About Us
The Thieves, Scoundrels, Scallywags and more...
To some, the word scoundrel carries with it a negative connotation, a moniker usually reserved for the most untrustworthy-wretched scum; purveyors of villainy who take the utmost pleasure in cheating and swindling others. But scoundrel is a common title amongst the canting crew: The Priggers of Prancers and Nappers of Nazy Nabs, the Rum Divers and Adam Tilers; with every finger a fishhook. These scoundrels lived a life of privation and toil, one forced upon them by lowborn circumstances and ill education. Hard work and determination were sacrosanct to their survival and it embodied their very ideals. Amongst their own, it was known: Scoundrels are made, they are not born. We count ourselves amongst that erstwhile group of natty lads. The Hawkers, Hucksters, and Graperow Grangers; Cellarratts, Winemakers, and Crushpad Captains. We live by the creed of the canting crew.
Each bottle of wine we create is made with the blood from our hands, sweat from our brow, and cheers in our hearts. So enjoy this wine, made by scoundrels, sipped by you!
We make wines for the hatch, Black Swift Vineyards, Indigenous World, Burnt Timber and even a few pints of scrumpy for Truck 59, and we always do our best to make sure the wines that each winery released were a good fit and something to be proud of. Sometimes, however, there would be wines that were either a little too geeky or a little too quirky to get blended away, which usually came from some of the creative experiments we would attempt in small batches each year. If Jason liked the results, but the wines weren’t a good fit for anyone else, he would earmark the wine for some future project.
We named this project “Crown & Thieves” and our goal was to shorten the gap between the people who love wine, and the ones who make it. To us, the people who buy our wines are like royalty and it’s our goal to “serve” their needs the best we can. We, on the other hand, were like thieves, stealing a barrel here, the ends of a tank there so we could make something different and fun. We started selling our contraband out of the hatch wine shop, and people seemed to like what we were doing so we made even more wines from even more experiments. The best part was that we were taking what we learned from these experiments and applying it to the wines of the other wineries.
We, on the other hand, were like thieves, stealing a barrel here, the ends of a tank there so we could make something different and fun.
After a while, it became evident that we needed to find our own place, and in 2018 Jason started the process of planning and designing a unique destination at the tail end of the Westside Wine Trail. This was a place plucked straight out of the creative recesses of his brain, an eroded rust-covered ode to the old world. A place, purpose-built to stand out - eliciting feelings of love or hate from those who visit.