The Wine Pair Podcast

Meiomi: The Worst Wine We’ve Ever Tasted?

• The Wine Pair • Season 1 • Episode 201

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Every once in a while a wine comes along that makes us say, “What the f*&k is this $h&t?!? Meiomi is such a wine. Sometimes described as diabolical, this wine is still, somehow, the best selling Pinot Noir in the United States. And so, we decided to see if we could figure out why. Meiomi makes what we call “California-ized” wine. By that we mean big, bold, sweet, and lush wines that are as subtle as a mule kick to the head. More like cocktails than wine, they are not really made to be paired with food. In fact, we think they may pair better with leather shoes or the bottom of your sink. So, in the spirit of discovery, adventure, and foolhardiness, we explore all the grandeur that is Meiomi wine. Wines reviewed in this episode: 2022 Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2023 Meiomi Pinot Noir.

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Show Notes

Episode #201: Meiomi: The Worst Wine We’ve Ever Tasted? 00:00

Hello fellow Glassmates! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair!

If you are new to our podcast, here is what you can expect. If you love wine and want to find great wines at affordable prices, and you want to expand your wine horizons, and you want to have some laughs and fun while doing it - then you are in the right place! Each week we explore a different wine varietal, style, brand, or region of the winemaking world, and learn about what makes them worth knowing about. And then we taste 2-3 of those wines that are reasonably priced to let you know if they are worth your hard earned money. If that feels like your vibe, then we are super happy you are here. And, we are proud to say that Decanter Magazine calls us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining.

A quick note, the name for the tribe this week comes from Janyne, and it is an awesome one! We love the names so keep them coming! If you have an idea for our tribe name, just send me a note a joe@thewinepairpodcast.com or send us a DM via instagram and we’ll also see if you want to be interviewed on the podcast and meet us in real life and in person over video on a computer. Intimate! But seriously, if you are game, we’d love to talk to you, but no pressure, you can just send us a name and we’ll just let everyone know about your great idea! Like Janyne! Thank you, Janyne!

Carmela, this week are doing something that we do periodically, and should probably do more often, and that is take a deeper look into the mass market wines that are in our faces every time we go to a grocery store or big old wine shops, to see if they are any good. I will be honest - they can be quite tempting, especially when they are on sale or we see advertising for them. And we have done this a few times in the past, but it has been a while. If you can’t recall other brands we have covered, we have done episodes on Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi, Josh Cellars, Bread & Butter, Layer Cake, and now Meiomi, and we have included other mass market wines in other episodes - such as JaM Cellars and Chateau Ste Michelle -  in our Costco Kirkland Chardonnay challenge and other similar episodes. And, to be transparent with you all, they have not tended to do very well. The only ones that we have found to be ok are Chateau Ste Michelle and Bogle wines, but the others, not so much. But, that may change today!

The reason we are focusing on Meiomi is that they are all over the place, they have a very popular Pinot Noir, they advertise a ton, they are squarely in the price range of the wines we review on our podcast, and they are very controversial. Which we’ll get into a little later in the pod.  In terms of size, Meiomi is huge. They sold more than 1.8 million cases of wine in the US in 2023, and it is the #1 largest selling American wine brand in the US in the $15+ price tier which is considered “ultra-premium.” Most of what they sell is their flagship Pinot Noir, and that is yet another reason why we are interested in checking them out as we said in our intro - because Pinot Noir is one of our favorite wines, my favorite for sure, and it is the top selling Pinot Noir in the US. Depending on what data you believe, it is also likely the top Pinot Noir brand in the world by dollar sales since the price point it sells at is higher than a lot of other mass market wines.

But we are admittedly a little skep about this wine. Open minded, but skep. And we want to find out if Meiomi is a decent wine worth your cash. Or if it is cheap plonk. And we will let you know all of that, including some history and background on the wine in a little bit, but first, we need to head over to address this breaking news . . .

Wine in the news this week: Tuk-tuk wine theif avoids jail after returning some stolen bottles 05:42


Our wine in the news segment this week comes to us from jolly old England, and we have several articles about it in our show notes, but the main article comes from Sophie Arundel writing for The Drinks Business and her article is entitled: “Tuk-tuk wine thief avoids jail after returning some stolen bottles.”

A lot of theft and crime in the wine world. 

First, you may ask what a tuk-tuk is. Well, a tuk-tuk is a three-wheeled open air vehicle that serves as a taxi for short trips. It is usually a motorized rickshaw with a motorcycle front, but many are also pedal-powered, and they are most famous in places in Southeast Asia like Thailand. But this tuk-tuk story comes to us from London, where we will be in a couple of months, and the story proves you don’t need a James Bond Aston Martin to steal a fortune in fine wine. Sometimes, all you need is a bicycle rickshaw.

Our story, which just wrapped up in the London courts, starts out in a very strange way because the thief is a 61 year old man named Iuliu Kubola, originally from Romania, whose day job is driving one of those "tuk-tuk" pedicabs where he ferries tourists around Central London. Note, too, that since his was a pedi-cab, he was pedaling that thing - no motor was involved other than his legs. Remember that.

Over the course of about six weeks, Kubola went on a crime spree targeting high-end Italian restaurants. What he would do is break into the restaurants in the early morning hours, like 3 or 4 AM, using crowbars and pliers and screwdrivers to pry open windows and doors.

Once inside, he would drag a plastic municipal "wheelie bin" or, in other words, a plastic trash can, right into the wine cellar. Once there, he’d fill it up with armfuls of expensive wine, and then he would carry out the heavy bin out to his rickshaw and actually hoist the entire thing into the passenger seat. We know this because he was caught on CCTV doing it. After loading the trash bin, he would pedal away into the early morning with about £31,000 ($40,000) worth of wine.

He hit one restaurant, Piazza Italiana, multiple times. In one single trip, he loaded 73 bottles into his bin and cycled off. When the police finally caught him, and they caught him literally riding his tuk-tuk near the scene of the crime, they asked him the obvious question: What were you planning to do with all this expensive wine?

Guess what his answer was? He looked at the officers and said, "The wine is to drink, no?"

In court, his lawyer tried to claim he was a disgruntled former employee who hadn't been paid, so he was just "taking his salary" in liquid form. The police checked, however, and there was zero evidence he had ever worked there. So, he was a bad thief and a bad liar.

The judge, however, made a very unusual deal. He told Kubola that he would delay his sentencing for two weeks and go easy on him if he helped the police find the missing wine. 

So, amazingly, Kubola actually managed to "recover" 32 unopened bottles and handed them back. Because he returned the booty, the judge suspended his 20-month prison sentence. So, the "Tuk-Tuk Bandit" is technically a free man today, provided he stays out of trouble, and hopefully stays out of the wine cellars.

Here is a question for you, Carmela. If you saw a 61 year-old man pedaling a pedi-cab with a trash can on the passenger seat at 4 AM, would you think there was something weird going on?

But we are not here to talk about 61 year-old Romanian wine thieves on pedi-cabs, Carmela! We are here to talk about Meiomi wines to see if they are any good, and we have a Meiomi Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Sauvignon to taste and review to let you know if you should buy them or avoid them . . . 

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

Thank you for listening to us and for supporting our show, and remember, we buy all of our own wine so that we can give you real and honest reviews, and we do all of the writing and recording and editing to  bring you a show every week because we love you all, and all we ask you for in return is that you please follow or subscribe to our podcast and also please leave us a nice rating and review  to help us grow our listeners - and a huge thank you to all of you who have done so already! 

You can also follow us on Instagram at thewinepairpodcast, and on Bluesky. You can contact us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, and you can sign up for our email newsletter there and you can also visit our “Shop Wine” section where you can find links to buy the wines that we rate as buys in each episode.  I will also note that on our website, if you are curious about a wine we have covered in the past, we do have a pretty good search functionality, so you can use that find wines you want to know more about. 

And we want to make content you care about and you like, so send us a note or DM us and give us some feedback or let us know if there are wines you want us to try or wine making areas of the world you are curious about - and we’ll take care of it! joe@thewinepairpodcast.com - we always respond back. 

  • Shout out to East Idaho Foodies who sent us a wine they think may be similar to Etna Bianco called Benje Blanco from the Canary Islands - we’ll have to be on the lookout for it!
  • Adam P our good friend who told us to do Greek wines a while ago which we did and he is back at it and wants us to do an episode on Xinomavro so I will figure out how to get that done. That wine is often called the Barolo of Greece!
  • No one got back to us on Timmy’s idea from last week on whether you would be interested in us doing episodes on wines from your cellars, so let us know. We won’t take your cheap stuff.


And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should recommend The Wine Pair Podcast to - because the best way for us to grow listeners is when you tell your family and friends about us - and this week, we want you to recommend us to anyone who has based their judgment of wine and Pinot Noir in particular on Meiomi wines, and / or anyone who has been tempted to buy Meiomi wines because they may need this intervention. 

RESEARCH ARTICLES AND LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE


Topic: WTF is the big deal about Meiomi wine? 14:26

On that note, Carmela, I think it’s time to find out just what the eff Meiomi wines are all about, ok? I mean, what is the big deal?!?

For a little bit of history, we need to go into the wayback machine because the Meiomi of today is not the Meiomi we originally started with.  Meiomi was founded in 2006 by Joseph Wagner, who is a fifth-generation winemaker and son of Caymus Vineyards co-founder Chuck Wagner. So this kid was no slouch. The Meiomi label was originally developed as a sub-brand of Belle Glos wines, a single-vineyard Pinot Noir label named after Joe’s grandmother, Lorna Belle Glos Wagner, and one that has a decent reputation in some circles, and a not so great reputation in others. Something that we will continue to hear as we learn more about Meiomi wines and the style of wine they create. 

The name "Meiomi" is derived from the word for *coastal"in the language of the indigenous Wappo and Yuki tribes of Northern California.

While Joe Wagner was still a winemaker at Caymus, he released the first Meiomi Pinot Noir in 2009. The brand utilized an innovative “copper cane" harvesting philosophy, where grapes are picked only when the shoots turn a copper color, which they believed ensured the fruit was ripe enough to create a full-bodied and lush wine. Which, if you ask me is kind of the root of the issue for me because classic Pinot Noir is not generally thought of as a full-bodied or lush wine. The wine, however, was an immediate hit, so what do I know,, and grew from 90,000 cases sold in 2010 to 550,000 cases by 2014, the same year it was named "Wine Brand of the Year" by Market Watch. 

For a bit of an editorial before we talk about the years between 2015 and 2024, and a bit more on my previous comment about style, it should be noted that Joe Wagner and Belle Glos and Meiomi wines are really Pinot Noirs meant for the Cabernet Sauvignon fan. They tend to be bold, sweet, and round, which is what I call the California-ization of wine, where everything is meant to be big, bold, fruity, and over-extracted. These are the epitome of what we call punch-you-in-the-face wines that lack a lot subtlety or complexity. They are cocktail wines. They are not what you would call the classic Burgundian style. This is why some people love them, and some people just do not. 

And, by the way, we had a great conversation with one of our listeners and we talked about the fact that the style of wine we tend to like is different than what they tend to like, and that is actually helpful because they know if we don’t like a wine, they may like it for the same reasons we don’t. And we love that. We love being a reference point for you. 

Ok, back to the main story.  In July 2015, Joe Wagner sold Meiomi to Constellation Brands for $315 million. Holy mackerel! Not bad. The deal was particularly noted not just for the high price, but also because it was just for the brand. It did not include any vineyards or winery buildings. It was just for the brand rights and existing wine stocks, and they kept Joe Wagner on as a consulting winemaker for the next two vintages.

Constellation Brands is no joke, by the way, from a size and selling standpoint, so they didn’t really care about anything other than the name on the label. Other Constellation wines at that time were well known brands include Kim Crawford, Ruffino, Robert Mondavi, Black Box, Clos du Bois, Estancia, Mark West, and Jackson-Triggs. Under Constellation, Meiomi's growth exploded. By 2017, they surpassed a million cases in annual production. In future years they expanded their offerings adding a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon in 2020, as well as Rosé and sparkling wines. And, in 2019, Meiomi became the official wine of the PGA Tour

The Constellation period, however, was also the period where the brand started getting increased criticism from wine professionals who viewed it as a "mass-produced industrial product" that relied on heavy intervention and additives like "Mega Purple" to maintain a consistent, sweet flavor profile. We won’t do it now, but look up Mega Purple on the Google machine or Copilot sometime. 

By late 2024 things were getting worse, and the brand faced a high-profile "sugar scandal" when Sonoma winemaker Adam Lee ran advertisements claiming one bottle of Meiomi wine contained as much residual sugar as 32 bottles of his Dial Tone Pinot Noir. Laboratory tests confirmed that Meiomi contained roughly 19.4 to 21 grams of sugar per liter. For reference, a good quality Pinot Noir should have less than 2 grams of sugar per liter. So, while it is not as bad as drinking a soda, you are consuming a lot of sugar from wines like Meiomi. 

In April 2025, Constellation Brands announced an agreement to sell Meiomi, along with several other labels, to The Wine Group, which is the the second-largest wine supplier in America. With this change, Constellation is focusing on more high-end artisanal brands while The Wine Group focuses on more entry-level and mainstream brands and markets. So, Constellation sold Cook’s and Woodbridge and Robert Mondavi Private Selection to The Wine Group along with Meiomi and kept The Prisoner Wine Group, Mount Veeder, and Kim Crawford. Other wines in The Wine Group include bangers like Franzia, Cupcake, and Benzinger. That should be your first clue as to what the quality of Meiomi is like today. The second clue is that Constellation wanted to focus on more “luxury” brands and Meiomi didn’t fit anymore. 

I know we should not prejudice the jury before we actually have the chance to taste and review the wine, but here are some notes about the wine and brand.

  • It is very popular. In addition to the sales numbers, it is the most searched Pinot Noir brand in the US 
  • It has over 168k reviews on Vivino with an average rating of 4.1, which is very high
  • In a blind tasting called the Judgement of BC, it rated last among 30 wines by wine professionals. 
  • In professional circles, they call the wine words like diabolical or an abomination, and the brand has become a sort of short-hand for low-quality, over-manipulated, and inauthentic wine. Maybe we’ll start using it as a verb soon. They Meiomied it. Again, pre-judging, I know. But, we are setting the bar low, so that could be a good thing?!?


And on that note, Carmela, that’s enough background. I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today and then actually take the brave step to taste them and rate them. You good with that?


Meiomi Wines We Chose for This Episode 23:46

As usual, the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $25, and these wines will be really easy to find because you can basically buy Meiomi wines at the gas station. Any grocery store or mass market wine shop like Total Wine or BevMo will carry Meiomi, and wine.com has it, but a really good wine shop will not carry them. So, be warned.

I will also just warn you all ahead of time that there is not a ton of information about these wines in terms of winemaking practices, and I could not find tech sheets which I was not surprised by, and that is not generally an awesome sign.

The first wine we are going to drink is the 2022 Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon. According to the winemakers, the wine is made with traditional Bordeaux winemaking practices, with a little bit of New World ingenuity. I have no idea what that means. They do say they age the wine with both French and American oak to “bring out the ripeness of the fruit and to deliver a great baking spice nose.”

The wine is 13.5% alcohol, which is a bit on the low end for a California Cabernet Sauvignon, and the wine is from California. It makes me worry that there is not enough alcohol in the wine to balance it. They also do not list any other grapes the wine is made with, but in the US a wine is only required to be 75% of a varietal to be called a specific varietal. Just saying. It is a screw cap, so I will give it that.

The next wine we are going to drink is the 2023 Meiomi Pinot Noir, and believe it or not, Wine Enthusiast gave this wine an 88 rating. So, we’ll see if we agree, but this is one of the reasons I tend not to trust their ratings. It is also a screw cap, so points for that

This wine is interesting in its alcohol and sugar content. First, it is 14.5% alcohol, which is really high for a Pinot Noir. Second, it’s residual sugar is 15 grams per liter, which actually puts it in the off-dry category rather than dry, and that is quite a bit of residual sugar. So, high alcohol and high sugar makes it sound like a cocktail more than a wine.

Again, there was no tech sheet for this wine, but information online says that they age the wine for 6 months in French oak barrels.

But, honestly, that is about all I could find out about these wines, so I think we should just start drinking. If you have a Meiomi Pinot or Cab Sauv, why don’t you drink along with us and see if you agree with us. That would be really fun!


2022 Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon, 2023 Meiomi Pinot Noir Wine Tasting, Pairing, and Review 29:19

Wine: Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon
Region: California
Year: 2022
Price: $20.99
Retailer: Fred Meyer (Kroger)
Alcohol: 13.5%
Grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Rating: Vivino 3.6

What we tasted and smelled in this Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon: 

  • Color: Dark purple, inky
  • On the nose: Sugary, candied cherries, cherry syrup, plum jam, stewed fruit with extra sugar, like macerated fruit, smells thick, some wood, matchstick, vanilla, sweet baking spice like cinnamon stick, caramel
  • In the mouth: So sugary and sweet, like syrup, strong bitterness, really strong and bad aftertaste, pruny, raisiny, tastes like it came from a leather shoe, so bad we had to taste it again. Disgusting.


Food to pair with this Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon: Nothing. 
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, with no half points, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 1/10
  • Carmela: 2/10



Wine: Meiomi Pinot Noir
Region: California
Year: 2023
Price: $17.99
Retailer: Fred Meyer (Kroger)
Alcohol: 14.5%
Grapes: Pinot Noir
Professional Rating: WE 88 Vivino 4.1

What we tasted and smelled in this Meiomi Pinot Noir : 

  • Color: Even darker than the Cab Sauv, does not look like a Pinot Noir at all, deep purple, looks like grape juice or a blueberry syrup from IHOP
  • On the nose: Does not smell like a Pinot Noir, smoke, wood, clay, not a lot of fruit, some rose, a touch of cherry or strawberry, sugary, smells like those Mr. Sketch scented markers - purple color, chemical, artificial, rubber eraser, rubber cement
  • In the mouth: Tastes the same as the other wines, tastes like the scented markers, worse than church wine, very chemically tasting, metallica, really bad, leaves a bad aftertaste, old coffee, taste like they have been fed through rubber hoses


Food to pair with this Meiomi Pinot Noir: A shoe.
 

Meiomi Pinot Noir Wine Rating: 

  • Joe: 1/10
  • Carmela: 2/10



Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

  • Carmela: Neither
  • Joe: Neither



Taste profiles expected from Cabernet Sauvignon & Pinot Noir  44:32

  • General 
    • California Cabernet Sauvignon: Aromas of black berry, cherry, black currant, and plum. Also vanilla, cedar, and backing spices, as well as mint, tobacco, eucalyptus, and green pepper. Full bodied, jammy in the mouth with dark fruit flavors along with mocha and espresso
    • Pinot Noir: Aromas of bright cherry, raspberry, strawberry, and cranberry. Also forest floor, mushrooms, and roses. Sometimes clove, allspice, vanilla, cola, and tea. In the mouth light to medium -bodied, silky, mouth-watering acidity, low to medium tannins. 
  • Meiomi Cabernet Sauvignon
    • Winery: Deep ruby color, the wine opens to reveal expressive aromas of juicy blackberry, boysenberry, and bramble, along with notes of toasty vanilla and graham cracker. The full flavors are highlighted by a plush, velvety mouthfeel with a long finish.
  • Meiomi Pinot Noir
    • Winery: A rich garnet color with a ruby edge, the wine opens to reveal lifted fruit aromas of bright strawberry and jammy fruit, mocha, and vanilla, along with toasty oak notes. Expressive boysenberry, blackberry, dark cherry, juicy strawberry, and toasty mocha flavors lend complexity and depth on the palate. The well-integrated oak provides structure and depth seldom seen in Pinot Noir.
    • WE: The wine's aromas are youthful raspberry, red plum, coriander, and notes of mushroom on the nose; the palate is deep with dark cherry, loganberry, vanilla bean, mocha, and dry, juicy tannins on the finish

What is the verdict on Meiomi wines? 46:37
The worst wines we have ever had in our lives.


Wines coming up in future episodes in case you want to drink along with us 47:26


Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 48:00

Ok, so, Carmela, it’s time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to follow or subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

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Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.

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