The wine we didn't taste. Fortunately, I have a bottle of the '07 in my cellar.

Day 1, Part 3. After our truck ride with Tom Gamble, we headed to Envy Wines, where Mike Smith custom crushes for his Myriad and Quivet labels.

Wine nerds love Mike Smith because he’s one of us. Back in 2001, when Mike was living in Portland, Oregon, he started traveling to Napa Valley on the weekends to help out Thomas Rivers Brown (of Schrader, Outpost, and Maybach fame). Brown was already well known at that point, but agreed to let Mike help out because the two men got along well — and Mike was willing to work for free.

After his third harvest, Mike took the real plunge, moving his family to St. Helena to join Brown as a full-time assistant winemaker. Shortly thereafter, he launched his own label — Myriad Cellars — with his wife Leah. Around the same time, he created a separate label with a wine enthusiast from Massachusetts named Duane Mason (the two met while Duane was sampling Outpost with Thomas Rivers Brown). Together with two of Duane’s friends from Massachusetts — John Brooks III and Paul Mason — the men launched Quivet Cellars.

Mike was a real pleasure to chat with because his focus is so obviously on the wine. He’s not tied to any one type of wine making — with some syrahs, he’ll do whole cluster fermentation. With others, just 15 percent. He’ll use yeasts. He’ll water back. In other words, he’s honest (I suspect just about every winemaker has a couple of tricks up his sleeves). And he’s not rigidly tied to one school of thought. Rather, he tries to make the best possible wines — that are expressive of where the grapes are picked — with each vintage.

Mike took us through the full Quivet lineup and most of the Myriad cabs. We tasted six wines in total: the 2008 Quivet Las Madres Vineyard Syrah – Hulda Bloc ( $38); the 2008 Myriad Cabernet Sauvignon  – Rutherford ($48); the 2008 Quivet Cabernet Sauvignon – Kenefick Ranch Vineyard ($65); the 2008 Quivet Cabernet Sauvignon  – Spring Mountain District ($65); the 2008 Myriad Cabernet Sauvignon  – Spring Mountain District ($65); and the 2008 Myriad Cabernet Sauvignon  – Beckstoffer Vineyard Georges III, ($75).

I loved all of it.

The wow wine for me was the Quivet Las Madres syrah. The color was a deep purple, and the wine was huge — all sorts of ripe blue and black fruits, meat, and pepper. The wine coated the palate — but had ample acidity and elegance, and just a touch of oak. Mike could tell how much we loved the wine — he let us take the unfinished bottle home!

The Cabs were fun, mainly because Mike proves that big, bold, modern Napa cabs — in 100% new oak — don’t have to be monolithic. In fact, they can be incredibly nuanced. My favorite was the Quivet Spring Mountain. It was very similar to the Myriad Spring Mountain bottling, but tasted a bit smoother — it may have had a had a touch more acidity. The Quivet Keneflick Ranch (which is just a stone’s throw from Araujo’s Eisele Vineyard) was a bit different from the other cabs in the lineup — both brighter and lighter, yet somehow riper.

I’ve been on the Myriad list for a while now — and I’m glad to have joined the Quivet mailer.