ORIN SWIFT ADVICE FROM JOHN MERLOT 750ML 2024

Advice From John began as a side project sparked by curiosity. When Dave Phinney’s longtime assistant, Samantha Smith, asked for time off to visit New Orleans and Austin, Texas, she admitted it was to wander dive bars across the US photographing the so-called ‘words of wisdom’ scrawled inside bathroom stalls. The project expanded well beyond the States—she travelled internationally, compiling a compendium of thousands of photographs capturing what people write in bathrooms around the world. That archive eventually became a book, Advice From John, organised into themed chapters drawn entirely from restroom stall graffiti. Samantha selected a handful of favourites and enlarged them dramatically on metal, and this label features one such phrase pulled from a restroom stall in Dallas, Texas. As Dave Phinney explains, the idea behind the wine was simple: what are people actually telling us? Price matters. The goal was to create something approachable, by the glass, under $20, and—crucially—a wine people would want to order a second time. Merlot was the natural choice, sourced from Gallo-owned sites to achieve both quality and value. The wine delivers exactly what it promises: a genuine yum factor, with mixed berry fruit, vibrant sweet spices, and plump, velvet-textured tannins. There’s a chalky mineral note on the finish, followed by pleasant cocoa powder and slate-like nuances. It over-delivers at the price point—and the story behind it is, frankly, hilarious.