Who is David Phinney?

By Lisa Perrotti-Brown for The Wine Advocate – Robert Parker

If you mention Dave Phinney, a wine bar in the United States, most people will surely know who you are talking about and what their wines are. Few winemakers are as controversial or as polarizing. What started as a dark, symbolic image on the label of a pretty decent red wine blend at a pretty decent price has turned into a very lucrative wine trend. In 2010, Phinney sold his wine brand "The Prisoner", with engraving by Francisco de Goya "The Little Prisoner" from a chained squatting man, to Huneeus for an estimated u$s 40 million. Production doubled in the next five years to 170,000 cases of 12 bottles. Six years after they bought the brand, Huneeus sold it to Constellation Brands, one of the largest beverage companies in the world, for an alleged $285 million. A nonsense…

"Many of their labels take a walk on the wild side, and many of the images are downright dark, starting with The Prisoner and progressing to Palermo (is a chilling photo of a mummified priest in a red cloak and black hat known as a 'biretta,' taken by National Geographic photographer Vincent J. Musi on a 16th century catacomb in Palermo, Sicily), Mannequin, Machete, Blank Stare and the new l'usine wines,” I told Phinney, after tasting the upcoming releases of the brands he now produces for E. & J. Gallo. “From a consumer point of view, I see these labels as having a certain kind of menacing appeal, similar to film noir.

Was this intentional? I asked…

Mannequin

Palermo

“My wife summed it up best when I showed her the first version of one of our labels,” he told me. “I woke her up around two in the morning to get her opinion on some labels. He looked at the label, looked at me, looked at the label again, and said, “Yeah, it's nice, but what the hell is wrong with you?” It's not something we do intentionally. It's just what has evolved over the last 20 years."

Dave Phinney He embarked on his career in the wine industry in 1997, working temporarily in the harvest at Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley. In 1998, while working at Whitehall Lane winery, he established his own company: Orin Swift Cellars, "with two tons of Zinfandel and not much else." Since then, Phinney graduated from winemaker to alchemist when it comes to developing beverage brands. In addition to having a clear knowledge of the consumer's taste and a special ability to make cuts, Phinney has been able to quench the thirst of today's wine drinkers, it has the unique ability to captivate what was perhaps a previously unrecognized mid-market audience. And that skill is pure gold in this industry.

Lisa – “I see your wines as a series of stories,” I commented to Phinney. «What do you think is the main story: the story in the bottle (the wine itself), the story and the bottle (the packaging/label) or the story beyond the bottle (the vineyard, the vintage and the winemaker )?»

He replied, "To me, the three stories together form the 'main story.'" They should act as chapters and complement each other in building the total package. The vineyards are, of course, where it all begins, so they would make up the first chapters. The wine is the product of the vineyards and acts as the body of the story, and the package/label is the conclusion."

Lisa – “So do you see any link between your labels/packaging and the wine inside?”

"Yes," Phinney said. “The first thing I address is whether the wine is “masculine” or “feminine.” Once established, nomenclature and label iconography follow. However, sometimes it is the juxtaposition of using a very masculine name or image for a very feminine wine or vice versa. Machete is an example of a combination of the two. You have a very masculine wine with a very masculine name, but the art of the label is very feminine to me."

David Phinney – Winemaker Orin Swift

The labels of Machete feature provocative photos of a beautiful woman in a bikini, brandishing a machete, with a vintage white Cadillac as a backdrop. The wine is a big, bold, peddle-to-the-metal Petite Sirah blend sourced from vineyards in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties in California. “A heroine does what a heroine wants, and in this case, wine does the same,” is just part of the story that accompanies Orin Swift.

Machete

He Machete is one of the 15 wines, labels, stories in the portfolio of Orion Swift which was purchased by E. & J. Gallo in 2016. Part of the deal was to keep Phinney as winemaker. Production of this label alone exceeded 12,000 cases in 2017. The cheapest wine in this range is the spooky China Doll label, a rosé. The 2018 vintage of this rosé was completely sold out, with a waiting list for 2019. The most expensive wine is the Mercury Head Napa Cabernet (its label is a 10-cent coin, which Phinney liked to collect when he was boy and who casually called him Mercury Head), with a production for 2017 of more than 10,000 boxes. The quality throughout the collection is excellent and consistent. So the story here is the stories and how well they help communicate the wines to an audience that may not be all that sketchy vineyard sales and winemaking, maybe boring topics. 

Mercury Head

In 2018, Gallo purchased another of Phinney's projects: locations. This is a range of wines that is represented on its label exactly by the first letter of the word "U". These are good PRC wines, they offer a wide range of places, countries or important regions. Locations is perhaps the least interesting of Phinney's projects, but in some ways, that's the point. These are quick-selling wines, means to an end. Simple labels, simple and well-made wines, end of the story…

Locations

L'usine is Phinney's latest release for Gallo. Sourced from vineyards on the Sonoma Coast, Sta. Rita Hills and Santa Lucia Highlands, sporting its striking labels and packaged in a six-bottle case, the packaging is fun, innovative and personalized. This might be his most impressive project yet. L'usine means "the factory" in French, so the name Phinney places for this collection comes from Andy Warhol's term for his iconic/iconoclastic art studio: The Factory. When posting a photo of the bottles on my Instagram - says Lisa -, this was one of the first comments:

L'usine Pinot Noir

“I find this representation of women offensive… I realize that art is subjective. I am currently in a women's wine group and shared these images. Several women agreed that women are not portrayed in a positive way. It's the expressions on their faces, they look victimized. Warhol has similar paintings of women with red eye shadow and lipstick (Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor) but their expressions show strength and confidence, these do not. There is also a strong sense of sexual subjugation. It makes me wonder who the artist painted this for, who was the audience he wanted to capture...

Lisa – It was the passion of the response to these labels that surprised me the most. Without even tasting, the wines evoked strong emotions.

In fact, tasting these wines also made me wonder why Phinney avoided this grape for so long.

Phinney – “Actually,” “we started making Pinot in 2003. I made something like 10 vintages but I was never happy with the result. Then, finally, a friend who produces incredible Pinot, told me to stop trying to pick grapes like we pick other red varieties. She told me that when it gets close to 26 brix, pick it up. I was horrified because to me that seemed like painting by numbers. I told her that, and she laughed and asked me what I had to lose and reminded me that I hadn't had much success doing it my way. That harvest, I took his advice, and we bottled our first Pinot Noir.”

David Phinney at the vineyard

Lisa – I threw one last curveball question at Phinney, not about winemaking, not about art or labels. It was about the least talked about: if you could have one vineyard in the world, what would it be and why?

“Honestly,” he said, “I'd rather have a jet. I have been very fortunate to make wine all over the world and have fallen in love with vineyards from Mendoza to Piedmont and everything in between. But if there is a gun to my head, it would probably be a great Burgundy vineyard. The potential for catastrophic weather every year, as well as the pressure of not screwing it up when you get a good year, would provide a lifetime of challenges and heartbreak.”

That's the "surprising sense of self-torture" that makes what's in the Phinney bottle as provocative as what's on the label.