Acclaimed Washington Brewery For Sale, but Owner’s Fight for Small Brewers Rights Just Beginning
Dwinell Country Ales, one of Washington’s most respected and acclaimed farmhouse breweries, is for sale. Dwinell founder Justin Leigh has listed both the brand and the real estate in the Columbia River Gorge for $750k, including all equipment for brewing, winemaking, and cidermaking. However Justin and his wife/co-owner Jocelyn Leigh, are not leaving the area - or the industry.
“Around the end of July, we began to contemplate the idea of selling the business,” says Justin Leigh. “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.”
The Dwinell property includes a 3,000+ square foot facility with a tasting room, production space, walk-in cooler, and a spacious 1,400+ square foot patio on a 12,500+ square foot lot. Additionally, there’s a vacant lot ready for expansion and multiple storage options. Inventory includes packaged goods valued at $145,000, and the brewery operates with established equipment and supplier relationships, ensuring a seamless transition for the new owner.
Dwinell Country Ales opened their brewery in small rural town of Goldendale, Washington in 2017. Their focus was on rustic saisons and other historical styles, and over time developed a deep well of barrel-aged mixed culture fruit beers and their own cool ship for spontaneous fermentation. Like most breweries, Dwinell struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic but found their footing by pivoting to private tastings and a seasonally open taproom, and instead building up their distribution network with 16oz cans exported as far as British Columbia, Copenhagen, and Seoul. Throughout that phase Dwinell became a master of can-conditioned mixed-culture ferments, a feat that not many breweries in the world even attempt to do outside of a bottle.
Balancing out the often strong and overwhelming funk or acid in wild ales, especially mixed-culture fruit beers, has paid off in spades for Dwinell. But making a balanced sour beer is half the battle, how you get it to consumer (especially after the pandemic when more people are drinking at home) is arguably just as important. The effort has paid off, as evidenced by this year’s Washington Beer Awards where Dwinell won a silver in Belgian Style Ales for their “Lookie Loo”, and completely swept the Brett Beer category with gold, silver, and bronze medals, ultimately being named 2024 Very Small Brewery of the Year.
Dwinell has not only managed the fruited, wild, farmhouse beer, but in 2023 launched an expansion of their offerings to include clean lagers, complex home grown orchard hard cider, and locally sourced natural wine. “Diversification” is a buzz word in craft beer these days, no longer can most breweries rely on IPAs to pay the bills. “The expansion of our portfolio has been highly successful for us. From a sales standpoint, it puts us in a position of strength that we can fulfill a wide range of needs for retailers. Likewise, drinkers who enjoy one of our offerings can use that as a springboard to discovering our other offerings, hopefully threading a needle that will, for example, expose a lager drinker to wild ales, then cider, then piquette, and then wine.”
Justin started as a Chicago, Illinois attorney who caught the homebrewing bug initially while applying to law schools. Its a far cry from running a small farmhouse brewery of which initially called Justin away from the big city to creative hand-on pursuits and a small town lifestyle. But a few years after moving to Goldendale to begin a new family and rural lifestyle and establishing the brewery, Justin transferred his license to practice law in Washington in 2019.
“In many respects, I had written off the creative elements of being a lawyer,” says Justin Leigh about his turn away from being a full-time lawyer. “But over the last few years especially, I've come to better appreciate the creative and intellectual aspects of practicing law. Ultimately, I don't view this as replacing one creative endeavor for another but rather forging a creative path to include new and different endeavors.”
Over the last 5 years Justin’s legal practice has steadily grown from side hustles consulting on real estate transactions, to serving Goldendale’s residents as only the second lawyer in town for a broad variety of services. “At first I was reluctant to take on certain matters, but then I started encountering people who desperately needed a lawyer and were unable to secure representation. The fact is, many lawyers from the Portland, Seattle, or even Hood River area refuse to take on clients in rural areas. This is actually a really big problem because it severely prejudices people's rights and limits their access to the justice system. So it got to a point where I essentially stopped saying no to legal work - and here I am.”
In the last few years Justin Leigh has earned more headlines for his beer industry work outside of the brewery/cider/winery. In July of 2022 Leigh, orchestrated a Washington brewery lawsuit by plaintiffs Fortside Brewing, Garden Path Fermentation and Mirage Beer against the state of Oregon and the OLCC, alleging discrimatory distribution practices. The conflict centered on language that barred of out of state breweries to self-distribute their beer or ship direct to consumer in Oregon. The lawsuit kicked up its fair share of press coverage, and both positive and negative criticism from self-interested parties in Oregon.
After initial suggestion that they would put up a fight, Oregon representatives and the OLCC decided to settle the lawsuit in record time, opening up Oregon as a more viable market for small breweries in Washington. The framework for the lawsuit is not limited to Oregon however, and can be applied in different ways throughout the country where the three-tier distribution system is implemented differently in each state and often times biased toward small breweries.
In October of 2024, the publication SIP Magazine spotlighted Justin’s work as a “Disruptor" in its first ever “SIPfluencer” issue, describing his impact on the industry for his civil rights legal advocacy and Dwinell’s innovative influence.
But the success of Dwinell Country Ales brand expansion, and Justin’s foray into alcohol law, ran into the expansion of he and Jocelyn’s family and their two young children. The last few years of 80 work weeks focused on expanding the Dwinell business in potentially opening satellite taprooms, or investing in hospitality and retail concepts in major cities, to starting an Oregon distribution company all began to take a toll.
“I think Jocelyn and I realized that, on a personal and business level, we were looking for something different,” says Leigh. “The fact is, we used to spend all of our time and energy focused on the brewery - working together. As the business has grown, many aspects are less hands-on, we spend less time together working on the business, and we've become interested in pursuing other things with our time together.”
The demand for Justin Leigh’s legal services have exploded since the lawsuit against Oregon’s discrimatory out-of-state-distribution rules have come to light. In 2023, Leigh was one of the plaintiffs on a similar lawsuit against the state of Idaho challenging such laws, and eventually he hopes to take on the entire U.S. distribution system.
“Between these commerce clause cases and my experience as a brewery owner, I’ve been taking on more and more clients within the industry,” Leigh says. “Whether its licensing, compliance, liquor board violation defense, HR issues, landlord-tenant matters, dispute resolution, or succession planning, at this point I feel that I can better serve the industry as an attorney.”
After many calls from potential clients in Oregon, including many people in the beer industry, Justin decided to gain admission to the Oregon bar. His current clients include producers, retailers, and suppliers. And now Leigh continues to pursue similar litigation efforts, including a current lawsuit on behalf of out-of-state distilleries who are fighting the State of Washington for the right to ship spirits directly to Washington consumers.
“Rather than spending all of our time in the brewery or out in the market, we’d rather chase around and experience new things with our two kids,” says Jocelyn Leigh. “When we started Dwinell, we picked a family name–my great-grandmother’s last name–to represent our family business. Since then, our family and our business have changed–both for the better.”
Even with the announcement of their sale, neither Dwinell nor the Leighs are going anywhere.
“We’re still here and we’re still operating. We’re not closing. On the brewery side of things, we have a lot of amazing new and upcoming releases, which we’re excited to share with retailers and drinkers alike, the support of whom we’re eager to preserve,” says Justin Leigh. “And, on a personal level, Jocelyn and I plan to continue living in Goldendale, while remaining committed to supporting the industry, with my legal work and, together, by providing consulting services to startups, breweries interested in developing mixed-culture programs, and, of course, whomever wishes to take the reigns at Dwinell.”
Dwinell is currently listed for sale with Fay Ranches, a boutique real estate brokerage focusing on lifestyle properties and businesses. The listing includes the real estate, equipment, inventory, and the brand.
Dwinell Country Ales Sale Listing:
0.27± acres; licensed as a brewery, winery, and distillery, offering a wide range of products
The property includes a 3,000± SF building with production and tasting room space
Opened in 2017, added cider in 2019, wine in 2023, and hard seltzer in 2024
Current production capacity is approximately 900 bbl
Self-distributes in Washington and Oregon, with distributor relationships in California, Idaho, Canada, South Korea, and Denmark
2023 gross sales reached $210,000, with $175,000 year-to-date in 2024
Includes $42,000 worth of inventory with a self-distribution value of $145,000
Equipped with 3-phase power, city water/sewer, and fiber internet
Features a 1,400± SF outdoor patio with a cedar fence
Vacant lot offers 5,375± SF for expansion or additional facilities
Dwinell has earned 19 gold, double gold, or platinum medals for beer, wine, and cider
Accolades from SIP Magazine Best of the Northwest, Best of Craft Beer Awards, National Honey Beer Competition, and The Washington Beer Awards
Learn more about this property, its investment potential and information about the area in the Property Brochure.
