“Marin Wine Cellar wasn't just a wine shop. It was a flat out mirage. Nothing existed like it, or ever would after the doors closed in 2006. Paul ran the shop, Harvey was the owner. The shop was in constant chaos. I walked in one time and saw '67 Yquem, '74 Martha's, '85 DRC and '78 Latour piled up like it was in the discount bin at the grocery store. ‘Lunch wines,’ Paul said.

“When David was looking for a bottle prototype, Paul and Harvey laid out hundreds of bottles, all from the late 1800s to early 1900s. They were relics, icons. The amazing thing is they were all hand blown. And if David had his way, he would have had one guy make each Abreu bottle the way they did back then. The bottles were so stylized, flamboyant, extreme, yet so light in weight. The punts were massive. After careful (painful) deliberation, David narrowed it down to an 1896 first-growth. He liked how it felt in his hand. He bought it, drank the wine with friends, then showed the bottle to some glass people who tried—and failed—to copy it. So he got the hospital to run a CAT scan on it, which revealed how dense it was. Finally someone connected him to a perfumer in France who was able to create the mold.

“Before David had this bottle made, glass companies only produced stock versions of standard bottles. No one was replicating old bottles—David showed them that looking back is just as important as looking forward.”

—Brad Grimes