💯 Dry Creek Vineyards from $40 down to $24.99! 💯
03.13.2026
2022 Dry Creek "Regatta" Meritage
Release Price: $40.00 USD (HERE)
SALE Price: $24.99 (net)
SAVE 37%
Lowest Online Price in the USA!
Reminder we open at 9am today!
SALE ITEMS THIS WEEK:
$40 to $14.99 on iconic Napa Chardonnay
$12.99 for a perennial winestore favorite
Maybe as close as you can get to Sancerre for under $20
TGIF! Am I right?
As I have mentioned winter is over for me so I am refusing to wear a jacket outdoors while we go through this cold snap or whatever it is...
Anyhoo...back to the wine of the day.
In 1988, a group of frustrated California winemakers had a problem. They were making world-class Bordeaux-style blends - Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec - but federal regulations said if your wine didn't contain at least 75% of a single grape, you couldn't put that grape's name on the label. Your options were a proprietary name nobody recognized or "table wine" - the marketplace equivalent of a dunce cap.
So they held a contest. Over 6,000 entries from around the world. A guy named Neil Edgar from Newark, California won with a word he invented: Meritage. A portmanteau of "merit" and "heritage." It rhymes with heritage - not the French way. The rules were simple: at least two Bordeaux grapes, no single variety over 90%, and it had to be the winery's best blend.
The very first winery to ever put that word on a label? Dry Creek Vineyard.
David Stare studied civil engineering at MIT. Got his MBA at Northwestern. His dream job was to become president of a major railroad. He worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for years. Then in 1967 he took a job with a German steel company and moved his young family to the Rhine Valley. On weekends, he started visiting wineries.
That was the end of the railroad dream.
In 1970, Stare spent two weeks driving through Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Loire Valley. He fell in love - specifically with the crisp, mineral Sauvignon Blancs of the Loire and the structured, elegant blends of Bordeaux. When he got home to Boston, he read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the future of California wine. He packed his wife and kids into a mint green station wagon and headed west.
In 1972, he bought a 55-acre prune orchard across from the Dry Creek General Store in Sonoma County. The agricultural advisors told him not to plant Sauvignon Blanc there - they said it was "inappropriate" for the region. He planted it anyway. It became the first Sauvignon Blanc in Dry Creek Valley history. His Fumé Blanc became the first in Sonoma County. In 1982, his winery was the first in California to put sailboats on wine labels - a bold move when everyone else was doing faux-French chateau designs. In 1983, he petitioned for and won AVA status for Dry Creek Valley, then became the first to use that appellation on a label. In 1985, he became the first to use "Meritage" on a label and the first to coin "Old Vines" for Zinfandel.
Sensing a pattern here?
The guy from Boston who wanted to run a railroad became Wine Enthusiast's "American Wine Legend" and one of the most decorated pioneers in California wine history. He founded the first new winery in Dry Creek Valley since Prohibition. His daughter Kim runs it now - second generation, still family-owned, 185 acres of sustainably farmed vineyards, 100% Certified Sustainable, Top 100 Winery from Wine & Spirits Magazine.
And they've never forgotten the sailing. Dave grew up sailing in Massachusetts. The sailboat labels weren't a gimmick - they were an extension of who the family is. In 1977, Dave sponsored the first sailing team at Sonoma State. In 2000, they launched their America's Cup Reserve series. They became the Official Wine of the Louis Vuitton America's Cup World Series. They partnered with US SAILING for nearly a decade, donating a portion of proceeds from their Regatta wines back to sailing education programs.
This Regatta Meritage is the best sub $25 representation of one of the most historically significant Bordeaux-style blending programs in American wine that we have ever found.
So let's drink some awesome wine tonight, shall we?