The Meeker Story

 

 

Charles and Molly Meeker bought their first vineyard in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley in 1977, and thereafter, in 1984, established their winery -- The Meeker Vineyard -- with Charlie as the winemaker. In its early years, the winery specialized in Zinfandel, Cabernet and Chardonnay.

 

The winery's first red wine release, a 1984 Zinfandel, was an instant success, winning eight wine competition medals and becoming the third most awarded Zin in the country that year. Thereafter, among other awards, the 1985 Meeker Zin was a Wine Spectator "Best Buy", the 1986 Zin was a "Spectator Selection", and the 1990 Zin was included among the Wine Spectator's "100 Best Wines of the World". During this period Charlie was also honored to present a Meeker Zinfandel at one of the famous Windows on the World wine dinners in New York. And Zinfandel wasn't the winery's only success – for example, the Spectator gave a 91 to one of Charlie's early Chardonnays.

 

All this while Charlie was working full time in Los Angeles in the motion picture business (first as an attorney, then as a film producer, and later as a studio executive), so his winemaking career was confined to weekend and holiday trips (many, many trips!) to Dry Creek Valley. Finally, in 1990 when Charlie became President of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer, this two-career life became too much, and the Meekers hired a full time winemaker for the winery.

 

During the 1980's, Meeker wines were generally distributed in a number of states throughout the country, but this began to change in the early 1990's when Sonoma rapidly became a prime target for wine- tasting tourists. At this point, The Meeker Vineyard winery consisted of a 1,664 sq. foot building with no tasting room and only a tiny wine lab in which to welcome growing numbers of visitors. In an act of desperation, we erected a 40-foot-tall tipi (an authentic Sioux tipi in every respect except size) beside the winery and began using it as a tasting room. This crazy idea worked, and the winery was soon deluged with visitors, such that we had to pull back from normal wine distribution channels in order to retain enough wine to satisfy customer demand at the winery.

 

In 1993 we formed a wine club – named, naturally enough, the Meeker Tribe. This club currently has about 1,900 members from around the country.

 

In the late 1990's we sold our original winery property for various reasons (including Sonoma County's threat to close down the tipi for lack of a tasting room permit) and bought a new property at 5377 Dry Creek Road, on the eastern side of Dry Creek Valley. This site is more acceptable to the County for a winery and tasting room, and we are now in the process of working with an architect to design a new winery -- which will, of course, include the return of the Meeker Tribe tipi.

 

In the meantime, we obtained a long-term lease on a much larger, existing winery facility located just south of Healdsburg in Sonoma County. The Meeker winery has been operating at this leased site since 1999, and during this period the winery's production level has expanded to about 17,000 cases for the 2002 harvest. This increased production has allowed us to once again begin distributing Meeker wines in selected areas throughout the country.

 

In 1999 Molly and Charlie left Los Angeles and moved full time to Sonoma County. Molly now manages the winery's business affairs, while Charlie has resumed his active winemaking role as co-winemaker with the winery's winemaker, Matt Blankenheim. With one exception, Charlie and Matt are making only red wines, including Four Kings (a Bordeaux blend), a Gold Leaf Cuvee Cabernet Sauvignon, the Winemakers' Handprint Merlot plus a Gold Leaf Cuvee Merlot, a Dry Creek Zinfandel plus three vineyard-designated Zins and a Gold Leaf Cuvee Zinfandel, FroZin (a red dessert wine), a Petite Sirah, a Syrah, three vineyard- designated Carignanes, and a proprietary blend named Barberian. The non-red exception is Tutu Luna, an ice-wine-style dessert wine featuring a blend of Muscat, Chenin Blanc and Gewurztraminer.

 

The Meeker Vineyard tasting room is currently located in the 100-year-old Geyserville Bank Building in the farm town of Geyserville, about six miles north of Healdsburg between Alexander and Dry Creek Valleys. In 2001, the Meeker tasting room was cited by The Wall Street Journal as one of the most enjoyable wine tasting experiences in all of Napa and Sonoma Counties. As Molly says, "If you enjoyed tasting in a tipi, try it in a vault!"