About Us

Our People

Matt Berson, Vintner and Winery Owner

In 2003, I was rescued from the restaurant grind by a band of marauding Oregon winemakers. I worked in their cellars and vineyards until it got under my skin. Then I traveled to New Zealand, Napa, Germany, and Argentina, to work in their vineyards and wineries and discover the secret of making great wines. Sure, it’s a glamorous lifestyle (cue needle scratching across vinyl)—it’s actually incredibly hard work with equal parts barrel heaving, lab tinkering, hand wringing, and business minutiae.

I love what I do and learn something new every day. Hard work aside, getting back to basics and finding simple ways of doing things—such as making tasty wines for different moods, foods, and palates—is part of the creative process that truly drives my passion for this labor of love.

Angela Reat, The ‘Squalor’ in Love & Squalor

I’ve spent almost two decades working as a creative in the world of graphic design—as a brand developer, print designer, and strategic thinker. Growing up, I loved redecorating closets—my friends’ more than mine—but I loved organizing a big jumbled mess into something beautiful and functional. I’m attracted to things that are gorgeous or striking, of course, but I like when things function even more. Closets, graphic design, or working in the wine industry, the common denominator is problem solving. If it is beautiful (and delicious) all the better!

In addition to web and print design for large brands such as Disney, Nike, Chiat/Day, and the UN (in Rome), I’ve lived and worked in South America, Asia, and Europe. I founded and was creative director of a design/marketing firm in Rome and served as art director/senior designer for the University of California San Francisco.

In 2007, equipped with a portfolio of domestic and international work from two decades in design, I moved my studio, my life, and my heart from San Francisco to Portland, to be with my vintner (now) husband. Since 2015 I've been working on bringing a Love & Squalor tasting room to Portland (The Portland Wine Company Tasting Room opened Oct 2019), continue to grow our Wine Club and...well...work on every other aspect of the wine business. It's a family affair, so we must wear many, many hats.

Our Winemaking

In 2007 Portland Wine Company released 65 cases of wine. Now we make a few thousand and have our own facility. We’ve grown steadily and are eager to share our wines with you. With your friends. And with everyone you know on Facebook.

We start with the belief that wine needs to taste alive. The best way to ensure this is to let the grapes express themselves. We’re happily positioned in a new world, younger growing region so our wines won’t resemble what comes from Europe or California. Flexibility here is key, as conditions in the volatile Pacific Northwest change with each harvest. Just as wines vary per region, wines from the same region shouldn’t taste the same each year. We strive to present those with a unique personality, personality that includes authenticity (or, honesty) in each vibrant sip.

The Willamette Valley blends are all about the fruit—after all, winemaking is all about preserving the fruits of the harvest. Our WV Pinot smells sweet and inviting like freshly picked strawberries or cherries. Our WV Riesling seduces with scents of juicy peaches or bright sprays of lime and always finishes bright and dry. Both of these favorites are built to drink today.

The Pinot rests for 18 months in older French oak before bottling giving it ample time to relax and grow into its early maturity. The Riesling ferments low and slow in order to preserve the delicate aromas and fragile flavors in the finished wine.

Great wines are made in the vineyard. We don’t own a vineyard, though I have spent a fair amount of time in them and even farmed full time for the season in both Oregon and New Zealand. What I look for when choosing a site is a partner I can grow with. Someone who cares about what they are doing and who cares about wine because that’s what we are building together. I also have a soft spot for some of the more raggedy, rustic sites. I do buy from some meticulously kept vineyards, but it is the frays at the edges and patches at the knees that always catch my eye.

Our Pinot comes from multiple sites, in various Northern Willamette AVAs. The diversity of sites, clones, and vine age make for a more complex and compelling blend. The Riesling comes from six sites, too, four of them planted before 1976, two of them planted in 1971. Go old vine or go home when it comes to Riesling.

All our wines are blends. Blending for me is like putting together a dinner for friends—pairing ingredients, choosing spices and herbs, squeezing a lemon on top. I like to compose a plate and let the flavors mingle.

Everything is processed in small lots. Most of the reds are destemmed though there are whole-cluster ferments in every vintage. The reds don’t see any commercial yeast or other additions except for fermentation nutrients. The handling is gentle. The respect is high. The oak is minimal because I like to taste fruit not wood. The whites are lightly pressed whole-cluster transferred to small primarily stainless steel vessels. The fermentation is low and slow with a combination of commercial and indigenous yeasts. We don’t cut corners, avoiding bad habits which only harm the wine. When the pieces are in balance then the whole will be balanced, too—what we’re striving for in every handcrafted, quality bottle.

Our Winery

Love & Squalor launched in 2006 after a few years of voluntary enslavement to some of the greatest practitioners of winemaking in Oregon and beyond. It started with a bit of Pinot noir and a splash of Riesling—two barrels of each. Then came the naming. Three months of scribbles in traffic and on the bedside notepad resulted in exactly no big ideas. A quick trip to the Goodwill thrift store led to the rediscovery of J.D. Salinger’s book Nine Stories (in a pristine 50’s paperback version, no less!) and the lead story: For Esme, with Love and Squalor.

There it was, in one short phrase—winemaking as I know it. I don’t mind if people think I’m smart because I put a literary reference on the label. I don’t think it’s smart, I think it’s basic—passion and poverty are two of the building blocks for any worthy endeavor.

So it began with 65 cases of wine, a stolen phrase and an inspired sketch of some slips on a line. Love & Squalor is still a small concern, but the label has grown wider and taller. Production grew slowly in the first years, limited by humility and space as I was making the wine in stolen corners of my winery employers. For the first four years I stuck to the task of making two wines well—one Pinot and one Riesling. Then, as my confidence grew and the diversity of my cellar expanded, we began making and bottling our Reserved line— and introduced small amounts of other Gamay, Sauv Blanc and other varietals that we like to drink. 

Fall 2019 was the first harvest in our new home Portland Wine Company Winery and Tasting room. We now have regular hours for customers to come try our wines, sit and enjoy a bottle with friends in our lounge, or set up an event. See more about our space here.

Our Label

The original label was illustrated and designed by the inimitable Clare Carver of Big Table Farm. Inspired by my travels through foreign lands and the resulting photo albums (remember those?) filled with moody pics of drying laundry. Underlying that was a desire to get back to basics in my life and in my winemaking—as simple as hanging one’s wet clothes to dry in the sun. All subsequent iterations and all of our other fun labels were lovingly created by Angie Reat / Imprint Design.

And the pants?

When I was a lad, I sported a pair of patchwork madras trousers that my New York grandpa had given me. I loved them, but I wasn’t allowed to wear them to school or out to play. They were my fancy pants. So we put them on our “fancy pants'“ wines.

Special credit

Shout out to Eve "Evalicious" Connell for the word wrangling. A Special thanks to our wonderful photographer, Jeff Press of J Mitchel Photography. You can get in touch with him here: JMitchel Photography