Oakland, CA
Devon Magee
Founder
devon@offshorewines.com
He got a job after college in ‘03 at Esquin Wine Merchants, a wine shop in his hometown of Seattle. He was eventually put in charge of receiving, and he grew frustrated at his inability to pronounce the names on the French labels. Missing the wine culture of Spain, he also realized that he had never seen an actual vineyard. He therefore set out to simultaneously learn French and work harvest. He landed in France in ‘05 on a student visa and found work as a waiter in the 1st Arrondissement in Paris, working under the mentorship of the legendary Tim Johnston at his famed Juveniles Bistro A Vin. Tim’s passion was the Rhone and the Beaujolais, so regular sightings of Marcel Richaud, Auguste Clape, Brigit Clusel, and Raimond de Villeneuve were commonplace as they routinely swung through to drop off allocations in person.
In ‘06, Devon worked harvest at the multi-generational, family-run Vieux Télégraphe in Châteauneuf-du-Pape (the Brunier brothers ever present in the vineyard and the cellar; their mom cooking Provençal lunch everyday); and the following year, ‘07, at Jordan Winery in Sonoma County, the antithesis of natural winemaking. The latter experience quelled any winemaking ambitions.
But as they used to say, all wine roads lead to Burgundy, so in 2012 he found himself at Chandon de Briailles in Savigny-lès-Beaune, working harvest in the pursuit of getting to know a region whose wines he couldn’t afford to drink. In Devon’s case, all wine roads in fact led to natural wine, and it was at Chandon de Briailles where he met Christian Knott, the intrepid Australian winemaker who was surreptitiously steering this Grand Cru domain towards natural winemaking by casually eschewing sulfites (while dogmatically convincing the sibling owners that there was no need).
For Devon, Christian swung the door wide open to natural wines, constantly challenging the “why” of conventional winemaking with science and years of natural winemaking and drinking. Devon returned to work harvest with him in 2013 and 2014.
In 2017, Christian teamed up with Morgane Seuillot to bottle the first vintage of their new wine, Domaine Dandelion. He told Devon that he should import it into California, planting a seed that germinated quickly. When Charles Dufour, Christian’s old friend from winemaking school in Beaune, offered to also send Devon some of his Champagne (a wine that Devon's wife already had been smuggling back to California with every trip to France), Offshore Wines was born. Offshore’s first shipment in 2017 was four cases of the 2016 Dandelion Pinot along with 20 cases of Charles’ Bulles de Comptoir #6.
The Offshore portfolio has expanded quite a bit since then to include friends and fans of the original gang, but the spirit remains the same. Small, thoughtful producers with beautiful wines that speak to the tiny pockets in which they are so carefully grown.
Meet Devon. With over two decades working in various facets of wine, his background in restaurants, journalism, retail and sales all seemed to dovetail when he founded Offshore Wines.
As a young buck studying political economy at Middlebury College in Vermont, Devon serendipitously spent his junior year of college in Logroño, Spain. Upon arrival, he was unaware that this bumping tapas town (where a glass of wine cost 100 pesetas) was also the municipal capital of the La Rioja wine region. It was a revelation to understand wine as something one craves to wash down food, and to dinner party with people his own age. It flipped the script on getting drunk on a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Burgundy or a fifth of MadDog 20/20; or slowly sipping Walla Walla Cabernet with his parents back home.
Bridget O'Brien Dolfi
Creative Director
bridget@offshorewines.com
Meet Bridget, an artist and Bay Area native with Irish roots. After spending her formative years drawing portraits of every face she could find in her parents' T.V. Guides, and turning any assignment that came her way into an art project, she went on to get her Bachelors in Studio Art at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.
Growing up her family returned to Ireland for the summer every year (California just didn't offer enough precipitation) and after those countless summers spent in Kildare's green fields and on misty Wexford beaches, she returned to her Irish mum’s hometown to get her MFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, with a concentration in painting. She stayed for years, photographing and cataloguing jewelry for Anthony Nicholas Group, and drinking a bottomless pint of Guinness.
She returned home to the Bay Area in 2005 and found herself behind the scenes in the art world, working at the San Jose Museum of Art in the Education and Experience department before moving into Development where she begin designing
and producing marketing materials for the department.
Eventually the desire to be less behind the scenes and more in the creative driving seat drove Bridget to collaborate on founding Offshore Wines. The return to her original form of artistic meditation, the portraits she renders for each producer, is truly a full circle moment.
Today, she lives with her family in Oakland, one block away from where she was born (speaking of full circle!) Her husband is a teacher, writer and musician and is part of a multi-generational family of California farmers. They named their daughter, Olive, after a bookmark inscribed “Olive You” under the image of a mouse hugging an olive. At age 11, she’s just as salty as her name suggests.
Bridget discovered wine when she realized that there’s no proper Guinness on the mainland, and her design aesthetic, and personality, pair perfectly with Offshore’s fresh, sometimes spazzy, wines.
