversation. The difference? It may be obvious, but I am here to be transparent in my lack of understanding. “Well, a vineyard is where you grow grapes, and a winery is where you make wine,” explained Angie. “One is a farm and one is a warehouse, or a production processing processing facility.”

They explained further:

“Traditionally, they can be all on one piece of land; in the European tradition, they were. Particularly in Oregon, in newer wine regions, oftentimes the winery is some distance away from the vineyard, even if the vineyard is their family-owned estate. Matt

“Also, we buy grapes from vineyards that don’t have wineries and we make wine for them. So that that’s one part of the business. And another part of the business is, just like a brewery—you don’t ask when you walk to a brewery, ‘Where are the hops? I don’t see the hops.’

“We’re making wine in a facility, just like a brewery.

“One of the most renowned Oregon wineries is The Eyrie Vineyards. They made one of the original plantings of Pinot Noir, where their vineyards are in a variety of places in the Dundee Hills. Eyrie ‘s winery is in an old ice house in an industrial part of McMinville. It is, for all intents and purposes, also an urban winery.

“And a lot of that gets down to marketing.  With a lot of wineries, people are romantic about a vineyard. Another question that’s asked of us regularly is, ‘Where is your vineyard?’ And so we say, ‘Well, we source grapes from 17 different vineyards, all in the Willamette Valley. We only make Willamette Valley wine. But our business is not a vineyard.

“Our business model allows us to be much more flexible in a challenging wine market as we we can shift our focus on what kind of grapes we bring in, and how much and which kind, because we’re not tied to whatever we planted.

‘That said, we have huge respect for wine tenders and the vineyard owners. And they have respect for us too. It’s a very important relationship. It’s a mutual, back patting and back scratching situation. 

“And a lot of those guys, they just grow grapes. They have no interest in making wine.

Why a Grape Stomp?

I asked Matt and Angie why they wanted to do a grape stomp for this anniversary. “He’s been talking about it for years!” exclaimed Angie. “I’m strangely attracted to it,” added Matt. “It’s kind of cheesy—it’s a piece of Americana, you know, with Lucille Ball doing it.”

He continued, “It’s the first question that people ask us when they find out we are winemakers: ‘Do you stomp on the grapes like Lucy?’ It’s funny to me, so we decided to embrace it instead of making fun of it. We decided to definitively answer that question!”

And so, they thought there was no better way to kick off a 20th anniversary party than people squishing grapes and splashing grape juice all over their feet, having a fun time doing something a little different.

Matt and Angie also pointed out that while full-on stomping on grapes is part of the tradition and history of winemaking, modern winemakers today step on and move the grapes around.

“We don’t step on them in order to juice them—which is basically what a grape stomp is—but we do press and step on them in order to move the grapes around as they’re fermenting,” explained Matt.

“You know, the great stomp is so iconic for some,” said Angie. “For whatever reason, it’s part of the fabric of what people think of as what wineries do.”

The Great Portland Grape Stomp

The Great Portland Grape Stomp—which they say will be the first grape stomp in Portland—is on Saturday, October 10 from 2pm to 7pm. “Wine lovers, neighbors, and curious newcomers” are all welcome. They want you to get your feet dirty and stained from juicy grapes. PPE is not provided but they encourage you to wear costumes.

The Great Portland Grape Stomp: How It Works

They have room for a max of twenty teams of four persons each for The Great Portland Grape Stomp. Teams will go head-to-head in a five-minute grape-stomping showdown—two will stomp in a barrel, and two will watch the juice come out of a little spigot attached to the bottom of the barrel; these two will also help steady any stomping teammates that may lose their balance, or just need their hand held. They plan to use about 1,000 pounds of grapes—half a ton—for stomping.

“We probably won’t use it all, but I certainly want to have more grapes than less,” said Matt.

They looked for grapes that are a little overripe (those will squish especially well). They found some from a vineyard that had some Tempranillo on hand. “Plus, they’re nice and dark, really red and purple,” remarked Matt.

The team that creates the most juice will claim the championship crown, a magnum bottle of Love & Squalor Wine, and custom T-shirts.

Beyond the Stomp

There will be plenty of Love & Squalor wine to taste and sip, some NA options. You’ll also find local food available for purchase, including from Oi! the Sausage, Dos Hermanos, and possibly one other cart.

“We’re inviting our friend Chauncey, who’s a DJ at XRAY FM, and we’re talking to another friend who’s in a band about putting together a band for this event.” explained Angie. “So we’re going to have a live music and some games and then, of course, the main attraction will be the stomp.”

General admission tickets for The Great Portland Grape Stomp include a branded Govino outdoor wine glass, five tasting coupons, and discounts on additional glasses and bottle purchases. There will be a costume contest, with prizes awarded to the best team costume and best Lucy look-alike.

You can register to be part of a team, or attend as a non-participating observer, Tickets are $40; designated driver tickets are $25. For more information and to purchase tickets or register a grape stomp team, visit the Portland Wine Company website. 

Wine From The Great Portland Grape Stomp?

Matt wants to make wine from the juice generated during the wine stomp. “I think if we have enough juice from the stomp, that I will make a small batch of grape stomp rosé,” said Matt. “And we’ll slap that label on it and people who participated can come back next year and enjoy it. It won’t make very much wine, so it’ll be a little batch.”

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This sounds like one for the ages. I hope you will consider heading over to see this incredible and fun spectacle on October 10. All the best to Matt and Angie and congrats on 20 years!

The Great Portland Grape Stomp Anniversary Event
Saturday, October 10, 2026
2pm to 7pm 
Portland Wine Company’s Crushpad, 3201 SE 50th Avenue
$25 for wine club members and designated drivers, $40 for general public. Ticketing link