While he was comfortable working at a young age in his father’s shadow, Matt Meyer was nevertheless uneasy about following in his footsteps.

Not that he couldn’t fill his dad’s shoes, Matt just wanted to make his own way in the world of wine — if indeed that’s where he landed once formal studies were completed.

It probably wasn’t easy growing up in the shadow of one of the valley’s best known, respected and well-liked winemakers — bragged about as the next generation to follow Justin Meyer into the cellars at Silver Oak.

But Matt liked his father’s chosen profession and enjoyed his summer posing as a cellar rat.

“I always liked being at the winery,” the earnest young vintner recounted as we tasted wine on the veranda of the Oakville home where he grew up, where his mother still lives. “I knew that I wanted to do something with wine.”

That “something” is partnering with his mother, Bonny, in Meyer Family Cellars, as well as in a separate venture with mother and siblings making California port wine — a project launched by Justin Meyer two decades ago.

While Matt’s focus at the moment is on cool climate syrah and California port, he will soon work with fruit from one of this valley’s best known grapegrowing locales — Bonny’s Vineyard, a prime Oakville patch of vines whose fruit was allocated to a limited release cab highly prized by Silver Oak Collectors. The vineyard’s been replanted and the first new wine, from the 2003 harvest, won’t be released until September, 2008. Seems Matt has followed his father’s lead here, as Justin Meyer employed extended barrel and bottle aging so that Silver Oak wines would be ready to drink upon release.

Along with Colorado oilman Raymond Duncan, Justin Meyer founded Silver Oak Cellars in 1972. The elder Meyer sold his interest six years ago but kept the port program for himself and his family.

Matt said his father was intent on finding a small winery somewhere in the region where the port could be made, and where the son could launch his own winemaking venture.

“My father spent a couple of years shopping for a facility,” Meyer recalled. “Eventually he came upon a small winery in Boonville that was for sale. I didn’t even know where Boonville was.”

Matt said he was not enthusiastic at first. But when his father told him a year later the property was still on the market, he joined his father for an on-site inspection. Located on a tributary of the Navarro River, the winery sat amidst redwoods and Douglas firs. “I loved it,” Matt now admitted.

“Matt was a little reluctant at first,” his mother added. “His only reluctance was that he didn’t want to be given anything.”

“I wanted something on a scale smaller than Silver Oak,” he said.

In addition to working crush at Silver Oak, Matt had spent considerable time in cellars around the globe. He’d graduated from UC Davis with a masters degree in horticulture and met his wife, Karen, when both worked a harvest at Argyle in Oregon. He followed her home to Australia, where he studied enology and worked harvests in both Australia and New Zealand before returning to California.

Matt believes only a small piece of the 175 acre Meyer Family Cellars site in Mendocino County can be planted to vines. “I think about seven acres look promising for grapes,” he said.

Before his father passed away in 2002, he and his son had bounced ideas around for the Mendocino property. “While I was in Australia, I enjoyed shiraz and wanted to do something with that grape here,” Matt said. “I wanted to grow shiraz, or syrah, in a cooler region.

“We planted a test vineyard, not only with syrah, but also some zinfandel and all the dessert varieties — riesling, muscat, semillon, sauvignon blanc. We got cooling breezes, even ripeness, but we couldn’t get botrytis (the noble rot required for making dessert wines). The syrah ripened and it tasted good.”

So with a little of his own fruit, plus grapes he purchased from other Mendocino growers, Matt began making his own syrah.

His current release, a 2003 Meyer Family Cellars syrah, is a blend of estate and purchased fruit from seven growers, all from Mendocino. The fruit’s a bit riper than one might encounter in an Australian shiraz but it has the attractive blueberry finish Matt was hoping for.

In the not-too-distant future, Matt hoped to have a syrah from the Yorkville Highlands appellation, an American Viticultural Area just outside Boonville. He’s been encouraging other growers to plant syrah, hoping to establish Yorkville Highlands as the ideal appellation for cool climate syrah.

Besides syrah

Fan leaf virus devastated Bonny’s Vineyard in Oakville and half of it has been replanted to cabernet sauvignon on resistant rootstock. The rest of the vineyard will be replanted soon. This will allow the Meyer family the opportunity to return Bonny’s Vineyard cab to loyal consumers who’d missed the single vineyard offering since it was pulled from the market more than a decade ago.

Port will continue to be part of the Meyer Family Cellars portfolio, Matt noted. “When my father first made it in 1987, the grapes came from Lodi. Now we’ll use only zinfandel grown in Mendocino.”

Production of port will continue to be about 1,500 cases each year, Meyer said. “For the time being, we’ll only have a few hundred cases of Bonny’s Vineyard (cabernet sauvignon),” starting with the release of the 2003 in the fall of 2008. Our growth wine will be our syrah, which will remain at about 2,000 cases for a while.”

In addition to his mother, Matt and his wife are partners in the port operation with his brother, Chad (who’s a partner in a theatrical lights and sound firm called the Lux), and sister, Holly (who’s getting her master’s in architecture at present).

Meyer Family Cellars port retails for $35 while the syrah retails for $30. The wines can be found on the shelves at Calistoga’s Wine Shop, Sunshine Foods and Dean & DeLuca in St. Helena, with the port available at St. Helena Wine Center and JV Wine and Spirits in Napa. They’re on lists at both Martini House and Market in St. Helena and Bouchon in Yountville, with the port available by the glass at Redd, Celadon and Zuzu.

 Matt’s goal is producing “world class wine. But what if I can produce only good wine (in Mendocino County)? We believe (the new venture with its Yorkville Highlands fruit) has the potential — but so far we have yet to prove it.”

Have a sip of the 2003 syrah. You’ll have no trouble recognizing that Matt Meyer is more than halfway there.