Issue XVIII: Meiomi Pinot Noir Edition

 Belle Glos Meiomi Pinot Noir

Last installment I mentioned an article from various Salt Lake chefs asking for their choice for best wine under $20. One of those names was the title of the last edition, the wonderful Atrea Old Soul red. This is the second and like the Atrea, pushes right up against our ceiling, again pretending that sales tax doesn’t exist.

What Atrea did for me with regards to blends, Meiomi did for me with Pinots. I’d had plenty of those in the past, however, whoever was choosing them tended towards the sour and didn’t necessarily allow them any breathing time before consuming. In a word, I can best describe this experience as: ACK! It led to some degree of confusion when seeing the movie “Sideways,” not related to the actual movie and writing, which have their own bailiwick, but also to why they would choose that particular grape to highlight. After experiencing Meiomi, my eyes were opened and my head cleared to what this grape could do and what this wine could be.

Frankly, this is by far my favorite Pinot Noir and in the area of one of my favorite wines in general. When people ask about what I think is the overall best wines of the list, this is one of them that I always mention, even though the name seems to be sometimes a bit of a mouthful for some of the people asking. I don’t often say this about wines, but the one adjective I would use to describe this is delicious. It is a very smooth, medium-bodied wine, with a bit of latent sweetness to it, but it still has enough of a tannin kick to lend a bit of astringency to it, though that dissipates and silks out a bit with enough air time. It is for this reason that I usually give it around 15 – 20 minutes of air time before getting to it, so the first round will have a bit of punch to it and the second will be a lot rounder and mellowed.

As with the Atrea, a bottle of this is pushing right against that $20 ceiling. I have never seen this particular brand or any of the variations, including this, on SPA, ever, which precludes it from SPA Only. With that kind of price point, it also makes it difficult to tag as a Standard, so by process of elimination, this comes in as a Mixed, though also like the Atrea, I still like to get this in the mix every so often.