Meyye is Back
You may be asking, where did you go? In short, we’ve moved our home and business from the Sierra Foothills to Sonoma Co. – basically from one side of the state to the other. We’ve hit a few bumps along the way, but we are now firmly in place in Sonoma Co. and ready to start sharing our wines with you again.
While the home and family move went fine, I’m always surprised how much time it takes to pack up your life and move somewhere else. No matter how good your plans are, how detailed your lists are, how much time you have – it always seems like a never-ending process right up to the time the moving truck arrives.
When you have a wine-based business – nothing is easy when you move. You basically have 5 levels of government to deal with that are inter-dependent for approval and all must be in good standing before approval is granted.
TTB – Alcohol and Tabacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a bureau of the Department of the Treasury (that’s a mouthful). The feds. This turned out to be one of the easiest steps to update but was required before doing anything else on the list.
SOS & FTB – California Secretary of State & Franchise Tax Board basically the entities that need to know where your business is, who controls it, and who to send the resale license to (as well as the tax bill).
ABC - Alcohol Beverage Control – State alcohol control and, by far, the most complex step with the most paperwork. However, the people who work at the ABC are fantastic and do a great job of helping us hapless winemakers get all the paperwork right.
Local Business License – Lastly, is your business location zoned for alcohol sales? It is up to the city and county where your business is located. This is the last step as everything else needs to be in place first.
CDFA – Allows you to purchase fruit. Unfortunately, with the hold up with all our other licenses, we didn’t have enough time to secure this license before crush, so unfortunately, there will be no 2025 vintage for Meyye. But we plan to be back in 2026.
In the meantime, we are excited to release two new vintages this fall and winter, our ‘Omay Pinot Noir and Palachchak Zinfandel.
2022 ‘Omay Pinot Noir – We source our pinot noir grapes from Sangiacomo’s Roberts Road Vineyard in Penngrove, CA (Petaluma Gap AVA). Who would have guessed we would rent a house less than a mile away in 2025 – small world! Harvested overnight in the early hours of 9/16/2022, I picked the fruit up shortly after dawn in a thick blanket of fog I could barely see through. Shrouded in fog most mornings, but basking in the sun most afternoons, this pinot fruit enjoys a long and cool growing season with plenty of sunshine hours. The result is fruit with well-developed flavors without excessive sugar buildup. This is a 100% Pommard clone pinot noir aged for 19 mos. in French oak.
2018 Palachchak Zinfandel – This marks the first vintage we switched Zinfandel vineyards, from the 130-yr old Picnic Hill vineyard to the 30-yr old Quartz Vineyard from Story Vineyards. While these vineyards are 100 years apart in age, they are only separated by 20 feet. Over the prior decade we noticed that the Quartz vineyard was some of the best zinfandels we made. In 2018 we made the call to switch Palachchak to the Quartz block. We believe this continues the taste profile of Palachchak (along with a little syrah) and will yield the same long lived taste profile of past vintages. Aged for 2 years is a combination of American and French oak this wine is tasting great at release but will also age gracefully for another 5-10 years.