029: Dave Phinney, Orin Swift Cellars

I sat down with Dave, explained what a podcast was, he took off his worn John Deere hat, I hit record, and 70 minutes later I left grinning with the anticipation of sharing this episode with the Inside Winemaking listeners.  

Dave recounts the experiences that brought him into winemaking and the early days of the Orin Swift wines, while working at Robert Mondavi and Whitehall Lane, including the lessons learned from the difficult 1998 vintage.  Our conversation leads from assessing vineyards to blending and the "perception of sweetness."  In 2010 Dave sold two of his brands; The Prisoner and Saldo, but continued to build the Orin Swift brand and went on to create Locations Wine after the idea struck while stuck at Charles de Gaulle airport.  Locations Wine is now producing individual wines from France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, California, Oregon, Washington, Corsica (great story of the label here), and soon to add Portugal.  

Not content just to oversee the winemaking, Dave is the creator of all of his wines' labels, a collection that has been inspired by world travel, simple observation, and a desire to give his fans something they can't find anywhere else.  The labels are too cool for me to do them justice - check out them out atInsideWinemaking.com.  Dave tells the stories behind the Machete, Abstract, and Mercury Head wines.  We finish out our conversation with his story of how the Orin Swift tasting room floor in St Helena came to be furnished with pages from "pamphlets of Maoist propaganda."  Don't miss Dave's answer to the question. "What do you believe that nobody else does?"  

Listeneners may recall that Amy Warnock, who was the guest in Episode 7 is the director of viticulture for, and Zeke Neeley from Episode 14 is now working with Dave Phinney at Orin Swift.