I’m a fan of Sean Thackrey and his wines — and have posted about him previously. I received an email sent out to his mailing list and thought I would post it here as you might want to pick up some Pleiades XVI. He says he will not be making that again for a while, but It sounds like he has some other interesting projects in the works.

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Dear Friends:

No, this isn’t the annual autumn wine offering; that will come along at its usual time, which should be the first week in October.

But it will come along without Pleiades, and I thought you should be forewarned of this fact while there was still time to do something about it.

In other words, we bottled the Pleiades XVI earlier this year, and are not planning another Pleiades bottling any time soon; which means that what remains of Pleiades XVI is all that there’s going to be for a while; and what remains will almost certainly be gone by October.

So it occurred to me that there might be much lamentation and rending of both vestments & wine-maker if I didn’t tell you this now, as opposed to then.

Thus, last call. If you do want more Pleiades – at least up to one case – right now is the time to say so. It can, of course, be shipped now as well, although I’d strongly advise waiting until the weather cools; my suggestion is that we store the Pleiades for you (at no charge) until the autumn offering comes out, and ship the two together. The price ($288./case, $24./bottle, less your usual discount) is unchanged: just return this e-mail with a note of what you’d like to order, be sure to include your preferred contact telephone number, and Leslie will do the rest, as usual.

Otherwise, we have a number of projects in spiritual fermentation at the moment, and now is as good a time as any to let you know about some of them.

When I first named my wines after constellations, I thought one virtue would be an immediate association of the former with the latter. But no. It turns out a startling number of people seem not even to have heard of the constellations; thus, answering questions about what “Ply-aidis”means, or hearing “Orion” pronounced as in “Oreo”, etc. But, not one to give up easily, it dawned on me there’s actually one constellation every American knows: that’s The Big Dipper, and I think it’s a splendid name for a wine; so I’ve trademarked it. It’ll be less expensive than the Pleiades, and probably will be a négociant production, which I expect to be a challenge and quite a lot of fun.

Then there’s my pink wine for the airhead niche market – being blond, I have a natural affection for airheads – to be called “Fifi” (& with the slogan, “Gosh; it came out all pink!”); probably a rosé of Sangiovese, but I’m still working on it.

And then there’s at least one more Pinot Noir, this one called “Cassiopeia”, & made from the splendid produce of a perfectly situated and organically farmed vineyard in the Anderson Valley, Mendocino.

And two more wines from an equally perfectly farmed and situated vineyard in Knight’s Valley; the first being a revival of the Taurus I made in the late 1980′s, thus a Mourvèdre; and the second a Viognier, to be called Lyra, which may turn out to be the first white wine I’ve ever released with a label on it.

But in the meanwhile, leap to your mice, or at least don’t say I didn’t warn you.

with all best wishes,

Sean

Sean Thackrey
e-mail: sean@wine-maker.net
website: http://www.wine-maker.net

Visit his site to learn more about him and also sign up to his mailing list.