Recently, Joy and I shared a bottle of 2006 Myuge Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Even now, 13 years past its vintage, this wine is excellent. The dark fruit we remembered from earlier bottles remained. The texture is rich, the color deep, and the finish long.

Sterling Cellars in Mahopac, New York, had carried a couple of vintages of Myuge Cab and I went on the hunt for more. Nope …

Not only was it impossible to find Myuge, it is also apparently difficult to find the individuals who had been responsible for Myuge finding its way onto retail shelves. It seems that the Myuge people, headed by “prominent New York sommelier”  Michael Greenlee, had eventually formed a broader wine entity named Amedo, and purchased a wine shipping operation named Wineflite. Things do not seem to have been successful.

Amedo was closed in 2015, and states began to “seize wine shipped by Amedeo and associated entities, for failure to comply with state tax laws”. Napa Valley wineries were successful in winning judgments against the “absent owners”. Greenlee has a recent profile on Linkedin indicating a continued connection to the wine industry. The wine and companies associated with it are gone, but the individuals appear to have moved on.

We know that the 2006 vintage was nearing the end of the ‘wine glut’. Vineyards production had been reduced and was more closely matched with consumption. Myuge, like many fine and reasonably priced wines, was likely vinified from surplus grapes, and with the inability to acquire those grapes, likely disappeared (apparently like the company that marketed it).

Myuge is apparently no more, but my questions are…where did those grapes grow? And, who was the winemaker?

I will continue the hunt for an answer and will share it should I find one. If anyone has a clue…let us know.