Tasting Notes

Pale gold in the glass, opulent aromatics of Meyer lemon, vanilla crème, and sweet oak are complemented by subtle notes of jasmine, gardenias and caramel. The layered palate is replete with ripe stone fruit, melon, lemon curd and hints of roasted almond, grapefruit pith and white pepper. The finish is long and rich with a tapering young coconut flavor.

Robert Parker 91 Points

About Orin Swift Cellars

The history of Orin Swift Cellars dates back to 1995 when on a lark, David Swift Phinney took a friend up on an offer and went to Florence, Italy to spend a semester “studying”. During that time, he was introduced to wine, how it was made, and got hooked. A few more years of university led to graduation and eventually a job at Robert Mondavi Winery in 1997 as a temporary harvest worker. Deciding that if he was going to work this hard, it would eventually have to be for himself, he founded Orin Swift Cellars in 1998; Orin is his father’s middle name and Swift is his mother’s maiden name. With two tons of zinfandel and not much else, he spent the next decade making wine for others as well as himself and grew the brand to what it is today.

About the Mannequin label

Phinney is often asked what came first, the label or the wine. In the case of Mannequin, made from Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat from Sonoma and Atlas Peak, a song came first.

Driving around with the radio blaring, Roman’s Revenge by Nicki Minaj came on the radio and Phinney was struck by the line: ‘You at a stand still, mannequin’.

“It got me thinking about mannequins and their purpose to serve as stylised representations of the human form to showcase clothes. Clothing, much like wine, evolves over time to reflect trends, nature and creative whims, yet the mannequins always remain static,” he says.

The sinister photo of amputated shop dummies was shot by LA-based photographer Greg Gorman, who used his Hollywood contacts to source dozens of old mannequins bound for the scrapheap, most of which were missing their arms.

As is often the way with the creative process, Gorman took scores of photos but neither he nor Phinney were happy with the result until the mannequins were tossed to one side after the shoot and everything fell into place, on shot 540.