For those familiar with the Portland Indie Wine Festival, you know about the fantastic wineries we host at our annual event. What you may not know is that we purchase a secret stash of each year’s festival picks and tuck them away in our storage compartment at Portland Wine Storage.

About 6 months ago, our Indie locker officially burst at the seams and we quickly moved all our bottles into one of Portland Wine Storage’s first class 5 ft x10 ft x 8 ft spaces. After 4 years of collecting wine, you can imagine the number of boxes currently populating the cellar floor – lets just say it’s over 600.

It’s time for a renovation!

With the Indie Wine Festival’s 5th Anniversary in sight, the time has come for the impressive Indie wines to have an equally impressive home. We want to transform our rectangular space into a modern experiential tasting room where clients, sponsors, winemakers and fellow Indie friends can come enjoy the collection.

Maybe we’re picky, but who knew how hard it would be to find the perfect wine racking system? So far, our favorite designs are outrageously expensive for our sundance-style festival, so we’re on the lookout for an innovative contractor who can make it work on a budget. Modern yet classic, clean but interesting, modular and strong – these are some of our starting points. Check out some of our favorite designs so far:

Malaga Racking System - great design but impractical for our wine library.

The Bordex Bottle Rack - beautiful display case.

Pilare Wine Bottle Storage - in this design, less is more.

If you have any suggestions on how to transform our cellar space into the perfect Indie wine experience, feel free to give us your insight. Who knows, you might be among the first to experience our tasting series…

Check out this beer pairing story we worked on in Country Living Magazine!

Hey Gang,
It’s official- this is my first ever post on the new LAD comm. blog.

In case you haven’t heard, July is Oregon Craft Beer Month and last night was the Oregon Brewers Guild’s (OBG) official kick-off at Portland’s Horse Brass Pub. Lota and I were fortunate enough to make it down for the event and were amazed by all the limited-edition Oregon beers that were on tap. Bravo to Don Younger and his team, who put together quite the list - Vanilla Otis from Ninkasi in Eugene, Kolsh 55 from Rock Bottom Brewery, Molten Lava from Double Mountain Taproom, Barrel Aged Jubelale from Deschutes Brewery and many more.

In addition to all the great beers, people had the chance to sign-up for the S.N.O.B program (Supporters of Native Oregon Beer) with Oregon Brewers Festival prize package giveaways throughout the evening. Needless to say, everyone had a really good time. To get in on all the Craft Beer Month fun, check out the complete list of events here.

Also, check out the OBG/Oregonlive.com contest for a chance to win the ultimate craft beer month prize package, including: 2 tickets to the OBG brewers dinner, 2 S.N.O.B. memberships, 2 Oregon Craft Beer Month t-shirts, 2 tickets to the Brewers Brunch and 2 gift certificates to the Oregon Brewers Festival.

P.S.- Tell a friend.