Sean Thackrey Pleiades XXIII Old Vines

Imagine putting a band together every year, just to make the music you could hear in your head. You could choose any line up, of any size, and know that the egos wouldn't clash and they'd focus totally on the music. Sean Thackrey's been doing that with grapes for his Pleiades wine for the past 21 years. This year Pinot Noir and Sangiovese make up the front line, but as ever Thackrey has written for his sidemen as well. He brings the best out of the blend, which includes Viognier, Mourvèdre and Petite Syrah, to create a wine of truly Ellingtonian orchestration. It has heartening flavours of orange peel, red berries and warm spice that form wave upon wave of harmonious brilliance.

Sean Thackrey started making wine in 1979, having previously traded in antique books. He rather stubbornly insists on making remarkable wines the way he likes them, and to this day he refuses to release a wine if it doesn't quite live up to his personal standards.

This excerpt from an interview he gave in 1992 pretty much sums up Sean’s winemaking philosophy: "Why have dinner with a wine whose company you wouldn't enjoy if it were a person? The Pleiades is the perfect example, since its only intention is to be good company. But what is one's idea of good company if not the immediate expression of one's actual personal pleasures? When I used to eat at La Coupole in Paris years ago, I'd be seated next to a hooker, or a Marxist accountant, or a pig broker and his wife from the Auvergne, and I'd find out all sorts of things about which I hadn't had a clue before; while being benevolently supplied with Belons and Sancerre, confit and Vacqueyras, and of course I'd wish I could eat there every night. So of course I want the Pleiades to be that sort of company."

Sean Thackrey crafts his wines in Marin County, to the west of Sonoma, in his outdoor winery amid eucalyptus trees. Fruit for Pleiades is sourced from a variety of vineyard sites, is aged in old oak and fined with egg white. No filtration takes place. Pleiades does not carry a vintage statement, being identified simply by Roman numerals, and the wine does not consist of the same grape varieties from one year to the next. Sean's mould is well and truly broken.

Pleiades XXIII is a highly individual wine, whose blend includes Pinot Noir, Sangiovese, Viognier and Mourvèdre in untold proportion. Fragrant and sensuous, it has flavours of orange peel, red berries and warm spice.

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