Dave Phinney Enters Bourbon Land

Good morning. Welcome to the Third Edition of the Bourbon Central Bulletin!

I always like to think of distillers as more akin to artists than spirit producers. They are the stewards of the blend—where a 1% incremental difference in say the balance of rye and barley will completely change the profile of the whiskey. And, so it takes meticulous craftsmanship to come up with the perfect blend, the ideal age statement, and nuanced, but not overpowering finish. Call ‘em Picasso; from the outside in, sipping on whiskey seems like a great job, but I’d stray away from calling it easy!

Anyway, we had a chance to sit down, blend, and chat with one of these masterminds last week. And, the product is coming to you!

WHISKEY CONVO OF THE WEEK
Blending With Dave Phinney

Dave Phinney is an absolute legend in the wine world, but I’ll be honest—even some of the bourbon geeks on our team did a double take when his name came up. Here’s a quick memory jogger: Phinney founded Orin Swift Cellars, most famously the proprietor behind The Prisoner wine in the late 1990s. More than a decade and some well-deserved fame later, Phinney sold Orin Swift and some related brands for a cool $300 Million to E&J Gallo.

Sure, you might grab a bottle of The Prisoner for the Mrs. as you’re hunting for Pappy, but the question remains—why is Phinney uniquely relevant to us now? 

Turns out, he could only stay away from the beverage world for so long. The universe willed Phinney into joining the rising tide of bourbon; with backing from Gallo, he started Savage & Cooke, a distillery located on the historic Mare Island in California in 2018.

Mare Island is best described as a quirky stretch of land in the East San Francisco Bay area that once served as a naval shipyard. Today, it’s more commonly filled with stunning brownstones that flaunt their perfect positioning between the Bay and Napa Valley. A winemaker at heart, Phinney focuses on wine cask finishes for his spirits—often going to the end of the earth (read: Ganache Barrels from France) to source the best of the best. Naturally, as the former head at Orin Swift, his whiskies also benefit from having first dibs on their coveted zinfandel barrels for finishing.

Let’s look at some of Phinney’s inaugural offerings at Savage & Cooke:

At first glance, you’ll notice the bottles look just a tad different for bourbon—in Phinney’s classic tale of jettisoning tradition, he choose a fully opaque, black container adorned with avant-garde, black and white photography.

Fun Fact: The bottles today are regular glass thanks to bartenders’ struggles to inventory remaining bourbon in the formerly opaque bottles at the end of a long night.

Anyway, the aesthetic aside, Savage & Cooke’s earliest release consisted of: the ‘Burning Chair’ Bourbon, ‘Second Glance’ American Whiskey, and ‘Lip Service’ Rye. All of these are blends of 3-5 year old whiskey, sourced from small lots in Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee. In a nod to Phinney’s past, the bourbon is finished in Cabernet barrels, the whiskey in Zinfandel barrels, and the rye in Grenache barrels—all carefully procured from his past winemaking projects.

While the juice is just as good, the lineup has been changed up visually as pictured below:

We’re generally skeptical of new, celebrity-tinted whiskey projects, but Savage & Cooke is different: we had lunch with Phinney yesterday, and all of our concerns were quickly pacified. Phinney is deeply passionate about the spirit, and imparting a new way of cherishing whiskey—where centuries-old winemaking craft blend seamlessly with America’s homegrown alcohol.

Plus, Savage & Cooke is officially a field-to-glass distillery where they handle the end-to-end processes of crop growth, malting, distilling, and bottling all in-house. It’s an especially refreshing tone, when the industry norm has become to source distillate from IN or KY and call it a day.

It gets better: we hand-blended a custom barrel pick with Phinney, an unforgettable experience! In Phinney’s words (not ours), it’s one of his personal favorites from all of the whiskey he’s had over the years. 

The Blend: 100% 4+ Year Old Bourbon, with 57% Grenache-Finished, 26% Zinfandel-Finished, and 17% Cabernet-Finished.

The Profile: Toasted marshmallow and orange peels, balanced by some vegetal earthiness on the nose. Robust character on the palate. Coffee cake glazed with honey, touched with hints of tobacco and barrel char. Lush and complex finish.

Like what you’re hearing?

We have 36 bottles of our hand-picked custom barrel with Phinney left for pre-sale. Shipping date is estimated to be mid-June. As usual, as soon as we receive it, it’ll go out to you. Don’t miss out on this truly, one-of-a-kind, Phinney-blessed barrel.

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