Sean Thackrey "Pleiades" XIII

Region: California, US

Composition: Syrah, Barbera, Zinfandel, Carignane, Pinot Noir, Mourvedre, Grenache

Background: I have always loved this wine, but this is the first time I sat down to deconstruct it and try to figure out what it is that I love about it. Pleiades is Sean Thackrey's sort of entry-level wine, his "kitchen sink" wine, as he calls it, because he throws just about everything and anything into it. It's also his largest-production wine, and he makes about 2,500 cases a year. Which is part of the reason I have had this wine enough to decide I love it, and not Thackrey's Orion or Andromeda, which are much harder to find (and the Andromeda is a new effort for him and only came out this year, so I would have to be very fast to have drunk a lot of it by now). Pleiades is the recipient of Thackrey's failed attempts to make other wines, and (as the recent SFGate article about Thackrey mentions), he puts these failures into his nonvintage Pleiades, which he calls a "disobedient wine":

"It pays no attention to winemaking rules," he says of Pleiades. "I use fruit that's incomplete. Some has good flavor and not much mouthfeel. Some has good mouthfeel and not much flavor."

Whatever he is up to, it seems to work, and his ability to blend the grapes into something interesting and cohesive is a success. It's a circus of wine, and you can practically detect each of the varietals in it... the spiciness of the Zinfandel and Syrah, the softness of the Pinot Noir and Grenache, the backbone the Carignane and Malbec give it, and the acid of the Barbera. It's not the most elegant wine, perhaps, and it is probably too over the top for some, but I think it is interesting and fun and is enjoyable to drink.

Notes: This is a rich purplish-ruby in the glass, and has a nose so strong it practically jumps out at you-- you can smell it across the table. It's filled with dark rich fruit, bramble, eucalyptus, and some pine resin and sweet mint (a minty smell that isn't really green). On the palate it is fruit-driven with a ton of black raspberry, blackberry, and plum, along with a pleasant but not overwhelming amount of warm spices like white pepper, black pepper, and nutmeg. The finish is slightly leathery with a little bit of raisin (which makes sense here since Thackrey often uses the passito method, in his own way, of course, when he makes wine). The wine has a good acidity to match the fruit, and very soft tannins... you get more spice than tannin on this. As it got more air it became more earthy and leathery in nature, with the fruit taking more of a back seat, and it would be interesting to revisit this one with a decanter and see what happens over time (I will have to try that in the future, since I have some stashed away at home). The finish is medium long, and overall the wine went well with an Indian-style pizza we were having (the spice of the pizza went well with the spice in the wine).

Cost: $15-$18 (good luck finding it... Wine Searcher might score you some, and I know the San Francisco Wine Trading Company had some last time I went by, but that was months ago. Weimax gets it in on occasion, and right now the restaurant Geranium has the Pleiades as well as some of Thackrey's other wines on the wine list).

Overall: A