Surprised at the criticism for Meoimi Pinot Noir. As others has said, it is a crowd pleaser, and your average wine consumer (which means 99% of the people who drink red wine) love it to death.
If you were going to set out to make a fruity, fruit forward Pinot Noir - they nailed it. I’ve had it a couple times, and it was downright delicious for what it was, a sweeter Pinot Noir for the masses. Not my style of wine, but who am I to judge.
Isn’t it easier to just praise the wines you like rather than spend all your time ripping the wines you don’t like? Life is just too short for that.
i keep stuff like this around the house as well, and don’t find it surprising that a lot of my friends like it. asides from true collectors/connoisseurs, these wines appeal to a very broad market, as is evidenced by meiomis numbers
I used to love the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon back in the 70’s (and it was reasonably priced!) but later all the Estate Cabernet went into the Special Selection. Really mercenary…
“Meiomi is roughly 97 percent Pinot Noir, with small amounts of other grapes, including Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay and Grenache, depending on the wine.”
Help me understand something. I have seen the Meiomi label, although not tasted it. I have recently though tasted the Belle Glos Clark and Telephone and didn’t care for it.
How are the two wines related from a business and winemaking perspective?
Meiomi grew out of a small Pinot Noir project named after his mother, Belle Glos. Joe started Belle Glos to focus on vineyard-designated Pinot Noirs.
The Wagners turned Belle Glos into a standalone brand in the aftermath of the 2004 film Sideways, an unexpected box office hit that helped trigger a boom in Pinot Noir sales at a time when only serious wine lovers were familiar with the grape. “Nobody cared about Pinot Noir [before Sideways],” Wagner, 33, said in an interview with Wine Spectator Wednesday. “After its release, all bets were off and you couldn’t make enough Pinot. [It] changed the dynamics of the industry for Pinot Noir.”
Suddenly the grape was in great demand. Hoping to draw attention to Belle Glos, Wagner created a lower-priced wine sourced from multiple vineyards. Meiomi is a Wappo Indian word for “coastal,” according to Wagner. The Wappos were indigenous people who lived in what is now Napa before the Spanish arrived.
Initially Meiomi was part of the Belle Glos line, but as the wine gained popularity, Wagner needed more grape sources, and he separated Meiomi into its own brand, sourcing grapes from coastal vineyards in Santa Barbara, Monterey and Sonoma counties.
Meiomi was originally the second bottling of Belle Glos, and IIRC was initially made with some of the declassified fruit from those vineyards. Now it is a ‘brand’ made with whatever fruit they can find that will fit the profile.
Frank - based on your notes and what you look for in Pinot this ain’t it. Congrats to the Wagner family though. Incredible success in such a short period of time.
Fred, it is interesting to me that those Caymus family pinots are so popular. The User count in CT for 2013 Clark and Telephone is 460, and over 700 for the 2013 Meiomi. People dig these wines. The Belle Glos C and T that I had recently was ripe, heavy, lacking delineation and just was ponderous to drink–I couldn’t finish my glass and dumped it. Yet, these wines seem to be what many do enjoy, and selling a label for the sum indicated above tells us a lot about what the market forces think people want to drink.
I was at SFO in December at the wine bar having a glass. Another guy there was looking at the bottles to buy and stated to the clerk he had just spent 4 days in Napa/Sonoma. When he saw the Meiomi, said it was his favorite wine from the trip and bought 4 750’s and 2 halves because ‘its wasn’t available’ where he lived. The stuff sells.
Although the reporter’s grasp of valuation multiples is tenuous enough (“a 24 times multiple against the brand’s present and future earnings”) that you have to kind of guess that’s what they meant.
Frank- the Belle Glos is the single top wine people tell me about when they hear I like wines and Pinot. It has a heck of a fan base and huge popularity in almost every steakhouse chain. I have the same reaction as you when I’ve tried it multiple times but the wines are not made for most of the folks on this board. Shows you how small a % we are of the wine drinking public.
Like you I had my run with full bodied pinot’s and used to buy and drink a lot of them. but somewhere along the way around 2007 vintage my taste shifted big time. Glad to see a style change in some producers and really happy with what I’ve discovered with Oregon. When I first saw this headline I thought this included the Belle Gloss wines as well. I don’t think it does. Really just a staggering success. I’d be at Press Steakhouse throwing down some serious wine and food to celebrate
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Did I miss the news?