The Shapeshifter, the Egg & the Mythic Hand

The story of Therianthropy begins with a grumpy birdman — a half-human, half-eagle creature trapped in a suit, dreaming of something more. This was the first character created for the label, and it is a self-portrait of sorts. David Eiberg — whose original surname was Örnberg, Swedish for "Eagle Mountain" — was not born into wine. He was an investment banker, working in the corporate world with the same restlessness that the eagle-man on the label conveys. But like the shapeshifter he imagined, Eiberg was destined to transform. He left finance, threw himself into winemaking, and in 2020 — in the middle of a pandemic, in a tiny space in Creemore, Ontario — he released his first wines. The debut was the David "Eagle" Gamay, a wine that married his name, his heritage, and his beloved grape variety into a single, mythological being.

By his side was Anastasia Phillips — a Canadian actress with film and television credits, and the creative engine behind the project's visual identity. It was Phillips who envisioned the shapeshifter universe: a world where every grape variety has a creature, every creature has a story, and every story connects the drinker to the wine in a way that no conventional label ever could. "We had the vision of a grumpy birdman, trapped in a suit, dreaming of something more — a similar situation to my previous life in investment banking," Eiberg explained. From that first eagle, the pantheon grew: Claire de Lune for Riesling — a whimsical, moonlit being; The Negotiant for Cabernet Franc — a superhero figure embodying the négociant's power; Bonnie Viviant for Chardonnay — luxuriously self-indulgent; and Le Maillot — a half-deer, half-woman resting her head against a giant cork on a Vancouver beach. The concept was not mere decoration; it was the soul of the brand — a recognition that wine, like mythology, is about transformation.

The project began with "sheer exuberance" — Eiberg and Phillips didn't know where it would lead. The first wines, tasted in June 2020, were raw, funky, and divisive — the kind of low-intervention expressions that challenge palates accustomed to polished, commercial wines. But four years later, the project had evolved dramatically. Eiberg moved Therianthropy to the Niagara Custom Crush Studio (known as The Crush), secured a manufacturing and retailing licence, and built a cellar that is a maze of concrete and ceramic eggs, Flexi-egg tanks, and a handful of neutral oak barriques used only when small quantities of fruit don't fill the eggs. The wines grew in precision, purpose, and clarity. What began as exuberance became intention — a library of now 19 different wines that shows a clear path to the style Eiberg wants to produce: site-specific, bone-dry, unfiltered, and as close to the fruit and terroir as possible.

Therianthropy's winemaking philosophy is distilled into a clear, uncompromising ethos. Organically farmed site-specific grapes. Wild fermentations. Low intervention. Low to zero sulphite additions. Long élevage. No flavour or colour manipulation. All wines fermented bone dry. No fining or filtering. No new oak — only neutral barriques when necessary. And a move toward lightweight glass bottles. This is not a marketing checklist; it is a technical protocol that governs every decision in the cellar. David Eiberg's goal is simple: "to get the drinker as close to the fruit and terroir as possible" — to remove every layer of winemaker intervention between the vineyard and the glass.

The cellar at the Niagara Custom Crush Studio is a maze of eggs — concrete eggs, ceramic eggs, and oxygen-free Flexi-egg tanks that dominate the fermentation and aging program. These vessels are chosen deliberately: they provide gentle, natural convection that keeps lees in suspension without stirring, adding texture and complexity without the influence of oak. Stainless steel tanks handle the cooler fermentations and aromatic whites. Neutral French oak barriques (225L) appear only when a small lot of fruit doesn't quite fill an egg — a pragmatic choice, not a stylistic one. The techniques vary with the wine: carbonic maceration for the juicy, glou-glou reds like Le Maillot; whole-cluster fermentation with extended skin contact for the structured Cabernet Franc and orange wines; direct press and lees aging for the fresh whites; and accidental flor development for the Bonnie Vivant Chardonnay — a twist of fate that Eiberg embraced rather than corrected.

What ties these disparate techniques together is patience and acceptance. Eiberg embraces vintage variation — he doesn't chase consistency from year to year, but rather builds a library of wines that shows what each vintage brings. The long élevage (many wines spend 6 to 30 months in cellar before release) allows the wines to find their own balance. The absence of fining and filtering preserves the raw, living character of the wine — the sediment, the haze, the microbial memory of the vineyard. And the minimal sulfur (often zero additions) means that every bottle continues to evolve from the moment it is sealed to the moment it is opened. This is winemaking as shapeshifting — not forcing the wine into a predetermined form, but allowing it to transform according to its own nature, its own site, and its own vintage.

Therianthropy Wines is not merely a winery; it is a proof that the most profound Ontario wines can come from a négociant model — from a project with no vineyards, no estate, and no inherited terroir — when the winemaker treats every site with reverence and every vintage with patience. In an era when the Ontario wine industry is still finding its voice, David Eiberg and Anastasia Phillips demonstrate that the most exciting Canadian wines come not from owning land but from building relationships — from finding special pockets across the province and expressing them with minimal intervention and maximum creativity. The same concrete eggs that were considered unconventional have become the signature vessel of a house style defined by texture and purity. The same wild yeasts that conventional wineries fear have become the microbial fingerprint that makes every Therianthropy bottle a unique, unrepeatable snapshot of a specific block in a specific year. And the same mythological labels that some might dismiss as gimmickry have become the project's moral core — a reminder that wine is storytelling, transformation, and the magic of grapes becoming something else entirely.

The legacy of Therianthropy is the legacy of the transforming hand in Canadian viticulture. The ~2020 founding is not a distant memory but a living declaration — a reminder that the best wines are made by people who embrace change, who accept that every vintage is different, and who trust their intuition more than their spreadsheets. The shapeshifter concept is not a marketing angle but a philosophical core — a recognition that grapes, like humans, have the capacity to become something other than what they appear. The long élevage is not a delay but a statement of patience — a belief that wine needs time to find its own form, just as a caterpillar needs time to become a butterfly. And the zero-addition approach is not negligence but confidence — a refusal to mask what nature has created with chemicals, oak, or correction.

The future of the project is tied to the future of the Ontario natural wine movement — to the growing recognition that the most authentic wines come not from the most famous estates but from the most committed négociants. As the Bonnie Vivant Sous Voilà continues to introduce drinkers to the savoury possibilities of accidental flor, as the Mouflon range proves that Ontario orange wines can be both approachable and profound, as Le Maillot demonstrates that Cabernet can be glou-glou and chill, and as The Negotiant shows that Ontario Cabernet Franc can rival the Loire in elegance and ageability, Therianthropy remains what Eiberg and Phillips have always intended it to be: a mythological winery without vineyards — a shapeshifting project that sources from nine sites across Ontario, ferments in concrete eggs, and bottles the results with labels that tell stories of eagles, deer, and moonlit dreamers — structured not by real estate or tradition but by transformation, mythology, and the eternal reminder that wine, like the creatures on the labels, is a living thing that refuses to stay the same. The story of this winery is the story of an investment banker and an actress who looked at the Ontario wine industry and decided to write a fairy tale — and who proved that the best Canadian bottle is sometimes the one with a grumpy birdman on the label, a hazy copper hue in the glass, and a soul that continues to shapeshift with every year in the cellar.