I’m Vincent Fritzsche, owner and winemaker of Vincent Wine Company in Portland, Oregon. I have a decade of experience making wine in Oregon, along the way working at some of the best local producers of Pinot noir. I launched Vincent Wine Company in 2009, with our wine made at an urban winery in downtown Portland. We’re all about low input winemaking, buying great Pinot Noir fruit from local vineyards and letting them become wine without a lot of fuss. Join the Vincent Wine Company mailing list and let us know if you’re ever in Portland and want to taste our wines.
About the Name
Vincent Wine Company is obviously a personal name, but it’s not just my name. There’s a long history of Vincents in my mother’s family, including her brother and father. Vincent is also the patron saint of winegrowers and winemakers. Saint Vincent of Saragossa, Spain, lived in the 4th century. Somewhere in the Middle Ages he was adopted by the wine world as our patron saint. It’s not clear why. He is especially revered in Burgundy, perhaps for no other reason than his name having the French word for wine – Vin – in it. Burgundy is the home of Pinot noir – our focus – as well as elaborate festivals to Saint Vincent every January. It seems fitting for all these reasons for our wine to carry the name Vincent.
About our Labels
Our labels were designed by Angie Reat of Imprint Design in Portland, OR. They feature the image of a shaft of wheat, which has a variety of meanings. Of course it’s elegant, something we look for in our wines. It’s representative of bread, an essential companion to wine. It also symbolizes the history of wheat growing in our region and of Wheatland, a place here in the Willamette Valley and the site of a lovely ferry crossing of the Willamette River to the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. And for you old coin trivia buffs, it’s a play on the “cent” in our name
. The old Lincoln “wheat” penny was first minted in 1909, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and 100 years before our first vintage in 2009. I was a coin collector as a kid, and the concept came to me in a waking dream. We like it and hope you do, too.
