A few weeks ago at the 2024 Washington Beer Awards, Dwinell Country Ales walked away as one of the big winners. The brewery secured four medals, including a sweep of the bret beer category, and earned the title Very Small Brewery of the Year. Today we learned via a story posted by our friends at The New School that Dwinell Country Ales is now looking for new ownership.
Located in Goldendale, Washington, Dwinell Country Ales is not exactly along the beaten path. The brewery is recognized for its creativity and innovative approach. In addition to doing farmhouse-style beers very well, it has blended styles and even beverage types, blurring the lines between beer, wine, and cider. For those efforts, the brewery has earned many accolades. Behind much of what makes Dwinell so successful is owner/co-founder Justin Leigh (pictured above).
According to The New School, the brewery is not looking to shut down, but the owners are looking for someone to take over. Read the complete story on The New School.
“Around the end of July, we began to contemplate the idea of selling the business,” Justin Leigh told The New School. “After many late night discussions, we finally decided to pursue this path. It’s not as if we have our backs against a wall, so to speak. Business-wise, things are actually going quite well, so we thought, let’s quit while we’re ahead and hand the reins over to someone else.”
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Justin Leigh is more than the owner of Dwinell Country Ales, he’s an advocate for the beer industry and beer consumers. He’s an attorney who has successfully challenged laws that hamstring breweries and restrict consumer choice.
I recently wrote a profile of Justin Leigh for Sip magazine after he was named a 2024 Northwest Sipfluencer. Here’s what I wrote about Justin, as it appeared in Sip magazine:
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Along with producing great beers at Dwinell Country Ales, the brewery he cofounded in Goldendale, Washington, Justin Leigh is successfully fighting for the constitutional rights of breweries, distilleries and wineries. He’s a brewer, a cidermaker and a winemaker, but Leigh’s work as an attorney on behalf of beverage producers and consumers qualifies him as a disruptor.
In 2022, he filed a lawsuit against the state of Oregon, challenging its law prohibiting self-distribution. Previously, out-of-state breweries were required to distribute their products through a licensed distributor, which was cost prohibitive for most breweries. The law effectively created a wall around Oregon that kept out-of-state producers away. The case never reached court; the state changed the decades-old law, recognizing the inevitable outcome. Leigh is currently involved in similar lawsuits against Idaho, California and Washington, and remains committed to increasing economic equity for producers and enhancing access and choice for consumers.
Outside the courtroom, at Dwinell Country Ales, Leigh produces beers, wines and ciders, blending the three sciences to create unique and widely acclaimed flavors. He is something of a Renaissance man as well as a formidable legal adversary.
