Become a Member
Home The Wines Membership Events Our Story Contact
Become a Member Member Login

The Release Library

Story first.Specs second.

Every release from Gestalt Wine Company is a thematic collection — the wine, the label, the packaging, all telling one story, creative-directed by Dave Phinney. Wines are member-exclusive and never sold separately.

The shelf · tap a bottle

White Lines bottle07 · White Lines Keyed Up bottle06 · Keyed Up No Coincidence bottleMe and My Shadow bottleCall Your Mother bottle05 · The Throwback Kit Safe Word bottle04 · Safe Word Save Me San Francisco bottle03 · Save Me SF Awkward Silence bottle02 · Awkward Silence Broken Swallowtail bottle01 · Broken Swallowtail

Drop No. 7 · Current Release · First pour June 4, 2026

White Lines2025 Chardonnay

100% ChardonnaySanta Barbara County2025Never Oaked

Chardonnay gets blamed for a lot of things — most of them caused by oak. This one never met a barrel.

Dave Phinney took fruit from Santa Barbara County and let the tank do the talking: no oak, no makeup, just bright, preserved fruit and a clean line straight through. The label is a road at night — nobody in it, nowhere particular, just the lines pointing forward into the dark. The wine drinks the same way.

Meyer lemon and lime zest, white blossom, a hint of wet stone. Green apple and pear underneath, then a finish of toasted almond and a salt-air minerality that keeps circling back. Medium-bodied, linear, mouth-watering.

Open it on the patio while there’s still light on the water, with something that came out of the ocean this morning.

Join to receive it
White Lines 2025 Chardonnay bottle — a road at night on the label

The Library

Every dropso far.

Member-exclusive and final sale — these wines arrive with membership, not a checkout page. The stories are free.

White Lines 2025 Chardonnay — a road at night on the label

Drop No. 7 · Current release

White

White Lines

100% ChardonnaySanta Barbara County2025Never oaked

Chardonnay gets blamed for a lot of things — most of them caused by oak. This one never met a barrel. Tank-fermented and tank-kept, it’s all Meyer lemon and lime zest, white blossom, wet stone; green apple underneath, and a saline, salt-air finish that keeps circling back like the tide.

The label is a road at night — nobody in it, nowhere particular, just the lines pointing forward into the dark. The wine drinks the same way: linear, bright, headed somewhere. Open it while there’s still light on the water.

Keyed Up 2024 Pinot Noir — a key-scratched panel on the label

Drop No. 6

Red

Keyed Up

Pinot NoirRussian River / Sonoma Coast2024

The vineyard sits where two of California’s great Pinot appellations overlap — Russian River and Sonoma Coast — two regions that almost never share a bottle. Russian River brings the pretty fruit; Sonoma Coast brings the nerve. A textbook 2024 season — wet winter, midsummer heat, calm harvest — delivered both.

Cherries and raspberries up front, ripe but never heavy, with acidity that won’t sit still. The label is a fresh key-scratch — that charged, ready feeling, bottled. Open it on a weeknight when dinner turns out better than expected.

No Coincidence Pinot Noir — pink wax top and shotgun-splatter label Me and My Shadow Syrah — a father-and-son shadow on the label Call Your Mother Sauvignon Blanc — a green telephone on the label

Drop No. 5

Kit · 3 bottles

The Throwback Kit

Pinot NoirSyrah blendSauvignon Blanc

No Coincidence — 2021 Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot, high-elevation fruit, bing cherry and pomegranate. The label is literal shotgun art: paint-filled bottles fired at canvas with a vintage Belgian twelve-gauge.

Me and My Shadow — Columbia Valley Syrah with Viognier and a splash of Cab, built to stand next to a Northern Rhône cru. Fathers and sons in shadow on the label; the drop shipped with a typed letter about family from the winery.

Call Your Mother — Gestalt’s first Sauvignon Blanc, Napa fruit with a smidge of the aromatic Musqué clone, fermented in neutral oak for volume without the wood. Named for a Mother’s Day phone call Dave made from the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Marin County jail.

Safe Word 2023 Malbec — a gold-foil silhouette label

Drop No. 4

Red

Safe Word

MalbecChalk Hill, Sonoma2023

Malbec has an identity crisis — dark and brooding in France, fruit-forward and friendly in Argentina. Grown in the Chalk Hill district of Sonoma, Safe Word walks the line between the two: dark, serious, round, rich, structured, impeccably balanced.

Brambly fruit on the nose to announce the inbound treat, a clean entry that fans out into serious wine, and a finish that satisfies without wearing you out. The bottle to bring when someone claims they don’t like Malbec.

Save Me San Francisco — an Apollo capsule afloat in San Francisco Bay on the label

Drop No. 3

Red

Save Me San Francisco

Cabernet blendNapa & Sonoma2023With Pat Monahan of Train

A collaboration with Pat Monahan of Train — his palate helped shape the blend — and a fundraiser for Family House, a free home-away-from-home for families of kids in cancer treatment. Classic Cab tannin, compressed dark-berry density, light spice on the finish.

The label puts an Apollo capsule down in a teal San Francisco Bay — a rescue, mid-splash. It shipped with handwritten lyrics in a hand-stamped envelope. A liquid reminder that it’s the small human moments together that matter. Keep rockin’.

Awkward Silence — a portrait with the face wrapped in red thread on the label

Drop No. 2

Red

Awkward Silence

Zinfandel · Petite SirahCalifornia2023

Named for a bottling-room math mistake: a mostly-Zinfandel wine that couldn’t legally be called Zinfandel. The room went quiet; the name stuck. Two-thirds Zin, one-third Petite Sirah — the modern-classic pairing Dave’s first wine project made famous.

Brambly berry fruit, darker spice, chocolate underneath — built for cold-weather tables, though it needs no food to open up. The label’s red-thread portrait says the rest: some things are better left unsaid, and poured instead.

Broken Swallowtail — a stained-glass swallow on the label

Drop No. 1

Red

Broken Swallowtail

Zinfandel · CabernetCalifornia2023

The one that started the club — an homage to California, surfers’ spring suits to winemakers’ dusty boots. Heavy doses of Zinfandel, the most Californian of varieties, backed by Napa’s most famous, Cabernet — blended for deliciousness over dogma.

Brambly, jammy-but-not-sweet, with enough tannin for anything off the grill. The swallow on the label flies a little broken, a little beautiful — like the best evenings do. The bottle that disappears before you need a second one.

All wines are produced by Gestalt Wine Company and reserved for members — they’re part of membership, not a store. Final sale.

The creative director

Every labelleaves his studio.

Dave Phinney — the winemaker behind The Prisoner and Orin Swift — makes every Gestalt release a complete thought: the wine, the label, the letter in the box.

The labels are made things, not designed things — paint fired from a shotgun, portraits wrapped in thread, family photographed in shadow. Each drop arrives with its story, and the story holds up under a second bottle.

Creative-directed in Saint Helena. Poured first in the South Bay.

Dave Phinney in his studio, a collage wall and a wine-bottle splatter canvas behind him

Membership opens quarterly

The next bottle isalready resting.

The club stays intentionally sized so the experience stays personal. If now isn’t your moment, that’s all right — the patio isn’t going anywhere.

Become a Member Ask us anything