The Dark Horse Of California Cool: How The Prisoner Wine Defied The Wine Rulebook And Became A Cult Favourite

Let's go back to the Year 2000. It was a simpler time, way before social media, when the world was alittle less meta - certainly in more ways than one, if you get my drift - and things were perhaps more straightforward, and for better or worse, the world was less "viral" (also in more ways than one), and for better or worse, certainly far less chronically online and interconnected.

Wine bottles looked like what you'd imagine a wine bottle to be - an etching of a chateaux, perhaps a fauna or two, evocative of the purity of a far away untouched meadow, typically going by the name of the estate that produced the wine, and then stating lowkey technical items like the dominate grape varietal, the geographical origin and then the vintage. These still remain by and large the go-to heuristics for highly trained sommeliers to immediately determine, for lack of a better word, if a wine is bs or not. The greater the specificity, the more the transparency, which is typically indicative of the intentionality behind the craftmanship of the wine - the winemaker posing as a sort of God controlling every factor that directly results in the wine in the bottle - and in simple terms, that the wine has nothing to hide. And of course, when we think about it, who could argue that provenance didn't matter.

But what if customers simply don't care.

Dave understood wine drinkers better than anyone else.

What if customers just want something that tastes good, goes for a price they're happy with, and is content simply being a minor character in their life experience. Maybe, just maybe, not everyone wants to be inundated with the term "Cabernet Sauvignon" - what might be seen by a wine lover as a matter of proof of authenticity, could instead come off as a question of the customer's wine knowledge (or lack thereof). You've got to admit - being a wine lover almost necessitates knowing a handful of names and terms that can be quite the barrier to someone simply loving how it tastes. Maybe the wine doesn't have to be the main character or a big event, maybe this time it can just be a really tasty drink of choice. Incidentally, Dave Phinney seemed to understand all of that.

"If you're trying to plan to be cool, you're not going to be cool, you're going to lose. If you're planning on coming up with a cult line that's going to have an emotional effect on people and you're trying to go through the playlist, there's no playlist. You have to listen to the customer, see what people like, and be really thoughtful about it." says Dave.

The original 1820 etching, Le Petit Prisonnier, by acclaimed Spanish painter Francisco Goya, was symbolic of protest.

And so when Dave had decided to pull out an 1820's etching, titled "Le Petit Prisonnier", by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, an incredibly lauded man known for some fairly horrifying paintings (to say the least), and have it on his Zinfandel-led blend, let's just say the 2000's wine world wasn't all that ready for it. Stories abound about how many retailers pleaded for a change to the brooding and emotionally intense label art, with some even going far as to soak bottles in hopes of the label slipping off. The wine industry wasn't ready for any of it - the defiant lack of the content's details, the alt imagery, the democratic nature of it all and just how rave the reception to it was. You really didn't need to know anything apart from whether or not you liked how the wine tasted, and even then, the wine was a rare example then of a ready to drink wine, one that didn't require cellaring, and was approachable and bold in flavours. No subtle notes of this or that came part of The Prisoner modus operandi. And everyone pulling the cork on a bottle absolutely loved it. 

"It's just, look, I'm outside right now, I don't sit in an office all day and look at computers."

But Dave didn't care - he was far more busy being immersed in sourcing fruit from around California, and then experimenting with them in the cellars. He's the sort of guy who buys a vintage truck and restores it for "no real reason to do it other than it sounds like fun", and believes that "there's an entire generation that has a misconception that sending an email means you did your job, and it drives me crazy". 

So what is it that makes Dave tick?

Dave was an 80's LA kid. Having been born to parents who were both professors, Dave had what he calls a "juxtaposition of highbrow fine art and grafitti" - on the one hand, his parents would take him to museums, and on the other he would spend his free time skateboarding, surfing and listening to punk rock. It was in fact his art curator mother who had gifted him, at just the age of 12, the Francisco Goya etching that would become The Prisoner's iconic label art (the art itself embodying Goya's protest against the inhumanity of the Spanish War of Independence, which certainly resonates with The Prisoner's perhaps incidental ethos of defying wine standards of the time).

By 1997, a young Dave just in his mid 20's would return from a study abroad trip to Italy and become deeply engrossed in winemaking. He would get his first wine job at Napa Valley legend Robert Mondavi's winery as a harvest intern doing the graveyard shift and handling punch-downs and pump overs. Yet that very year, Mondavi himself would encourage Dave to start experimenting with making his own wines. Dave would produce just one barrel made of second crop grapes. The next year Dave would produce the very first vintage of his wine brand Orin Swift (later sold to wine giant Gallo) - yet he wasn't too pleased and eventually sold it as bulk wine. 

"My first goal was to work a harvest. That, to me, was success. Then it was, someday, maybe I'll be a winemaker, someday maybe I'll have my own brand. Now it all happened very quickly because I was twenty-something-years-old and an idiot."

In 2000, Dave was now ready for the inaugural debut of The Prisoner - yet things that year were hardly smooth sailing. "It was a happy accident in 2000, which was a very challenging vintage. I had a lot of small lots of wines that I didn't want to bottle separately so I just threw them all together and that's how we made The Prisoner." explains Dave. Inspired by the old California vineyards created by early Italian immigrants who had just come over that typically featured a whole bunch of grape varieties all mixed together in the same vineyard, Dave had wanted to apply the same concept of "mixed blacks" (as they called it) to create a blend that could deliver more complexity than the single varietal style that was popular at the time. And so with a mixed bag of grapes, Dave had thought it best to balance out the riper Zinfandel with some more dry varieties, and eventually found a recipe that worked, producing just 385 cases of the 2000 vintage.

The Prisoner Winery.

With no vineyards of his own (and till this day, The Prisoner Wine Company owns no vineyards, instead working with close to 200 growers across California), Dave would source fruit from Rutherford's Morisoli Vineyard and Calistoga's Tofanelli Vineyard (eventually expanding to Calistoga's Solari Family Vineyard and St. Helena's Korte Ranch), eventually working out a recipe that called for 40% Zinfandel, with the rest being Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Petite Sirah and interesting Charbono, an uncommon variety that has just 100 acres of vines left in California, and yet is said to add a distinct spiciness to the blend. With also no cellar of his own, Dave would initially make use of wineries for rent, such as Bin to Bottle and Sonoma Valley Custom Wine. It wasn't till 2018 that The Prisoner Wine Company would find its current home in 2018 in what was once the historic Franciscan Winery, an early Napa Valley winery.

Batle's Ash Dancer on display at The Prisoner winery.

Here the handpicked fruit is first fermented by variety in individual steel tanks, with temperatures kept warm enough to extract deep colour and flavour, yet cool enough to keep the tannins soft. Once fermentation is complete, the wine is then aged for 15 months in a combination of American and French oak barrels, where 1/3 of the barrels are new, so as to impart some vanilla and toast to the wines. Yet, perhaps what is more stark about where the wines are made is the entire atmosphere of the winery, which itself is open to visitors and features a grungey feel to it. It showcases artists who are invited to display their works alongside the tasting room, with a particularly notable artwork being Agelio Batle's Ash Dancer, which features a graphite-made skeleton that lies on a gently vibrating canvas, thereby over time accumulating pencil-like shadings from the sculpture.

These days, some two decades since The Prisoner's 2000 debut, such edgy and graphic labels have become standard fare. Yet the spirit remains the same, “We’re never trying to appeal to anybody. I’m not going after Millennials or Gen Xers or 85-year-old grandmothers. I’m settled on something I like and I can stand behind, and hopefully, people like it. It’s never meant to be dark or edgy or disruptive, but maybe that’s a byproduct.” says Dave. In that sense it's worth noting that The Prisoner has long taken on a reputation that it never sought to create for itself in the first place - the goal was simply to do something different, drop the pretence and be accessible to wine lovers.

Inside The Prisoner winery.

After a decade long bull run, Dave would sell The Prisoner Wine Company to Huneeus Vintners, who in turn have since sold the brand to big league Constellation Brands (the very owners of Robert Mondavi's winery). As is expected, production has increased multitudes beyond that initial 385 cases, even as the winery continues to own no vineyards of its own, sourcing its fruit from some 200 growers. The line-up has also expanded to include expressions such as SALDO, a Shiraz forward blend with also Cabernet Sauvignon, and Unshackled, a Cabernet forward blend.

With all that said, today we're going to give this California icon a taste!

PS. It's California Wine Month and as such we've got an awesome showing of some of the most iconic Californian wines that'll be specially made available at various retailers and stockists, with masterclasses being held as well. If you're a wine lover, or just wine curious, definitely look out for them and grab this chance to see what the hype is about and find out for yourself exactly why these wines have become such icons!

Wine Review: The Prisoner Red Blend

This is the 2021 vintage - it's 51% Zinfandel with 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Syrah, 12% Petite Sirah, and 2% Charbono, that's sourced from key vineyards such as Bluxome Creek, Pastori, Trubody, Korte Ranch, Rogers, Solari Family Vineyard, Tiedemann Ranch, and York Creek. It's aged for 15 months in French and American oak barrels, with 30% of that being new oak.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Deep Ruby

Aroma: It opens up big and bold, with incredible forward and well-saturated red fruits of strawberry jams and cherry frosting. It's rich yet surprisingly not over the top. It has a freshness to it that keeps it lifted, and at the same time that richness allows for the bouquet to take on a good depth. It's certainly lush and ripe and with a side of confectionary appeal, yet with a side of cocoa and cedar that gives it some earthy dimensionality.

Taste: Medium-bodied here, it's plush and silky, really rounded and plummy, filled in with juicy raspberry jams and blackberry jams. There's a touch of clove spice and some cocoa as well. It's rich and velvety, here leaning sweeter and riper, yet with a gentle and fresh acidity that again keeps it from going over the top. It's approachable and bold, with these big juicy fruit jams.

Finish: More of the red fruit jams carry through to the finish, of strawberries and raspberries. It's plush and rich into the seamless finish. Clean with just a touch of dried tobacco that lingers.

My Thoughts

 A really approachable and bold wine that's fruit forward and fruit driven, really juicy and rich, with a touch of confectionaries and earthiness, yet really at its core its incredibly fruit dominated. It's a nice assembly of red and dark fruit that gives it this completeness in both brighter and deeper tones. It's juicy and supple, yet at the same time it's not heavy or over the top. It's definitely a big wine, but also incredibly approachable and easy to dig into - true to form, no waiting needed, it's ready to go. It's simple and straightforward, uncomplicated and plays it part well as being just a wine and not any sort of statement piece. You don't have to think too hard about it, nor squint for details - it doesn't pretend like it's something other than a tasty wine. It's an everyday, any occasion wine that doesn't demand anything of its drinker, and at the same time comes raw enjoyment guaranteed. It knows what it is and nails it.

Kanpai!

@111hotpot