Received the ‘our last vintage’ email from Lagier Meredith today, promptly placed an order as there’s no way I don’t capture this piece of history…
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2021 Lagier Meredith wines
View this email in your browser
2021 — Our Last Vintage
With this email, we offer you our 2021 wines. This is our 24th vintage (26th if you count 1996 and 1997, which were not commercial). The 2021’s are the last new wines we will release. From 2022 on, wines from our vineyard are being made by our friends Aaron and Claire Pott under their own Pott Wine label. We are winding down because we have been doing this for many years now and we’d like to have more free time to do other things (like watch sunrises and talk to birds). Please note that we are not yet shutting down our business. We will continue to sell wine as long as we have wine to sell. How long will that be? We just don’t know. Maybe one year? Maybe more? Maybe less?
So, what was 2021 like in our vineyard? The most remarkable thing is that it was our lowest rainfall year ever. The winter was cold and budbreak was late. Spring and summer were warm, but with no extreme heat waves, and harvest ended up being early. Our yield was lower than average. Importantly, there were no nearby wildfires to contend with.
Below are our four new wines. The grapes were picked on September 9 and 15. The wines spent 19 months in neutral French oak barrels. We used no new oak and the wines are all unfined and unfiltered. As we (and you) have come to expect from our vineyard, the wines are all balanced and complex,
Please note that we are offering an incentive for prompt orders. Scroll down for details.
2021 Syrah
$48
Order here
Yummy now and even better in 25 years. This balanced and complex wine greets you with aromas of blackberries, red currants, tart cherries and fennel. The looong finish reveals a hint of dark chocolate.
Picked September 9 and 15, 2021
No new oak
19 months in neutral oak barrels
Unfined and unfiltered
185 cases made
2021 Mondeuse
$45
Order here
Deep deep color. Concentrated waves of fig, menthol and leather on the nose. Perfectly balanced, with a long long finish.
Picked September 15, 2021
No new oak
19 months in neutral French oak barrels
Unfiltered and unfined
112 cases made
2021 Tribidrag
$45
Order here
Nutmeg, cedar, coconut, plum and cherry. Tribidrag was the ancient name for Zinfandel in the Middle Ages. We call this wine Tribidrag as a tribute to the venerable European heritage of Zinfandel.
Picked September 9, 2021
No new oak
19 months in neutral French oak barrels
Unfiltered and unfined
175 cases made
2021 Malbec
$45
Order here
Blackberry jam on cinnamon toast, garmished with a sprig of lavender.
Picked September 9, 2021
No new oak
Unfined and unfiltered
19 months in neutral French oak barrels
42 cases made
Order Soon and Save
We want you to order now, so that we can organize our shipping and send your wine when the weather is just right. We know from experience that the longer you wait to order, the harder it will be for us to find the right shipping window, when it’s not too cold or too warm to ship to you. Then we’ll end up storing your wine in our cellar for months while we wait, which is not good for you and not good for us.
So, if you order before the end of the day on Saturday September 16, we’ll give you a 15% discount on orders of 12 bottles or more and a 10% discount on orders of 6 to 11 bottles.
Shipping
We hope to begin shipping these wines in October but be assured that we won’t ship your wine until the weather is temperate along the ground shipping route to your location. We don’t make a blanket shipping decision for the entire country. We’ll ship to each destination as the weather permits. We’ll try to notify you before we ship your wine. And we’ll send you the tracking info as soon as we’ve shipped it. If you’d like us to hold your wine until the weather is cooler, warmer, wetter, drier, whatever, just let us know.
And remember that wine deliveries require an adult signature. If you don’t have a business address that we can use for shipping and if no one will be home to sign, we can have your wine held at a location that’s close to your home. Just let us know in the Delivery Instructions field when you enter your shipping address.
Our mailing address is:
Lagier Meredith Vineyard
4967 Dry Creek Road
Napa, CA 94558
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Just ordered 2 cases. Lots of older wines left as well.
Carole is still hoping for one final BerserkerDay, had to order now just in case the other loyal fans buy up the 2021 vintage before January
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Have her hold some back for a limited Berserkerday Monopole offer. Have her sign all the bottles.
She’s a legend
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If only you would tag @Carole_Meredith directly to read this! 
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I would order every bottle I could afford and completely ruin my month of inventory reduction if I was US based.
And to add, I unfortunately never had to the opportunity to try a single bottle but there are some winemakers you know will just make terrific wines…
She has her own Wikipedia page. You know it has to be good! LOL
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Calling the variety by its original name (Tribidrag) and being instrumental in identifying it, already makes her a legend.
I follow here on Instagram and anyone who gives that much care and love to vines, and a specific place will end up make special wines.
Except that, she also seems to be plenty of fun, hence a second note is that I’d love to spend some time with her and listens to as much as I possibly can, if I ever get that far West.
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Made my order.
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Tribidrag is not regarded by the ATF as a grape varietal name. When she put it on the L-M label, it was considered to be a proprietary name. She could have trademarked the name Tribidrag & then licensed its use to other wineries and then stood back and watch the $$$'s roll in… allowing her to finally, at last, retire. Didn’t happen. She has given free use of the Tribidrag name to other wineries… Ridge for one. When you see Tribidrag on a Rombauer btl, you’ll know the name has finally caught on.
The Wikipedia entry is deficient. It doesn’t credit her for inventing the Chocolate Brownie.
Tom
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Got me some…
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I think 2021 in the area should be spectacular for these wines. Besides the drought, the weather throughout the season was pretty close to ideal.
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@Carole_Meredith and Steve are two of the nicest people I know. We went to pick up some wine after a tasting with @Merrill_Lindquist from my first Berserker Day purchase and they were kind enough to visit with us for while and educate us on the vineyard and their operation. The next year, we brought a picnic lunch for the pick-up and had a great time. We even went once during Covid and did a “distanced” pick and right as I started loading the wine Steve started pretending to have Covid, which was hilarious.
Worst part about moving to Portland was giving up our wine pickups 
!
Anyway, our lives have been richer by knowing these amazing people and my cellar has twice as many wines from Lagier-Meredith as any other producer.
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Love their wines. Still have a Mondeuse (absolutely delish) in cellar, but must get a bit more of all of it before it’s gone.
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The two-part Bedrock Wine Conversations podcast with Carole from Jan 2022 was a fun listen:
Part 1: https://bedrockwineco.libsyn.com/025-carole-meredith-part-1
Part 2: https://bedrockwineco.libsyn.com/025-carole-meredith-part-2
Cheers,
Steve
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And, remarkably, the price has not budged in all these years.
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Picked up 6.
I’ve had the Malbec and Syrah in the past, and I’m pretty sure these wines are immortal.
Agreed - Carole and Steve were kind enough to part with a few of the 1999 Syrah and I have three resting comfortably in the cellar. The last time I tasted this was in 2019 along with some 1999 Cote Roties and everyone at the dinner agreed the Lagier Meredith Syrah had another 10 years at least. So I am thinking 2029 for the next bottle, then 2039, and if I am still alive at 88, 2049 for the final bottle. Stay tuned…
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