DAVE PHINNEY’S SAVAGE & COOKE
At 7:48am on December 7, 1941, air raid sirens droned weakly underneath tumult and chaos, muffled by the angry sounds of exploding bombs, the steel of ships and aircraft being pierced and contorted, and men and women screaming as they sought in vain for shelter. Over the next several hours, the Japanese Imperial Navy would succeed in damaging every battleship at Pearl Harbor, sinking half of them, while simultaneously killing more than 2,000 people and wounding over a thousand more. In the four days to follow, Japan, Italy and Germany would all declare war on the United States, a declaration to which America would respond in kind.
After more than two years of trying like hell to avoid getting involved in yet another foreign conflict, the United States would about face and begin preparations for entering what was to become the defining event of the 20th century: the Second World War. The one thing America would need more than anything in that battle would be the very thing Japan had attempted to take away that morning of December 7: ships.
Mare Island, near the city of Vallejo—and so named by General Mariano Vallejo, according to legend, as the place his prize white mare had been found after a barge capsized—rapidly became one of the busiest shipyards in the world. Factory buildings and Quonset-hut housing were quickly erected, eventually accommodating 41,000 workers in the war effort.
After the war, the need for such large-scale production of ships would ebb, and by the 1980s the number of employees on Mare Island would dwindle to 10,000. In 1993, President Bill Clinton approved the closure of the base, and a few years later the looming structures, equal to housing and creating entire fleets of battleships, would be shuttered, seemingly forever.
Enter: Dave Phinney.
Dave Phinney is a legend in the winemaking world, a vintner whose wines—Mercury Head, Abstract, Trigger Finger, Machete and, most recently, 8 Years in the Desert, become coveted cult wines almost immediately upon bottling. Arguably, what made Phinney famous was doing his own thing, damn the consequences. While most winemakers sought to craft wines that could be described as “balanced,” and would earn high marks from the oenological elite, specifically reviewers like Robert Parker and James Suckling, Phinney pursued winemaking as he saw fit, often resulting in wines that could be described as hyperbolic, even over the top.
Sometimes they garnered good scores from critics, sometimes not, but Phinney didn’t care, and neither did the millions of people who fell in love with his craft.
Phinney’s name became a household one when his wine labels The Prisoner, Orin Swift, Department 66 and Locations became household wines themselves, and soon serving a bottle of Pharaon (named for the ship in The Count of Monte Cristo) or Mercury Head, which comes adorned with an actual Mercury Head dime, carried the same prestige as serving a bottle of Chateau Petrus or Chateau Mouton Rothschild—except that far more people could afford it. “I love it when people tell me they saved their money and drank one of my wines on date night,” said Phinney.
At the helm of a winemaking empire, Phinney might not seem like a logical candidate to delve into the spirits industry, but in 2018 he opened Savage & Cooke, An American Distillery, in one of the abandoned brick structures on Mare Island. When the man who made his name in Napa was asked “Why Mare Island?” the response was indicative of the sort of thought and care that Phinney is known for putting into his wines. “It’s a combination of me being a student of history and loving the historical nature of the island,” Phinney began. “My grandfather was an archaeologist, so I have a deep respect for preserving [historic landmarks]—these amazing buildings are just sitting there ….” Then he added, “I’m glad to give Vallejo my tax money.”
Phinney’s desire to make spirits was birthed from a combination of factors. His distributors, of course, supported the proposition because it promised to be a lucrative endeavor, but that wasn’t going to be enough. “If you know me even tangentially,” said Phinney in response to this factor, “you know I don’t do anything just to make money.” But where the promise of money might have fallen short, an unlikely duo of nostalgia and pragmatism had their own roles to play. Fond memories of his father drinking single malts finished in sherry barrels coupled with the obvious fact that he had more wine barrels lying around than he could figure out what to do with seemed also to point in the direction of distilling. He also had a property in Alexander Valley that he needed to put to good use.
“I did a little reading. I learned the water [in spirits] is really important. We had this property up in Alexander Valley where we realized only after we bought it that putting in a vineyard would require a million-dollar road.
It just wasn’t going to work for wine. But it has this spring that brings 40 gallons to the surface naturally—no pump—every minute. We tested the water and found out it’s really good water. So that was the first domino to fall.” Eventually, whether it was nostalgia, pragmatism or business sense that had the final word, Phinney decided to go into distilling.
Enter: Jordan Via.
When Phinney started looking around for a partner in crime, Jordan Via came highly recommended. Via was living high up in the Rocky Mountains, working at Breckenridge Distillery, when a mutual acquaintance reached out to him. He’d made a grape-based vodka for Napa Valley Distillery more than a decade earlier, and had impressed the heck out of the owners with his abilities. Phinney and Via sat down and Phinney succeeded in talking Via into returning to California. “He was quite inspiring,” said Via, “and I spent the next couple years formulating our products and sourcing the equipment.” He also started looking around for the best ingredients he could find, and slowly but steadily Savage & Cooke began to take shape.
Today, walking into Savage & Cooke you’re almost sure to be greeted by Via. He’ll be distilling, and seemingly waiting for an opportunity to share their spirited products with any who find their way to Mare Island. Give him the opportunity, and he’ll talk excitedly about what makes their whiskey unique.
In addition to the special water being sourced from Phinney’s property in the Alexander Valley, a number of specially selected and locally grown grains find their way into the whiskey. The first is an heirloom corn called Bloody Butcher, suggestively named for being flecked in red spatter patterns. The corn’s appearance isn’t the only thing to make it stand out. “There’s variances in flavors of corn,” Via responded when asked about the decision to use this lower-yielding heirloom variety. “It’s more subtle than with grapes, but it’s there. [Bloody Butcher] has a sweeter, kind of nutty flavor that we like.”
They also use a hearty organic winter rye. Via explained that, going against the popular practice in the distilling industry of using six-row barley, they’d selected a lower-yield two-row barley for its flavor profile and substantially higher starch content. Aft er harvest, the barley is malted at Alameda’s Admiral Maltings, using a meticulous artisanal practice called “floor malting,” in which, over two and a half weeks, the barley is kilned at just the right temperature to extract the enzymes and ready it for distilling.
It is clear that Phinney and Jordan are applying the same attention to detail in distilling that Phinney has become famous for as a winemaker, but Phinney humbly remarks, “He’s a legend in the business— I give all the credit to Jordan. We do the final blends together, and it is a collaboration … but mainly it’s Jordan.”
For all of this effort, Savage & Cooke is producing some truly spectacular spirits.
Second Glance, The Burning Chair and Lip Service may be some of the most creatively named whiskeys on the market, and each matte black bottle bears a trademark Dave Phinney–style label, reminiscent of his wine labels, with an emphasis on an artistic image rather than words. Second Glance is an American Whiskey, 88 proof, five years old and finished in Phinney’s Napa Valley wine barrels. Bold, rich, oaky, nutty, it’s as beautiful an expression of corn as ever there was. The Burning Chair is a bourbon-style whiskey, aged in charred American oak and finished in wine barrels. Like Second Glance, it’s 88 proof, and also like Second Glance, it’s predominantly distilled from Bloody Butcher, then rounded out by rye and barley. Smooth despite the ABV, it has the sweet nature of bourbon, with notes of molasses, vanilla, cinnamon, toffee and more; it’s a beautiful take on an American classic. Lip Service, the rye whiskey, is 90 proof, and is the baby of the group at three years of aging. Vibrant, expressive, even exotic, Lip Service is a whiskey that begs to be tasted again and again—not unlike a complex wine.
“I wanted to apply a winemaking strategy to it, so we started growing our own grains,” said Phinney. “It’s a marathon,” said Via of that same process. And it’s one the two of them seem to be well-conditioned to run.
Left to right: Second Glance whiskey, Lip Service rye and Burning Chair bourbon
