Justin Meyer (born Raymond Meyer, 11 November 19386 August 2002) was an American vintner, enologist, and monk of the Christian Brothers. He was the founder along with Raymond Twomey Duncan of Silver Oak Cellars in 1972, a successful winery based in the Napa Valley and Alexander Valley. Today Duncan's sons David Duncan and Tim Duncan run Silver Oak Cellars, as well as Twomey Cellars, established in 1999. Meyer sold his share of the company to Duncan in 2001. One of California's top wine experts, he was president of the American Vineyard Foundation in the 1990s and also held numerous other positions in the wine industry. The San Francisco Chronicle cites Meyer as "one of the legends of the Napa Valley".
Background
Meyer was born Raymond Meyer on 11 November 1938 in Bakersfield, California. He joined a Christian Brothers monk shortly after graduating from high school and changed his first name to Justin. He taught Spanish at a Christian Brothers high school in Sacramento and in 1964 was apprenticed to winemaker Brother Timothy at their winery, Greystone Cellars, in St. Helena, California in the Napa Valley. At one point the Christian Brothers ran 6 wineries and were the largest brandy producers in the world according to Meyer.
Career
He left the Christian Brothers in 1972, and became president of V&E Consulting and Management Company. That year, Meyer met Colorado entrepreneur Ray Duncan who had purchased a 750-acre plot of land in the Napa Valley of northern California, which was formerly the Oakville Dairy farm, as an investment in growing and selling grapes. Meyer, a winemaker who was a monk of the Christian Brothers religious order, formed an agreement, with Duncan, setting up a winery on the Christian Brother's site in St. Helena. Meyer would provide his winemaking, cultivation and Californian market expertise while Duncan provided the financial backing.
The pair bottled their first vintage Cabernet Sauvignon in 1972, aging the wine in the old Keig Dairy barn on the original plot of land Duncan purchased. They made the decision to produce only Cabernet Sauvignon and to attempt to produce the finest in the world, to age the wine exclusively in American oak barrels. Meyer said of the reason for deciding to concentrate on one wine, "it was kind of a reaction to my days at Christian Brothers, where we made so many wines it was hard to do them all right, and it was kind of in keeping with what I thought — that Cabernets were what Napa and Sonoma did best, so why not devote our attention to that. This is a pretty common concept in France." According to noted wine critic Robert Parker, Meyer always believed in harvesting ripe, physiologically mature fruit. In answer to the question of why Silver Oak insists upon aging their wines in American oak barrels, Meyer once said, "I'm happy with a cellar of about 65 degrees. Aging is speeded up by heat and slowed down by cold, but the only thing I do to modify my cellar is drink it faster... To my palate, American oak imparts less wood tannin than French oak. I like tannic wine about as much as I like tough steak."