Orin Swift Cellars

My husband and I stopped by Orin Swift after lunch in downtown St. Helena. Like many of its fans, we’d heard of the winery because someone once gave us a bottle of Prisoner. Since we found ourselves a block away, we decided to walk in for a tasting. The place was busy, but we didn’t need an appointment and were served immediately.
The space was very attractive, chic and cozy, compact but comfortable. Unlike a lot of St. Helena wineries, Orin Swift’s location is just a tasting room – no grounds or anything, and the visit doesn’t take long. The staff was knowledgeable and friendly – we were helped by a pretty woman with short hair and a nose ring (didn’t get her name), and she was great, just really nice and on top of everything.
There were three flights available for tasting, two at $ 10 and one at $ 20. We split the Tails Flight and The Finite Few, and these were both fun, with four wines each, poured side by side. The pours were sized so we could both get substantial samples of every wine. The Tails Flight included the 2013 Mannequin (chardonnay), the 2013 Palermo (cabernet), the 2013 D66 (grenache blend), and the NV Muté (dessert wine). The Finite Few brought out the 2014 Veladora (sauvignon blanc), the 2014 Slander (pinot noir), the 2013 Mercury Head (cab), and the 2013 Machete (petite syrah). We liked pretty much all of these, and walked out with a bottle each of the Mannequin and the Palermo. Not quite enough to get tasting fees waived, but worth it. I look forward to drinking both.
I get the sense that Orin Swift is a young, hip winery, with good wines at affordable (if not cheap) prices and visually interesting branding. It felt less like the product of a rich white dude’s retirement hobby than most of the other places we visited. Not that there’s anything wrong with wineries with infinite budgets, but this was a neat variation, and I enjoyed our tastings immensely.

The building from the outside looks like a 19^th century British Pub. The inside has really cool décor, and a dark, industrial vibe. You should go to see the floors alone.
They have three different tasting flights, all reasonably priced from $ 10 to $ 20. What is great is you can taste their more widely know wines like El Matador, etc and then go into their more rare signature wines like Mercury Head cab (a beast but $ 120) and El Machete which was very good but sold out already.
If you did not know, on a side note, Orin Swift (not the owner’s name) does the regional wines with the single letter (S for Spain, A for Argentina, etc) which you can find at Safeway for a good price point.
The staff here was excellent, and had a more laid back feel, not as stuffy as some Napa estates. Check it out if you are downtown for sure!

What a great spot to do a wine tasting. The service was excellent and the winners were even better. I came years ago before there was a tasting room and this was definitely a huge upgrade, Thanks BONES for a nice tasting

The staff very friendly and helpful, but the tasting room felt a little too «hip» for me. We were also inundated by a bus full of guests, which takes away from the experience. Prefer tasting rooms on site.

huge fan of prisoner so i decided to check this out a little to hipster for my taste defiantly geared toward the yuppies from the tech industry a huge change from prisoner if your a fan of prisoner you may not like the feeling of this new winery the Japanese book floor was cool touch and the the trap door bathroom was also nice the stone gives a cool cave feel to tasting room and makes it seem larger than it really is it was Ok experience but not the same as prisoner still worth checking out if you are a fan of prisoner still worth checking out parking is extremely hard in this town and they no seating so that was a little annoying.

I love their wines, but that is the simple part.
Customer service is a lost art, but Ryann and Monica (wine club) excel at this part of the business.
Kudos to both.

What a surprise this was for us.
Very good wine in a very busy location. Parking is not easy to be had, but once you’ve parked, make sure you stop in here.
Very good wine, but also very elusive, as we got to taste three or four that they had no supply of to sell us. The offered to get us on the list for the next release, but we had to commit to buying six bottles. It’s so good that we’re thinking about it, but it’s an expensive commitment.
To conclude this short review, stop in, check it out, taste the good stuff, buy what you can, think about the club, and all the best. «Bones» poured for us, and he was patient and helpful, explaining the art on the labels as well as the philosophy of the wine maker. Again, great!

McCoy «Bones» Ayers was iut fun and informative server. 100% of the proceexs from the Sauvignon Blanc go to a local charity. It was a nice light wine. All of the wines were excellent. Sadly… the one I liked the most was sold out. As was one other on the flight I tasted. It was disappointing to enjoy a wine without the chance of purchacing. Cool fraphic labels created by the wine maker.

Charming tasting room with very friendly staff.
I sincerely enjoyed every red wine I tried. The staff even gave us a few extra tastings as we figured out which one to purchase.
The tasting room is small, but clean and bright. I enjoyed hunting for the secret bathroom door hidden in the wall!

I can’t tell if I truly like all of their wines or not. Some of it is too sweet but their D66 wine is really yummy.
This is a small tasting room. Staff is friendly and happy to share information about the winemaker and his unique take on winemaking. Really fun labels on the bottles — all image based.

I love there wines finally got to stop by and check the tasting room wish they would’ve had more exclusive wines available but still enjoyed my visit.

What an aesthetic! I loved everything visual about this place. The space itself, despite being decorated in such dark tones and being somewhat cavernous, was still richly interesting and appealing. The restroom was damn swanky. Everything was beautiful and minimalist, though with a bent toward the hipster. The labels on the wines are compelling and exciting; you can’t help but be curious about them!
Sadly, once curiosity is fulfilled, you realize that the tasting room is the truly great part of the Orin Swift experience. The wines are middling, and the rose was a downright disappointment. I found the chardonnay (Mannequin) and one of the reds (Abstract) to be pretty decent, but neither was compelling enough to make me want to buy a bottle. The port-​style desert wine was also pretty good.
Our server was a little bit too enthusiastic about the owner/​winemaker and talked him up constantly in the fashion of an Apple fanboy gushing about Steve Jobs. It got a little awkward at some moments. A little too much adulation, y’know? Overall, though, he was very nice, and had good knowledge of the wines, though not as much of the winemaking as we would have liked.
It’s a convenient location and a visually thrilling place, but the wines, while decent, aren’t anything worth going out of the way for. Since it’s convenient, though, I think it’s worth dropping in while you’re walking around downtown St Helena. Their tasting flights are also much more reasonably priced than many other places, coming at $ 10 for four pours, where most other places in Napa seem to set $ 20 as the minimum, so that was a refreshing change.

Really unique wines that were delicious from every angle. Tasting room is very cool and tastings are just $ 10 – 20. We subscribed to their super exclusive club and can’t wait to get our first case.

Visited on ¹⁰⁄₂₉. Spent about 45 minutes with Katie — amazing host and fantastic knowledge of everything she poured! Absolutely loved China Doll, Mannequin, Abstract and NV Mute. Without pressure from Katie, we joined the Milk Run and Equinox wine clubs. I highly recommend a visit to Orin Swift if you are looking for something «different». Thanks Katie!!!

4 stars for the Orin Swift portfolio — they produce some solid wines. Papillon and Veladora (yes, a white!) are two of my favorites and the reasons that we are members of their club.
However, the tasting experience only gets 2 stars — thus my average of 3. We have visited the new space twice now and both times the experience was just okay. The space itself is obviously very cool, but their people seem to share a generally lackadaisical attitude. We have never felt particularly welcome there like we do at the other wineries we know well and/​or of which we are club members. The guy that did our tasting last weekend was kind of a jerk on top of it. They aren’t snobby, they just don’t care.
When I first was exposed to Orin Swift, I figured that they had to be all smoke in mirrors. Cool designs and branding, but was it schtick or could the wine stand up to it? And it does! David designs the bottles himself and yes, they are cool — but the wine inside them is actually great.
You get a mix of patrons here — from those who clearly have lots of money to spend and genuinely love the wines/​know their stuff, and then a younger/​less wine educated crowd that has a lot to say about their branding and the space. The tasting experience here is not as «educating,» so if you are wanting to learn a thing or two about wine you may want to visit some other wineries first. It seems as though they assume that the people that visit them already have some familiarity with their wines.
Maybe things would be different if I were a hipster.

After entering the cool old building and wondering if we were in someone’s office, we opened the door to see a large table with a group of folks. It was awesome! Small group setting and excellent explanations of the history of the brand and a vision of the future. Oh! Let’s not forget great tasting of many great wines!

One of my favorite tasting rooms of all time. It’s industrial, modern, super edgy and the staff completed the experience. Not to mention the wine is fantastic! Can’t wait to visit again soon!

I was out in the San Francisco area for a weekend and it was literally a weekend. Not a three day weekend. Not a four day weekend… a single tightly scheduled weekend.
I also love wine. I collect wine. My exposure prior to visiting Orin Swift Cellars is with the Prisoner brand. My exposure out of San Francisco is pretty much a fantastic experience both in the tasting room and with the wines. The décor was admittedly a little loud, but if you stand towards the front door at the corner… the echo is not nearly as bad.
I cannot say about other folks but my friends and I had an exemplary time going through the tasting lists and sharing impressions. The wines are phenomenal in the classic Orin Swift fashion: Loud, bold, and able to hit you with a 2×4 but still leave room for complexity and craft. I admittedly prefer quieter blends from France or my native commonwealth of Virginia (don’t laugh, there are actually good wine makers in VA) but when I want the loudest, most aggressive, knock out of the park wine that is emblematic of California, I open a bottle of Orin Swift and call it a day, and a night, and possibly a second night.
When you go to Napa Valley, good wineries and good wine are dime a dozen. Few are made with the finesse and artistry of how Dave Phinney crafts his wines. D66 2010, if you can find it, is sublime for the intensity that it brings to the table. The D66 from 2011 is a bit… rougher. Some may like it that way. It’s been divisive amongst my social circle of wine drinkers.
I cross great distances to go to great wineries. I love a good glass of wine. Suffice to say, OSC was the only place I visited during my short trip in San Francisco (don’t worry, I had my share of other wines from other quality makers during meals at the area restaurants), and that was not because I ran out of time, but a deliberate choice to head to the best.

Wow, I was a HUGE fan of Orin Swift when they had their «unofficial» wine tasting room in the upstairs warehouse of the big brick building in downtown St. Helena. Now, they’ve opened up a swanky, modern space across the street. No more waived tasting fees or super personalized service. We checked out the new tasting room on our visit last month and were so disappointed.
The service was fine, but the room is so modern (think lots of concrete so it’s unbearably LOUD in there) that you just want to taste as quickly as possible and get the heck out. The wines were lacking too. I’ve always been a huge champion of all of Orin Swift’s portfolio but I have to say that every wine that was being poured ended up disappointing me. Yes, even the Papillon!
Note that Orin Swift has sold their popular Prisoner brand to a big wine conglomerate that is now mass-​producing case after case of it (and believe me when I tell you that the quality has suffered greatly). What a bummer.

Our Orin Swift adventures started with our love for The Prisoner. We were sad when it was sold to a different winery. Not as good! To our extreme delight, every single wine we tasted were phenomenal, even better than the earlier vintages of Prisoner!
We enjoyed Abstract 2011, D66, Triggerfiger, etc. was a bummer not to be able to taste Mercuryhead… Someday!
We WILL be back. We will recommend to anyone. And we have become members of one of their clubs.
(I had tears of happiness while trying most of the wines)
They know what they’re doing with reds and red blends!