The right place at the right time: An afternoon w Myriad

We took a break from traveling to Napa the past 3 years but work brought me to San Fran this week and no way we were not going to take advantage of being so close to one of our favorite places. We’re doing a quick weekend that started Friday in Saint Helena. I reached out to Leah to let her know we would be in town and as luck turns out Mike had done a tasting the afternoon before with AG. Leah invited us to come by and join some others in an impromptu tasting of all the 17 and 18 barrel samples of Myriad and Quivet and some of Mikes clients wines as well.

This was clearly the largest single tasting I’ve ever sat through and unfortunately I didn’t get to all the 18 samples and also did not take notes so just some general impressions. All of the wines had been opened the day before then re-corked until we tried them.

If you bought the 17’s like many board members did you will be very happy. These wines were fresh, silky and full of flavor with depth and richness Mikes wines are known for. They are all very good to outstanding.

Standouts for me- Napa( crazy for what it delivers for the $), 3 Twins( this is always one of my favorites), Stelz, G3 Reserve, Elysian. The last 2 should be left alone for a few years as they have wonderful tannin and depth that should continue to develop and unfold in bottle over the next few years. If you missed out on the release the Napa is still available and I grabbed a few.

Client wines- I didn’t try most of the other wines Mike makes as there were so many wines to try but the Scarlett and Scarlett reserve were awesome. I don’t think I’ve had these before and Mike did a great job with their 17’s.

2018
Folks will want to load up on these wines. They are already showing so well in their development. Many tasted like complete wines already. I only tried a few of these.

Peterson Family Vineyard- new addition to the line up. Wowza ! Surprise of the entire day and a killer wine.
3 Twins- beautiful
Round Pound- killed it
Napa- winner and another silly value for the $

Leah let us know that they will be sharing a tasting room that will open soon in Yountville and they’ll be available a few days a week by appt only.

Cheers

Sounds serendipitous, Fred. Thanks for touting a 2017 Napa Cabernet - so many are afraid, and to my experience, they should fear not! “Full of flavor with depth and richness” sounds about right.

Hi Merrill
Agreed, especially with the majority of small producers discussed here. Way to much care about what goes into the bottle. So far the 17’s we’ve tried have all been quite good.

Thanks for posting the impressions, Fred. Sounds like a great time.

Interested to hear more about the Peterson Family Vineyard, if anyone knows more about that property.

Sounds like a great time and glad the '17s are drinking well. For '17 I concentrated on the Napa Valley Cabs with small samples of the single vineyard wines. Figure I can drink those NV wines while I wait for the others, and the '16s, to mature.

see switchback ridge, south of eisele.

Yep that’s it.
New wine for 2018 lineup.

Nice!

Any trip for me out there isn’t complete without visiting Mike and Leah. So glad you were able to fit this in, Fred, and many thanks for your thoughts on the 2 vintages.

Mike

We were too ! Really cool to be able to taste side by side. Wish I had more in the tank to get through all the 18’s. You ever going to make it to Tampa for a Bern’s trip ?

I still want to…I promise I do!