You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me today, Hillary, also communications. Jay, I'm with the customer experience. Pat, director of spirit sales. And we're pretty stoked to be in the room today with a man who is not so much a wine maker as a wine creator, Mr. David Phinney. Oh, well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Not only do you do wines and you do a tremendous number of wines, but you're also dabbling in the spirits game. That's right. And just from California, wines? No, wines from all over the world. So we started in California and I think our second sort of biggest project outside of California was France. And then we've gone, you know, Corsica, Argentina, Portugal, Spain. That's the locations, right? That's right. Also California and Oregon and Washington. Yeah, Oregon, Washington. We also have a Grand Coupe of Oregon that we have coming out. You make fantastic wine. Oh, are you hitting on me? Yeah, it sure looks like it. I mean, no, you wouldn't be the first time. It's, there's so many places to start. I guess it's worth saying that a couple of days before recording this, you were at our Naperville location and we have a fair number of luminaries from the industry, wouldn't you say? Oh, yeah. And we did like a ticket pre-sale reservation thing with yours, and it sold out so quickly. So it's not just like industry nerds like us who are excited about Mr. David Phinney, but it's also just customers in Naperville, Illinois. It's not just the fancy labels either. And it's not just the fancy labels. No, Greg, I think that speaks to the style of wine that Dave makes. And it's the style that resonates with most consumers who want big jammy style structured wines and they drink really well. So what you're saying is I'm going to sell out? No, you don't even get to talk on this podcast. We're just going to talk about how great you are. Okay, so actually, there are a lot of people that are trying to do the same thing. And your stuff came on the scene. What, when was like The Prisoner, was that like two decades ago? It was vintage. The first vintage was 2000. Okay, right. So there over the last couple of decades have been a lot of similarly styled packages, right? Striking labels, like really opulent, right? But none of them seem to snag. None of them seem to catch the way that yours do. And you can keep coming out with more and more of these brands that people recognize as yours. What's your magic? What makes it work? Well, without jinxing myself, I think what we're very conscious of is we look at this process as a partnership between myself and the end user. So the way I look at it is, if you're going to give me your hard earned money, I'm going to give you a product that you are expecting and that you're comfortable with and that is going to over deliver, not only on a price point but on a quality point. And I take that very seriously. And I think when you start to instill a different virtue in that it's not about a return on investment, it's about a return on a partnership, then you naturally will take it more seriously. And I do look at it that seriously. I think my team looks at it that seriously. So it's not just about, I want to sell you a bottle of wine or I want to sell a hundred thousand bottles of wine. I want to sell you an experience that you can count on every time and that I can go to sleep at night knowing that I did my best and that hopefully you can go to sleep drunk. That's the best way to go to sleep for the record. You brought some wine with you. Can we try the first one? So we have Blank Stare. So this is a Sauvignon Blanc, not entirely, but mostly from the Laguna Ranch, which is a Gallo-owned property in the Russian River. And shortly after I did the partnership with Gallo, I was talking to Roger Nobidian, who runs Gallo's Luxury Division. And he asked me, he said, Dave, what would you do if you were going to continue on, or what's something you're excited about? And I said, show me on blog. So he said, well, go look at the Laguna Ranch, see what you think, and then give me a shout. So I went out there and I looked at it. I said, yeah, Roger, it's great. It's Goldridge Soils, you know, I can't believe you have show me on blog here. I would have expected Chardonnay because of the soils. And he said, well, you know, do you want to make some wine from there? And I said, absolutely. So I met with the vineyard manager and we did some pretty extensive farming changes or not changes, but essentially we put about half the fruit on the ground because this was July. And Roger said, well, how much wine do you want to make? I said, you know, I'm not sure that's more of a sales question, but we ended up on about three to five thousand cases. And Roger said, well, go ahead and make essentially the equivalent of about 10,000 cases. And I said, hold on a second, but I thought we just said we're going to make three to five thousand cases. He said, no, make again that equivalent. And then there's other places we can put what you don't like. So for a winemaker, that's like I'm on Canada camera. Like, are you kidding me? I get to go to this vineyard. I get to have all the farming done exactly how I want. I get to make twice as much wine as I need. And if I screwed up, it just goes away. I mean, that's again, where's the camera? It sounds like you have a good expense account. The way I look at it, because I, you know, having started and run my own business, there is no expensive. Like it's all coming right out of, you know, my account. So that's still the way I look at it. So you don't actually have vineyards. You're getting entirely sourced fruit, right? Yeah, we have a small 13-acre vineyard in Napa. And that's not a strange question. It's a good question, but it's hard to answer because the vineyards that Gallo owns, I have 100% control in the blocks that we're in, which is ostensibly the same thing as owning it from, again, from a viticulture and wine making practice. So, albeit we don't own those vineyards, I very much feel like the ownership has been given to me from a farming standpoint, which, whether I own a vineyard or not, if they'll, whomever, whether they work for me or don't, will farm it the way I want, Fair enough. When was the Gallo purchase? It's almost exactly three years ago, so it was June 6th, 2016. So, I guess my question was couched in pre-Gallo. Were you working with Gallo as a supplier before, or was that all externally sourced? Oh, yeah. So, I mean, the average time of our relationship with our growers is over 10 years. So, in all of our contracts, when we first sign up with someone, we have a one year out. It's kind of the, I'm crazy, you're crazy, f*** off thing. We can't work together after a year. It's too much heartburn for everybody. So, let's not do it. And then after that, if we are going to work together, again, that's where I get proud about the fact that it's, again, an averaging over 10 years. I mean, there's growers, Doug White, Gary Morsoly, Vince Toffanelli, I've been working with since day one, so 22 years ago. And then there's vineyards that we signed up two weeks ago. So, it's an ongoing process. But it works out to be an average of about 10 years. You know, David, there's a familiar theme, and that's farming practices that I hear you speak of often. How does that relate to what the consumer gets in the bottle, do you think? You know, I've said it over and over again. We try to do about 95% of our wine making in the vineyard. Because once you get it into the barn, as we say, there's no alchemy, there's no silver bullet. You know, you can fine tune it, make it a little bit better, but you're never going to turn a five into a ten. You might turn a seven into an eight. And so, when you have consistency in the vineyard, you have consistency in the wines. And if I ever got a compliment, or if I ever do get a compliment, it would be that our wines are consistent. Because being able to make scalable wines at consistency within our little wine making community is the stuff that we geek out on. Yeah, that's very difficult, no matter what you're making, whether you're making Budweiser or something like that. I mean, that really speaks to, I think, to the talent of the team behind the wine, for sure. But to your point, I don't drink a lot of beer. When I drink beer, I drink Coors, because I know exactly what I'm getting. I'm getting a Coors Banquet beer. I love that beer. It's the same every time. I don't want necessarily that to be, we're not the Coors of wine, but at least when that consumer comes, they know what they're getting into. That's how you win consumers for life though. I mean, they know what to expect every time they pop one of these corks. That's the highest praise I think you can have as a winemaker. Can we try the Sauvignon Blanc? Yeah. With so many people familiar with the New Zealand style Sauvignon Blanc, this obviously is nowhere near that. What was your thought process when you're thinking of the Sauvignon Blanc that you liked and you wanted the consumers to like? For this particular wine, it was very important to me that it was varietally correct, that it smells and tastes like Sauvignon Blanc. It's not a glorified Chardonnay. It has a bit of acidity. It's kind of lean and edgy. By the way, can I tell you, maybe you have the voice of the... If you were in a heist movie, you'd be the unshakable leader guy when the rest of the team freaks out. You're like, get it together, guys. Karaoke. I'll do that to you. We got him on the wrong night. Dave, what was the go-to song last night? Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire. Nice. Anyway, the Sauvignon Blanc. It does seem kind of edgy and cutting. The acidity is there and it gives it this vibrancy. Well, and that's what I wanted, and also to pay respect to the vineyard, because that vineyard, I really love that Laguna Ranch, and I didn't want it to lose its topicity and its terroir. It really is Russian River. It's cooler. It shouldn't be flabby and flashed out. It should taste like Sauvignon Blanc and smell like Sauvignon Blanc. Yeah, I don't particularly enjoy much Sauvignon Blanc, but this is approachable and to your point, totally on par for what you would expect from the grape. This is cool. I like this. I guess a lot of people want to ask too, if it hadn't have been The Prisoner, what would you have called it? Do you have a backup? Was there a backup name? Yeah, I was going to say there was no Plan B. Did the name come first or the wine? The wine and then the name and vis-a-vis the label. So that is a Goya etching and that's actually called The Prisoner. And so it was sort of embedded that that would be the name. You know, I've heard it called the Little Prisoner or the Prisoner. Okay. Kind of a follow up to that. We do have a customer question that's similar. Shelly asked, or she'd like you to describe how it felt when you first knew you had something great in The Prisoner. It's been described as lightning in a bottle, but when did you know it was the It wine and how did you feel? Well, thank you, Shelly. That's very nice. Yeah, it just gets back to I know everything wrong with that wine, much like I know everything wrong with every wine I've made. I never want to be complacent. I don't think we ever want to be complacent either in wine making, wine sales, new product development. So this idea that it's, I understand that and I've heard that lightning in a bottle, whatever it is, it's kind of like zeros. Like when I was young, I thought $100 was a lot. Then I made $1,000 and then you make X and then you make X. But if your mission is the same, it's just a different number. It's just different zeros. But it's like, OK, well, if that was lightning in a bottle, well, then what's double lightning in a bottle look like? What's Zeus in a bottle look like? You know, it's just complacency to me is death. So it doesn't matter. We could make a 150-point wine that's sold for a million dollars. And I'd be like, all right, what if we make a 200-point wine that sells for a trillion dollars? Like, you just have to keep... There's no... Years and years ago, someone told me, whenever anybody writes something nice about you, read it once and throw it away. Whenever someone writes something bad about you, read it once and throw it away. And that's kind of the way we look at it. So humility, I think, is underrated. What do we have in our glasses now? Mannequin. I'm not sure what vintage is that. Mannequin L. By the way, this comes as a skate deck. Oh yeah. This isn't our number one selling skate deck. That's actually the machete one, but this is probably number two. I have questions about that, but that will come later when we get into the harsh interrogation part of the podcast. All right. So we're tasting it. This is Chardonnay. Yeah. And it's California appellated by design. To me, the easiest way to get complexity is through geographic diversification. So all of the California appellated wines are done so with purpose. And at one level, it's a form of hedging because we can hedge against the weather. If it's very rainy up in Mendocino, you know, Santa Barbara never gets rain and the foothills didn't get as much. And so on any given year, we're not as implicated by sort of varietal weather, or pardon me, vintage weather. And it's also a way to maintain consistency. Because if you have an entire state, which we calculated, it's over 75,000 square miles, is the sort of perimeter of where we buy fruit from. You're just giving yourself a lot more chances to make a better, more consistent wine. You know, I tasted this in Naperville for the first time, I have to admit. It's spectacular. Yeah, it's another classic style. I mean, I guess you could talk about the wood, but it has a creaminess and it has that pineapple quality that a good California Chardonnay has, that it keeps its shape, keeps a little bit of acidic edge, but it's still round and pleasant and And I think that's not that we're trying to be everything to everyone, but definitely in this one, we're trying to touch on some of those key points of Chardonnay, if you will, but the right amount of oak, the right amount of ML, the right amount of So you kind of defended the California Appalachian, but did you see some pushback that people aren't going to pay the kind of money that this bottle deserves with that labeling? We were fortunate in all of the California Appalachian wines to not get pushback on the California Appalachian part of that. If we got pushback, which luckily we had very little, originally Mannequin was a white blend. So to have a California Appalachian white blend at $28 at the time. Right. I guess there had been some precedents for that kind of thing before. And again, this gets back to scale. That's fine at 200 cases, but 2,000 cases, that's different. 20,000 cases, it's a lot different. So, without sounding rude about it, it is that kind of f**k you, pay me moment, where it's like, if you're going to complain that this is California, or you're going to complain about the alcohol, you're going to complain about this, please try the Yeah. And then if you complain afterwards, we can have a conversation. But if you're complaining about it being California before you've even tried it, then we're going to have a tough time. I guarantee you also, your salespeople came armed with a conversation of, you know, it's David Phinney. I don't know about that. And actually, at the time, we had no salespeople. So it was me. I'm David Phinney. How strong is this wine? Oh, I think it's what, 15.5 maybe. Wow. Did you come up with the label? Yeah. So Mannequin, you know, it's sort of part of the fun part to me about the industry or about our particularly Orin Swift is coming up with the labels. I often say that by the time I'm sick of being in the vineyards, it's time to be in the winery. By the time I'm sick of being in the winery, it's time to come up with a label. And, you know, we have at times years of thought that goes into the labels. But Mannequin was an interesting one because it was just, I don't want to say a one hit wonder in the sense of like it all came at once. But I was listening to a Nicki Minaj song and at the end of one of the stanzas, it simply said, stand still Mannequin. And as soon as I heard that, I pulled my truck over and I got my iPhone, I wrote down Mannequin. And actually then I got out my moleskin and wrote down this idea for taking a bunch of these Mannequins out in the middle of the desert and piling them up and taking a photograph of them. And that's not exactly what happened, but it's very close to what happened. So, you know, I like the image of you like driving a truck through like the remote vineyards or something, just absolutely bumping Nicki Minaj and getting inspiration for labels from that. That's not what I expected to hear walking into this. I love Nicki Minaj. She's awesome. Can I guess at another creation story, you were digging in your pockets for an idea for Mercury Head and you're like, wait, I got one. You know, Mercury Head, and thank you for now, I'll get slightly embarrassed, but when I was a kid, I was pretty nerdy and I collected coins and one of my favorite coins that I collected was where Mercury Head dimes. And so when I got reacquainted with them, you know, many years later, it was really nice to be able to sort of honor them because I have a huge appreciation for coins and I still collect. But to be able to actually put it on a bottle surprised me that at the time it was BATF, now it's TTB, that gave us that allowance because, you know, label approval is kind of tough, but you're allowed to use out of circulation coins, but you can So it was originally going to be called Jeffersonian? No, no, no. I've seen that one. And plus somebody at the TTB was like, again, it's Dave Phinney. This is before I was David Phinney. This is a long time ago. Yeah. All right. What's in the glass now? So you were fixing your, what, air ducts when you came up with the label idea for this one? In New Orleans, so back in the day, I was the winemaker at a winery. And when we, the winery was purchased, I was hired to come in. And it took us almost a year and a half to clean up the winery to the standard that I was comfortable with. And during that period of time, my wife had never come up there. And then she came up and it was like pristine because that's the way I was taught, you know, winery should look like a hospital. And it was great because I was like, yeah, honey, check it out. I was so proud. And she's like, why the f*** can you do this here? And at home, you're s***. I mean, she just went on a f***ing tirade, right? And I said, I'm using up all my like organizational skills here, you know. It's the Cobbler's kids not having shoes. Exactly, exactly. So I'm very technologically challenged. Can't use a computer, don't use email. But something you always have in a winery. You're way too young for that. Hold up on that s***. That's crazy. You don't use email? There's like 10 people that can email me. Wow, that is the definition of freedom. So anyway, in this winery, which was beautiful and pristine, what I didn't have was like the pretty like computer-made labels for when we're different. You know, I'm taking mine home, sampling different lots, but you always have duct tape and you always have a Sharpie. So my common practice for bringing home samples, I would put a piece of duct tape and I would write the lot number on it. And so that kind of led to what is now the slander label. So this is what's Pinot Noir? Pinot Noir. So one of our wine managers got wind that we were going to have you on, and he wanted to know how you got Pinot Noir to taste so extracted. So what's the 24% that's not Pinot Noir? Oh no, it's 100%. That's 100% Pinot Noir? Oh yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay, then how did you get that Pinot Noir to be so extracted? Because that's ripe. That is rich Pinot Noir. What I like is that it's ripe and it's rich without, again, losing that varietal correctness. I made Pinot Noir for 10 years, actually a little bit more in 10 years, before we ever bottled it, because I wasn't obtaining that varietal correctness. And the truth of the matter is I was picking it too ripe. And a good friend of mine basically said, just when it gets to 25 bricks, pick it. And I was like, well, I don't make wine by numbers. And he said, well, currently, you're not making any wine, because you've never bottled a Pinot Noir. So I said, all right, Touche, you got me. So anyway, I did it that year, and that was the first year that we bottled slander. But again, this gets back to that using the entire state. And I think what we're able to do is obtain that sort of extraction and that perception of sweetness and boldness, because we have so many tools to work with. Jay, you like this one? I do. And actually, I was going to ask you, Dave, to comment on the phenomena of the super-ripe style Pinot Noir that a lot of consumers only think that that's what Pinot Noir is and should taste like. Oh boy, I could get in a lot of trouble on this one. Do it. Do it. So I have a friend, a very good friend, who's in the wine business, who's been very successful with Pinot Noir. And I asked him about it, and he said, what I did is I made Pinot Noir for people that don't actually want to drink Pinot Noir, but they want to order it. Are you implying that's the Canadian whiskey of Pinot Noir? It's whiskey for people who want to drink whiskey, but don't want to taste whiskey. It's, look, it's the wine business, not the wine hobby. And this particular gentleman figured that out, and has been very successful at making a wine that is totally respectable, but it's just not what you, it's not burgundy, right? It's not an Oregon Pinot Noir. It's not what we're used to. How many hundreds of thousands of cases? We're going to play 20 questions. Is it Miami? That's not how you play 20 questions. Well, question one. It's Canadian whiskey. So when you're talking about keeping Pinot Noir, still Pinot Noir, what is global warming doing to that, especially California Pinot Noir? Oh, man. That's a tough one. I get in this conversation often, mostly with my children, but is it global warming or is it climate change? What is climate crisis doing to Pinot Noir from California? It's hard to tell. I don't think it's doing a whole hell of a lot because it's just starting. Fifty years from now, it may be different or it may not be, but I don't think anybody really knows. I mean, yes, there's this belief that it's going to get warmer and warmer and warmer, but it could get colder and colder and colder. There's no one has a way to, and believe me, both my parents are professors, met in the Sierra Club, so I'm a big proponent of figuring out what the heck it is that's going on. But I think it's a little foolish to think that we really know because we're working with potentials and as the climate changes, the weather patterns will change and who knows will there end up. But that's actually a really interesting counter perspective to a couple of weeks ago, we had Michael Mondavia and he said something different and people can go back and listen to that episode. But oh, I think something's happening. I'm not smart enough to, but when it comes to the amount of time in the season that it takes for the grapes to reach ripeness, or I don't know about the heat throughout the day. I don't know if it's that apparent yet, but the phenolic ripeness and the acidity development versus the tannin and the sugars of the grape all the way through the season. I would let the proofs in the pudding. We've had a string of very successful vintages with 16, 17, and 18. If that's global warming or that's climate change, not bring it on, but it's making our lives a lot easier from a winemaking standpoint. But we're in, we have to remember, we're like in that, we're not, we're a relatively, sort of call it middle latitude. If you're down in Australia, I think it's, you're feeling it a lot more. All right, so we have another glass. This is abstract, 17 abstract. This is dark, this is crazy. Yeah, what's the varietal makeup of this one? So with abstract, we always start with Grenache, and we build the first portion of the blend, is the Grenache portion, and then we start weaving around with Syrah and Petite Syrah around that. So I think it's been as, the blend has been as low as 30% Grenache and as high as 70% Grenache, depending on the vintage. But again, what we're trying to accomplish is a consistency. And the 16 was my favorite till I made the 17, but the 17 is probably sort of my new favorite. Peppery qualities, a lot of traditional Rome flavors. Some grip from the Petite Syrah, you think, but it has that like ruby quality from Grenache that's so typical. Yeah, Greg, I'm glad you mentioned Petite Syrah, which is Dave, one of my favorite grapes. And actually I've heard you describe it as your hamburger helper. That's correct. Yes, and it is kind of the backbone of a few of your wines. Yeah, I mean, to me Petite Syrah is, you know, sort of every winemaker's dirty little secret because it can fix a lot of mistakes and fill a lot of holes. It has color, it picked, it can be very tannic, it picked too early, but if you allow it to get its, you know, sort of ultimate ripeness and those tannins, those sort of short tannin chains become long, you actually have a very dark, rich wine. It can be one-dimensional, you know, if left alone. And of course, that gets back to sort of site specificity, or specific, is that a word? I do this too, specificity. Specificity, that's the word. Is it? Yep. You just can't spell it. I second-guessed myself. But no, I think it's a very underrated varietal. Do you think it does well on its own? Absolutely. But Petite by itself could be better. Oh, Petite can be. My old joke was you can't get Petite ripe enough. So the highest-rated wine that I ever made for 10 years was a wine, it was called Caliban. It's a long story. From first leaf, Petite Seurat, so first crop of this Petite Seurat vineyard. So it shouldn't have been as good as it was. I missed it, got it super sweet. It was like 38 bricks. This wine was 50% water, I should not. Which is totally illegal by the way. And this goes, again, I think the statute of limitations have worn off. And that wine got a 96 from Parker. And it was at the time, that was the highest-rated wine I'd ever made. And I swear to God, it was 50% water. Because that shows you how sort of powerful Petite can be. It'll stain your teeth and other things. This wine also comes as a skate deck? Yeah. And you're talking a lot about winemaking. And you're also talking a lot about the inspiration and the marketing that goes into the packaging. How much of what you actually do, like a day in the life or whatever, a month, how much of what you do is marketing and idea generation? And how much of it is dirty hands and getting the work done? He's trying not to admit that he doesn't actually work that much. I was going to say, on the contrary, I don't think this will add up because it would be 200%, but it's 100% of both. I never thought of myself as a control freak, but there's certain things that I won't let go of. So I call all the picks, make all the final blend decisions. I'm very active in the vineyards during the growing season. I have an amazing team around me that allow me to be there at the right time and tell me where to go and where to be. So from the growing and winemaking side, again, I'm not 100 percent, but with the labels and the new product development, that I can, without a doubt, say 100 percent because I often say in my smaller circles, it's a dictatorship, or pardon me, that That's on tape. Can I tell you something? This is inspiring me. I am going to increase my micromanagement. Thanks a lot. So what I meant to say is it's a democracy till it's not. Because at the end of the day, someone's got to just say this is what we're going to do. With the labels, they all have to be from the same eye, from the same vision. You'll get it. It'll just be confusing. So anytime that we have a new label idea that we think might work, the first thing I'll do is put it in with the existing lineup. If it doesn't fit, it's out. And for every one label that we've ever done, there's 20 or 10 that are on the cutting room floor because they just didn't fit the family. But if that family, it's got to come from one person, and I'll own it. I'll own the good ones and the bad ones, so to speak. With the winemaking and in the vineyards, I have a ton of help. I just have to make those hard decisions. Because at a certain point, as I said, I'm going to listen to everybody's advice, and then I'm going to say, okay, well, someone's got to make a decision. We're going to do X, so. So kind of along those lines too. And I hope you don't take this the wrong way. I've had like owners of Spirit and Wine producers when I've asked this look at me funny. In Silicon Valley, it's not a dirty word. To build an app, to make it great, to sell it. To build another app and make it great and sell it. Do you see some of that kind of entrepreneurship, this modern business building in yourself? You know, by default, it's not why I got in the business. It's not why, and I even, if I were to really go back, I never looked at it as a business. I looked at it as, here's something that I'm lucky enough to do. I take it very personally and very seriously. Until someone hired me as a winemaker, I never put the name winemaker on my card, even though I own my own business. Because until someone's paying me to be a winemaker, I'm not going to do that. Because again, out of respect to all the other winemakers. So, I see the business part of the wine business is a necessary evil. You know, it's not my favorite part of it, but I understand it. I've had to. And we've been very lucky and had some good days. So, I understand that and I'm conscious of it. And I understand that I'm, you know, I'm an employee and I employ a lot of people. So, we have to keep this sort of machine going. But I think if you take anything as pure as farming and wine making and try to apply a business box to it, you're going to fail. You might make money, but you're going to fail. So, I try not to look at it that way. But I also don't want to go out of business. Yeah, yeah. And that does come back around to creating that relationship with the person who's actually going to be drinking it and a partnership with the consumer. Dave Phinney, modest man who also works 200% of the time. Dave, you talked about wine maker, but you really started with some humble beginnings in the wine industry. Want to tell some of our listeners what your first jobs were in the winery? Yeah. I graduated from University of Arizona, sent my resume out to 50 different wineries. Robert Mondavi Winery actually sent me an invitation to come interview for a temporary harvest position, which is beyond lower than you can get. It's like eight bucks an hour. So I show up suit and tie to my interview. Excuse me, there was a guy named Bob Paddock and Jerry Egan, and walk into a trailer because they were redoing the Mondavi Winery. I think those two guys were laughing at me. I have my resume. Again, I'm in my suit and my tie, and it's the only time I think I've been overqualified for any job or any interview. Basically, after about 45 minutes of talking to him, Bob said, well, you should come work down at the Carneros facility with me. He was the foreman for that, which is now defunct because you'll get your hands dirty, you'll see a little bit of everything. He said, the only problem is all the day shifts are taken. So you got to do the night shift, which is 3.30 to 1 a.m. This is harvest of 97. I said, all right, well, if you're telling me that's what I need to do, that's what I'll do. So that's what I did. And really ended up, you know, about a week later, the only white guy in an all-Mexican crew, they realized that I was there to work, gave me a nickname, taught me a bunch of the seller skills that I still use, and sort of off to the races. And what came out of that harvest, though, was if I'm going to work this hard, eventually I'm going to need to do it for myself. So in 1998, I started Orin Swift, that's how the whole thing got going. Should we talk about this wine? Oh, is this Papillon? Yeah. So Papillon was, in 2005, I like to say we were at the height of the sideways effect, when Merlot was not very popular. And I had growers that I was buying Cabernet from that had 20 acres of Cabernet, a 10-foot avenue, and then call it 20 acres of Merlot. And same terroir, amazing fruit, and I like to say Merlot got popular for a reason. Like Merlot makes great wine. And they were like, Dave, if you just take this fruit, I'm going to rip this vineyard out. If you'll take this fruit, you know, back in the day, you would hear guys say, just pay me before next harvest. They were like, just pay me when you sell the wine. And I was like, sure, okay. And so the first vintage of Papillon was a Merlot base plant. It was 65% Merlot. But I wanted to incorporate all five bordeaux varietals. And we've done that every year since. So the actual sappage, the blend has changed over the years. But it's always, it's very important to me that it has all five bordeaux varietals. And the label, which is near and dear to me, for a couple of reasons, but I was in a vineyard with my daughter. It was like a Sunday and I took her out with me. And she was probably three or four years old. And we're walking through this vineyard. She's on my shoulders. And it was when the monarch butterflies were migrating from Mexico up through California. And my daughter said, you know, look dad, Papillon. And I said, well, thank God we're paying 15 grand a f***ing year for the Montessori school because I didn't teach you French. You know, so there was that moment that I had with my daughter. And it was only $15,000 a year. I... Yeah, that f***ing doubled now. Oh my God. I love that school. Greatest school ever, by the way. A plug for the St. Helena Montessori. But, you know, then fast forward a couple years to when, like, this all came to fruition. And I had remembered that day with my daughter, and this is pre-iPhone, so I hadn't written this down. This was still in the sort of mental rolodex. And what the beauty of Papillon, the name, is that it's eight letters, and it'll, you know, fit on hands. But at the time, the only label we had was... I mean, the only label of note was Prisoner. And I didn't want to get known as that guy that, you know, because Papillon having the association with, you know, Devil's Island and Prison, I didn't want to be that, you know, line extension guy. And so I did a sort of a self-surveyor. I surveyed some, you know, people my age. And I think one out of, like, 20 had even knew what Papillon, you know, the movie with Steve McQueen and everything, like, no one had heard of it. So I was like, all right, I'll take that chance. Because I would have walked away from it, had enough people said, oh, Papillon. So, wow, that's cool. You have, like, Prisoner and now you have Papillon. I would have been like, yeah, we're not doing it. Is it The Great Escape? What is it? No, it's it's the movie's called Papillon. Oh, it's called it's a book. I mean, see, here you go. How old are you? Barb Herman tried to explain it. Yeah, I never heard of it either. I'm a big Great Escape fan, but I've never heard of Papillon. Yeah, it's very dark. I believe it won the academy of War in 73, which is the year I was born, is one of the greatest movies. Dustin Hoffman, Steve McQueen. It's a great book, too. So The Wine is densely packed. I think, I don't want to say it lives up to its name if it's named after butterflies. It is densely packed opulent, but not in a flabby sort of way. And it has a linear structure. I mean, sorry, it's a cliché, but it has like the skeleton to support the frame, the whole thing. Are those your hands on the label? No, that's one of the first guys I ever bought grapes from was a guy named Vince Toffinelli. And those are Vince's hands. And we actually wanted to use his mother, Pauline's hands. And Pauline, God bless her, passed away two years ago now. And she was just old school dirt farm, Italian, would go out and up until she was, I think she was 97 when she passed, but she would go out and still prune and do everything. And I had the honor of, I would have lunch with them every once in a while at their house during harvest. And this one time we had lunch and, I mean, they're sitting on like $50 million worth of land and Pauline lives in this little farmhouse, wood-burning stove, cooks us lunch, home sort of like jug of wine. And after lunch, she goes out and has her one cigarette a day. So I went out and I was like, I'm going to have a cigarette with Pauline. And so they were Lucky Strikes, unfiltered Lucky Strikes. So I told the story over the years. So I ran into Vince recently and I was telling him how I told the story. He goes, no, it's not that my mom smoked Lucky Strikes. She smoked whatever was on sale. You know, typical like depression era, you know, woman or man doesn't matter. It's like, no, I'm just going to get the cheapest cigarettes as long as they're not menthols. So yeah, she was, she was amazing. But to get that shoot took a long, it was about a seven-hour shoot. And to have Pauline sit there and do all that, you know, with a tattoo artist would have been a lot. Oh, it was an actual tattoo? No, it's not an actual tattoo, but just the whole setup because, yeah, Greg Gorman's the photographer and it was a big deal. I mean, not a big deal with a big production. Can we talk about Whiskey for a couple of minutes? Sure. So you're doing Savage & Cooke, and we have a couple of hand picks, right? Yeah, we have hand picks coming. Some custom blends we did put together a couple of months ago. We're getting a bottle of Full Strength too, which I think it's your first Full Strength bottling. That'll be the first one. Yeah. I mean, even though we're not tasting it, can you give us some examples? There's Grenache Syrah and Cab barrels. We got barrel samples of each and got a graduated cylinder and built two different blends. They originally was going to be bottled at 92 or something. It was good, and we asked if we could get a sample at Full Proof, and unlike any other large distilling company, they were like, yeah, sure, we'll do that. They sent them and we tasted them, and we're like, wow, these are awesome when they're full proof. Can we just get a bottle of this? It was again, it was like, oh, yeah, sure. So that is bourbon, right? There is a bourbon and an American whiskey. So it's whiskey and then finished in- Finished. The wine barrels coming from Orin Swift. Yeah. Well, I assume they're coming from Orin Swift. They were. And only because I don't want to mix messages because when I first started doing that, we owned Orin Swift and then we had residual barrels left over that we were using for other products. So I would hate to say moving forward that they are because that would be a little bit disingenuous. Wait, are ours? Ours should be because it's all four and a half year old product. I think it might actually hit five years old by the time it's bottled. There might have been something we're delaying bottling for that or something. The Grenache barrels definitely are ours and they're from our winery in France. One more reason if you're a fan of this man to at least check out these handpicked. Yeah, they're absolutely fantastic whiskeys. They're going to be great. Well, not only are the whiskeys fantastic, but there's a great story of where they're being produced. Dave, do you want to talk a little bit about Maryland? Jay, you talk about it because you enjoyed a cocktail there. Well, I did. I mean, it was a beautiful place. Break it down for us, Jay. I don't think I can do it justice, but the concept of the revitalization of this beautiful area is spectacular. Some of the buildings that Dave has multi-purposed to different uses is just a great reinvestment in the community, and it's just something I think Dave needs to be commended to, because it's a very beautiful place, and again, an investment in the You've got a pretty sizable column still going in there, right? Yeah. I always say it was 43 feet, but then I was corrected, and there's a six-foot stand, and then it's a 36-foot column still, continuous column still, so it's 42 feet. I give all the credit to Jordan by our master distiller. I can tell you how to grow grapes and make wine. I can't tell you how to build a still and distilled spirits, although Jordan's going to teach me enough to be dangerous on a tour. But where I come in on that is with the obviously coming up with the labels and everything, but also Jordan and I work on the final blends, and that's where the finishing the wines in Grenache barrels, Chardonnay barrels, Cab barrels, that's where I jumped in with Jordan. But I always defer to Jordan. He's amazing. This is where I usually say, do you have time to stick around for the Q&A segment? He doesn't have time to stick around for the Q&A segment. But luckily, we already asked the customer question. Thanks, Shelly. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else can email your questions, comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media. At Binny's, Bob on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. David Phinney. Can I call you Dave at this point? Please. Yes, my name is Dave, not David. And it's not that's awesome. Dave MF Phinney. This has been really cool. We appreciate your coming and hanging out. Everybody should try the Orin Swift wines there. Clearly fabulous. And we only got to try four of them. There's like ten and most of them are available at Binny's. Most of the time when we can get them, you know, it's easy to sell them because people love them. Well, thanks. You guys have been supporters since way back in the day. So I appreciate it. This has been another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We'll be back in another week with another episode. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. Jay's here too. Hillary. Dave Phinney, I guess. Keep tasting.