One of Napa’s Biggest Personality’s Has Some Ideas for the Wine Region’s Future

Phinney’s brand as the edgy, F-bomb dropping vintner of the Prisoner Wine Company fame is set in stone, his boundary-pushing, artistic labels helping the wine fly off the shelves. In 2016, six years after the 2010 sale of Prisoner to Huneeus Vintners for US$285 million, he hawked Orin Swift Cellars to the mammoth company E&J Gallo Winery for US$300 million, but still runs the place with a free—if stitched up—hand. In November, Orin Swift opened a new concept for a tasting room in downtown St. Helena: It’s modeled after the childhood game Rock, Paper, Scissors, which like other elements of the tasting room is an homage to Phinney’s childhood, in Los Angeles. Phinney, 50, spoke with Penta about the concept for his three-tiered tasting room and the future of the Napa Valley. 

Penta: Why Rock, Paper, Scissors? 

When I first came out to the valley, you could taste for free at many places. I understand the world’s changed, and charging is a way to qualify people, but when we first opened next door 10 years ago, I was like let’s just charge ten bucks. We ended up going to US$20 or something, but if it was my choice it would have been free, but I understood we couldn’t really do that. So what we’re doing here is to try to be more egalitarian with Rock, where you sit at the bar and anyone can just walk up and taste (for US$45), and then with Paper you get to sit down for about an hour and we’ll talk you through the wines (US$60), and then Scissors is the by appointment, more intimate, elusive not exclusive option (US$125). 

That explains the antique scissors stabbed into the door, then. Where did you get them? 

[Executive assistant] Samantha Smith, who’s worked for me forever and is amazing, had to source all those scissors, because we were very specific about what type we wanted. There are scissors from Ukraine, China, all over the world. I never knew scissors were so hard to find. 

How has Napa changed in the 25 years you’ve been in the valley? 

I would go around in my truck and just drive around and knock on people’s doors, and people would actually sell me grapes. Now, the price of entry is so high. At the time, the number of maybe 200 brands and 400 distributors, nationwide. Now there are 2,000 brands and four distributors. So it’s really hard to break into the wine business, especially in Napa, because grapes are so expensive. It used to be like, there were 10 of me, I had buddies that all came up around the same time and I’d look around to see who’s going to come eat my lunch. Now, I don’t even think about that anymore, because there’s just no one. There are very few brands run by a young person. 

If that trend continues, what does it mean for Napa? 

It means a bunch of rich people are going to come in and buy the best vineyards and hire a select group of amazing consultants—both the vineyards and the winemakers, all very good people, nothing wrong with that. But the price of Cabernet is going to go up, and land values are going to continue to increase, and there’s going to be a monoculture. It’s already happening, it’s just getting worse because of the economics. I said I’d never make a Cabernet over a hundred bucks, and you go out and I see wines I’ve never heard of that are US$300. I love Napa, I met my wife here, but the more exciting areas now are like Paso Robles, where the younger generations are gravitating, because you can actually do something there. 

Anything that can be done about that? 

I’m going to get in trouble for this, but I’ve really been encouraging Gallo to set up a farm team system. Get some of the best, the hottest young winemakers and create a mentoring system and you start creating these new brands. There’s no Coke or Pepsi of wine, but if there was, it would be Gallo, which is the biggest at 3%. That’s insane, right? But the only way to grow is through acquisition. So my strong recommendation is to grow through incubation. Get your own talent, because the problem with acquisition is you only get to tell that story once, and the only way to get that story is through the years. We only get one vintage a year, so you’ve got to have multiple vintages to have a really compelling story. 

You’ve said if someone picks up a bottle, there’s a 50% chance they’ll buy it based on the label. Can we trust our own judgment? 

No. The field is getting crowded with imitators, of not just our style of wines necessarily but definitely our style of labels, so there’s a lot of confusion, with imitators trying to do what we do with labels. That’s why we go outside the wine space now for label ideas. I don’t look at wine labels and try to compete, I look at Pharrell or Banksy, anybody doing cool [stuff]. If you find a label, whether it’s ours or anybody else’s, and it’s memorable, go for it, but you can’t just assume that because it’s a good label, it’s going to be a good wine.

What do you wish people knew about either buying or collecting wine? 

It’s not that big a deal. It’s the best thing ever, like it’s almost impossible for me not to have a glass of wine with dinner, it’s as important as the salt and pepper. But wine has been kind of overcomplicated. Cavemen figured out how to turn sugar into alcohol. It’s just wine. 

What’s next for you? 

This tasting room has been extremely important, and a focus, and what’s next is making sure this gets done right, because we have such an opportunity here not just to showcase our wines but to do this rock, paper, scissors thing. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone, but we want to have something for everyone, these different formats, because wine has been perceived as this luxury item, unobtainable. We’re missing out on a generation or two because it’s so expensive, or snooty. This is our way of hoping to get that younger generation into wine, because unlike a cosmo, once you start drinking wine, you usually don’t stop. So how do we, I don’t want to say indoctrinate people, but how do we reach that younger palate? Now people care about where everything they eat is from, and wine is so spot on for that. And also what’s next is to bring this younger crew of up-and-coming winemakers up, to take on the same challenge we took on 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. Because otherwise, you’ll end up with a commodity. And to me, that’s not what wine should be. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.