Summary: The Prisoner winery staged an elaborate, multiroom unveiling for its new $200 red blend, The Grail, positioning it as the brand's new flagship wine. Sasha Paulsen contrasts the carefully orchestrated marketing spectacle with the ultimately simple experience of tasting the wine, questioning whether increasingly theatrical launches add meaning or merely heighten expectations. Conversations with guests and a recollection of winemaker Doug Fletcher's remark — "It's just wine" — lead the essay to a broader reflection on wine as both a luxury product and an everyday ritual. The piece concludes that despite branding, prestige and price, wine's enduring value lies in the personal experiences and traditions surrounding it.
“You know, it’s just wine.” — Doug Fletcher
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — It was a puzzling invitation, at once so grand and so vague that I was not quite sure what I was being summoned to experience. References to “reaching a pinnacle” and the “unveiling of an icon” — along with a request that we garb ourselves appropriately in cocktail attire — did make me wonder, however, if our illustrious leader had decided to rename Mount St. Helena after himself.
No, presently (in a follow-up email for the confused) it was clarified: It was the release of a new wine.
With 500-plus wineries in our little valley, it is necessary to find new ways to stand out.
Why me? I am not a serious wine writer, of whom excellent ones abound. The organizers even wanted to send an Uber for me and were, I learned later, concerned when I declined this. But they were New Yorkers, unaware that the winery in question was just down the road from me and also that my husky, Luz, was likely to be my plus-one for the evening. She responds with enthusiasm to invitations to wineries, not for the wine but for the reasonable assumption that it will be paired with Wagyu beef.
I found a dress in the back of my closet and set out on a Saturday night, Luz riding along in the backseat. (If she suspects I am going somewhere good and I leave her at home, she sets to work at once to open a window, remove a screen, scale a fence and visit the neighbors.)
I had only been to The Prisoner winery once before, when it opened in St. Helena in 2018. Winemaker Dave Phinney, a champion of affordable, quality wines, had created The Prisoner in 2000; he sold it to Huneeus Vintners for $40 million, and they, in turn, sold it to Constellation Brands for $250 million. As a new home for their pricey investment, Constellation renovated one of its Napa Valley properties, Franciscan Winery, from a classic structure into a massive, somber gray edifice topped with a witch’s hat canopy over the entrance and decorated inside with chains and other stygian touches. Something between the Chateau d’If and a scary new ride at Disneyland, it was clearly aimed for the younger set who had made Phinney’s wine a hit. It did, however, continue to sell a Prisoner red blend for $45 as well as other wines up to $100 a bottle.
Last year Constellation sold its lower-priced brands, such as Meiomi and Simi, signaling that it would focus on its “ultra-premium” brands; in Napa Valley, these also include the Robert Mondavi Winery and Schrader Cellars, in addition to its controversial To Kalon Vineyard Co. brand.
What it was introducing at this new Prisoner event was a wine that was leaping up to a new price category – the pinnacle, as it were – of $200 a bottle.
But it was not so simple as handing out tastes of this unnamed (until the reveal) new wine to the guests. On arrival, we were given the name of a group. Mine was “Thorn”; two people I talked to were in “Squiggles.” We would be summoned, we were told, when our time came.
It might have been the dark, suggestive setting — although the skeleton I remembered from my first visit was gone — but as we were being sorted into groups, it brought to mind a British television show my daughter and her Scottish husband find enthralling. In “The Traitors” contestants are transported to a remote Scottish castle, divided into the Faithful and the Traitors. The Traitors are instructed to set about murdering the Faithful, while the Faithful try to unmask the Traitors before they become Victims. Whoever survives wins a jackpot of cash. (Being murdered, I should note, means you get a letter saying you have been murdered.) I believe there is now an American version of this super-popular show.
At any rate, when the Thorn group of eight was called first, I was not altogether certain we weren’t going to find out we were supposed to murder the Squiggles. But no, we were just taken to a room where wine bottles were arranged on a glass table and hidden under burgundy velvet coverings.
A leader awaiting us introduced (but did not uncover) the wine bottles: It was a red blend, a limited edition of 200 or 300 cases. (I heard two different numbers; there’s apparently not an official word on it, but either way, it is not very much.)
To see the wine bottles uncovered, however, we had to move as a group to Room No 2. Everyone passed the bottle around, duly admiring its impressive heft — heavy as a watermelon — its wax capsule and its elegant presentation in a red velvet frame inserted into a black box.
Meanwhile, two of the marketing executives told us more: This new wine was a project four years in the making with fruit from Stags Leap, 2023 vintage. The goal? They explained: “We wanted to make a 100-point wine.”
Its name? The Grail.
I do not think I was the only one wondering: Would we ever actually taste it?
Ah! This was left for Room No. 3, where we went next. The winemakers were waiting there with glasses of The Grail.
Here I realized the downside of this elaborate reveal – and I am sure a team in New York worked very hard thinking it up – but with such a buildup, one might reasonably expect not just wine to come out of the bottle but a genie, too, cracking jokes and granting three wishes. Or at least fireworks.
And the wine? It was fine; it was lovely, even if it was a bit of an anti-climax. Also, it was one more bottle of a cab-dominated, 15.5 percent alcohol Napa Valley red blend. Would the introduction make it stand out?
On the positive side, however, no one had to murder anyone.
I took my Wagyu beef pairing out to Luz, waiting in my car, and the winery team graciously invited her in. While she scouted for more samples, I talked to guests. They were from all over: Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana, Boston. Some were on their first visit to Napa Valley. They were polite about the experience; most admitted they had little to compare it to.
“I don’t know anything about wine,” one woman admitted. “I know I have to learn.”
I shared with her the wisest observation I had ever heard about wine, years ago, when I accompanied a group of visitors on a tour of the valley. We made a stop at Chimney Rock, where the winemaker at the time, Doug Fletcher, was pelted with questions from people anxious to learn about wine, worried that they were smelling the wrong things in it, identifying the wrong notes or liking — god forbid — the wrong wines. How could they learn it all?
“You know,” Fletcher said, “it’s just wine.”
Back on the tour bus, people were genuinely shocked that he would say such a thing. But I hope they figured out that it was true.
Before we left, Luz and I walked through the vineyards, and I thought about my own introduction to wine: It was something my grandparents drank. They had a ritual. My mother told me that every Friday my grandfather would take his jug to a wine-making friend who made a blend to his specification for him. It was labeled Cordova’s Blend, Cordova being my grandparents’ last name. My grandfather would bring home his weekly jug, and each evening my grandparents would have a glass together, sitting at their little round table, drinking from their cut-glass Woolworth’s glasses. I wish now I knew what that blend had been.
In the world we live in now, wine has become all kinds of things, both a mystery and a formula, a profit, a loss and either way an immense investment, a lot of hard work. For some, the elaborate game may be part of the fun; for others the personal ritual is the pleasure. But in the end, it really is just wine.
—
Sasha Paulsen is a Napa Valley-based novelist and journalist.
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Ah Sasha, its been a while but once again, worth the wait. "Its just wine." What a perfect response to the overwhelming pretense that has become the Napa Valley wine scene. I grew up in the Valley and enjoyed some of the great cabs and other red wines before they became the private domain of people with whom I had nothing else in common. Many of them wonderful people for sure, but the wines they made and marketed were simply removed from my realm of experience. Its wonderful to revisit that world through your eyes, and Luz's as well. Write on!
Relax, it’s just wine. Who doesn’t love Doug F. (No one) :-) very good story about a new release gather. Great stuff!