Sean Thackrey’s Orion: A Complete Retrospective
Of all of the cult wines of California, Sean Thackrey’s singular Orion bottling is right at the top of my personal list, particularly so as I've been following this consistently fascinating wine since its maiden voyage in 1986. Orion is shrouded in mystery, created by an autodidact who lives off the wine grid in the wilds of western Marin County and has never actively promoted his wines.
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In The Cellar with Sean Thackrey. Click here to watch the video.
A Garagiste and a Scholar
In an earlier life, Thackrey co-owned and ran an art gallery in San Francisco specializing in original posters, prints, drawings and photographs from 1970 until he sold it in 1995. (Thackrey’s special area of expertise is 19th-century European photographs.) He has also assembled an extensive library of rare and ancient texts about wine and winemaking. With no technical background in winemaking, Thackrey began his own wine venture as a hobby, after having bought a house in 1977 in the fog-enshrouded coastal town of Bolinas, barely 15 miles northwest of San Francisco as the crow flies but half a world away. (The Bolinas Lagoon, rich in waterfowl, is a protected tidal estuary that sits in a trough formed by the San Andreas fault.) He planted a few rows of grape vines on his property because he liked the way they looked, then decided to make a bit of wine, purchasing fruit from Wine and the People in Berkeley, which at the time supplied home winemakers with high-quality grapes. He soon discovered his métier.
Thackrey took a few extension courses at UC/Davis in the early ‘80s but he makes it abundantly clear that he views winemaking as an art rather than a science. Actually, he thinks of himself more as a chef: “I make the best wines I can from the raw materials that are available to me, and I’m constantly improvising with that in mind.” Although Thackrey began with varieties like Merlot, Cabernet, Petite Sirah, Sangiovese and Mourvèdre and has produced numerous other wines through the years, including Pinot Noir since 2001 and his multi-vintage Pleiades blend, Orion became his flagship wine from the first year he made it.
