With the help of IanBrand, I was able to track down DougMeador and had a very nice chat with him ystrday.
After a career of controlled crashes of jet aircraft onto the decks of aircraft carriers during the VietnamWar, Doug left the Navy and planted a huge vnyd for friends in the ArroyoSecco area of the SalinasVlly/MontereyCnty. He bought a small chunk of the vnyd in 1972 and founded VentanaVnyds. Doug was an inveterate tinkerer and it was more of an experimental vnyd than anything.
At the time, MontereyCnty had a dreadful reputation for producing vegetal/weedy wines..the "Monterey veggies" evolved from some of those early Mirassou Cabs that tasted/smelled of canned asparagas. The SauvBlancs out of Monterey were even worse.
Doug started producing wines under his Ventana label by the mid-70's. When I first tasted them, I was mightly impressed. The Riesling was the first Calif Riesling I ever picked up any of the gout de petrol character. His Chards were lean but rich and showed that celery seed character you find in some Monterey Chards. Alas, his first SauvBlancs still showed that weedy/vegetal character of the Wente clone SB grown in Monterey.
So, about 1979 when I was attending a weapons meeting at the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School, I made an appt to visit w/ Doug at his wnry in the old MontereyPeninsulaWnry facility just below the Monterey airport. After tasting a few wines there and chatting a bit, Doug offered to take me out to the Ventana vnyd over in ArroyoSecco. For Doug, the work he did in his vnyd was his real passion.
This was, as I recall, late Fall. Skies were overcast, the winds were blowing w/ gale-force fury, and it was colder than hell. As we walked the vnyd and he pointed out the close vine spacing he was using. Unusual at that time in Calif. We came to this few rows of scragly young vines and Doug proudly proclaimed "Syrah". I gave him this astonished look and told him "You gotta be crazy". At the time, I was already passionate about Syrah in Calif. From my vast knowledge of the grape, I lectured him that Syrah was a warm-climate grape and could never grow in this dreadfully cold climate. Doug gave me a knowing wink and replied "We'll see". You can find his story of Monterey Syrah here:
Meador Syrah
When he released his first Syrah several yrs later, I was eager to try his failure. Was I wrong on that one. From this first authentically cold-climate Syrah vnyd in Calif, he had produced a totally unique Syrah. It had a slightly herbal, rather pepper/cracked black pepper character I'd never tasted before. Now that is the norm for most Syrahs coming out of Monterey. Doug showed us that cold-climate Syrah vnyds could produce great wines and pioneered this effort to many of the exceptional Calif Syrahs we see to this day.
The other significant contribution Doug made to Calif wine was the Sauvignon Musque clone of SauvBlanc. He was not very satisfied w/ his Wente-clone SB and knew he could do better. He located on a FPS grape variety list a grape called Savagnin Musque. We he did a visit w/ CurtAlley at FPS, Doug looked at the vine and claimed it was really SauvignonBlanc. He took cuttings of it, propagated it at Ventana, and the rest is history...no more Monterey veggies w/ Sauvignon Blanc. The Sauvignon Musque clone is a particularly aromatic, almost muscatty, clone that has become quite popular now in Calif. A Google of "Meador Sauvignon Musque" will give several .pdf articles of this story.
Anyway, cold-climate Syrah vnyds and Sauvignon Musque are, to my mind, two of the huge contributions Doug has made, over the yrs, to Calif viticulture. He doesn't get the recognition he deserves, I feel, for what he has done for Calif viticulture. In other areas of viticulture as well. He taught the folks there in Monterey how to grow grapes. Much of the great wines that now come from Monterey is due to Doug's pioneering work. I've just started reading his book "The New Viticulture" and it looks to be a fascinating read...highly recommended even for wine geeks.
So what is Doug Meador up to these days?? That's what I wanted to visit w/ Doug about. After selling VentanaVnyds and establishing the MeadorEstate, he continued to make wine, very good wine, thru the early '00's. When he sold his last vnyd and escaped the wine industry, he moved to Reno for two yrs, where his son & his family joined him. But they pined to return home to Cape Girardeau, way down in the SE corner of Missouri. They convinced Doug to move there with them. So he's now ensconced in Cape Girardeau, out of the wine biz, and has a very lucrative job caring for his 3-yr old grandson. I suggested it would be a nice tribute to Doug if the USNavy would sail the USS Carl Vinson, when it's finished taking out NorthKorea, up the Mississippi to Cape Girardeau and allow Doug to land a Cessna on its deck, just for old times sake.
Anyway, it was nice to renew my contacts w/ Doug & catch up on his life. He's not yet unpacked his computer..so has no e-mail contact yet.
Tom