Ian Barry is the winemaker at Six Eighty Cellars in Finger Lakes, NY. He has been in the wine industry since 1997, but what excites him most isn’t the awards or high scores—it’s the 58 (and counting) grape varieties he’s worked with over the years. Since joining Six Eighty Cellars at its founding in 2020, Ian has considered it a dream role: one that allows him to explore minimal intervention winemaking across a broad range of styles. While he still works with stainless steel and French oak, his primary focus is on unconventional earthenware vessels—constantly experimenting with form and function to let each wine speak for itself.
Media Inquiries: ian@buttonwoodgrove.com | https://www.sixeightycellars.com/
What’s the ONE THING most unique, authentic, & memorable about your brand?
After 23 years in the wine business, I was starting to feel burnt out. I’d made a lot of wines I was proud of, had a good amount of creative freedom—but the spark was fading. For the first time since graduating college, I actually considered stepping away and doing something else entirely. It was early 2020, the pandemic was looming, and like a lot of people, I was questioning what came next.
Then I got the call.
Dave Pittard, owner of Buttonwood Grove (where I’d been consulting since 2015), told me he and his family had just purchased a neighboring property. He asked if I had any thoughts on what to do with it. That conversation turned into something much bigger: a chance to reimagine what winemaking could look like if we built from the ground up—with intention, with curiosity, and without compromise.
That was the beginning of Six Eighty Cellars.
We set out to make wines with as little manipulation as possible—wines that speak to place and vintage, made from sustainable fruit and guided more by instinct than by formula. We age many of them in unconventional vessels—earthenware like terracotta, cocciopesto, and sandstone—alongside more traditional materials like stainless and French oak. We experiment with lesser-known varieties, embrace spontaneous fermentation, and constantly explore new techniques, both ancient and modern.
Describe how and what you’d do with your winemaking career or winery business if you were not constrained.
But if I really let myself dream? I wish the wines could reach more of the right people, more naturally. I wish we didn’t have to spend so much energy turning this into a “business.” What we’re doing at Six Eighty—low intervention, small-scale, earthenware-aged wines—is deeply intentional, and sometimes the systems around wine make it harder than it should be to simply share that.
So yeah, if the sky’s the limit? I’d remove the financial pressure altogether. I’d take capitalism out of the equation. I’d let the wines speak for themselves and be shared in the kind of space where connection, not consumption, is the point. That’s the real dream. And in a small way, we’re already chasing it. Here’s my review of this wine.
What is the One Wine most emblematic of your brand and/or winemaking style? Tell us its story.
I’d have to say our Pinot Noir aged in Sandstone. It’s a quiet wine—complex, mineral-driven, and slow to reveal itself. But given time, it really opens up. It’s not flashy or immediately generous, but the more attention you give it, the more you get back.
Bonus Question: Why Winemaking?
Winemaking is what I’ve built my life around. It’s the only career I’ve ever had, and after more than two decades, it still feels like there’s more to learn, more to try, and more to say through the wines I make.
I’m drawn to the rhythm of it—from the vineyard to the cellar to the bottle. Each step has its own challenges and rewards, but what’s always been meaningful to me is the connection that wine creates. You get to share something that started in the dirt and ended up in a glass, and somehow, that brings people together. That part never really gets old.