When a winery owner meets you in his vineyard, trucks you to a shaded spot and hauls out a wooden bistro table and chair from the back of his pickup and then pours his wines for you to taste, you know you're in for a treat. Until the Yountville tasting room for Mira Winery opens in August, this is the type of hospitality a taster will receive - by appointment only, of course.

For almost four years, Jim, a.k.a. Bear Dyke, ran the family-owned Mira Winery Charleston Education Center and Tasting Room as a complement to his Mira Wines label. His wines were made with Napa Country grapes at at his crush facility in Yountville.

In 2017, he decided to close the center in his “pursuit of perfection” and made a move to the Napa Valley. Three years ago, he purchased 16 acres in Napa County, where he recently planted 10 acres of vines in Yountville – and none are cabernet sauvignon. In fact, Bear just planted sauvignon gris in a “dare to be different” move.

Bear’s background is in public affairs; he worked in Washington, D.C. until 2005. This is where he met Gustavo Gonzalez, a former winemaker at Mondavi, at a local bar one evening. The two chatted mathematics; more specifically about Society 610, or the Golden Ratio, a formula that, in an artful exaggeration, equals visual perfection. Applied to architecture, Bear likens visual perfection to veins on a leaf. Bear and Gustavo, who speaks at least four languages, used a bar napkin to draft a plan of business and came up with the name of the winery: Mira is the Latin root of ‘miracle’.

Watch a video of Bear and Gustavo discussing wine as a 'Mira'cle

When Larry Hyde placed a syrah block up for sale in Carneros, Gustavo contacted Bear and suggested they focus on a single vineyard and “make one thing” and do it right. Gustavo’s established relationship with Hyde helped the “birth of our concept,” which is in its tenth year, says Bear.

Since that fateful bar meeting between Bear and Gustavo, and with the Golden Ratio front-of-mind, the design of the tasting room and custom-crush facility is almost finished, ready for its grand opening in August.

Watch a video on the new construction

On Tasting

The 2014 Mira Chardonnay was grown from one block of grapes and produced 300 cases. Gustavo added a slight barrel oak to this wine that tastes precisely of chardonnay in its perfection and lingering creamy finish.

Aged in new French oak barrels from the seven cooperages Mira utilizes, the 2014 Mira Pinot Noir is an easy to drink-alone wine with a medium balance with notes of tobacco and a raspberry finish; this wine can be laid down for 15 to 20 years according to Bear.

The 2014 Mira Cabernet Sauvignon is worth keeping in the cellar up to 30 years. For now, it really is a drink-alone wine, which is surprising for a cabernet sauvignon grown in Stag’s Leap. There are 541 cases of this classic wine, priced at $95/bottle. Soon-to-be-released is a Yountville cabernet sauvignon priced at $150/bottle.

Mira Wines offers 13 products (1,200 cases each) and has a case production of 6,000/annually. The wines are distributed in 18 states and there’s an allocation sign-up list on the website. Mira Wines regularly holds wine dinners all over the U.S., but you can find its wines at Bottega in Yountville, and at Don Bistro Giovanni in Napa.

The tasting experience is offered by appointment only (10:30am or 1pm daily) and the cost is $100 per person. Please allow approximately 90 minutes for your visit. Call (888) 819-4668 or visit www.miranapa.com for more information.