Our Story
During the first four years that my wife, Stephanie, and I had the opportunity to spend in the San Francisco Bay area, we developed a passion for wine. The explosive richness of a well made Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon unleashed something within me. I became enthralled with wine-- simple as that. Football had guided us here and we took advantage of the opportunity to meet many new friends and taste lots of Napa Valley's finest wines.
Rick Mirer (left) and Rob Lawson (right)
I couldn’t let go of the idea of one day operating a winery—the thought kept lurking in the back of my mind. While playing for Oakland, I had the opportunity to meet Jeff Smith of Hourglass (it’s tiny by production, but one of the great Napa Valley cabernets). Jeff is a crazy Raider fan (not the painted face type, but a fanatic nonetheless) who sent me some of his cabernet. Unbeknownst to him, I was already an Hourglass fan and was thrilled to find the package on my doorstep. We struck up an immediate friendship and would go on to have great dinners and taste a lot of interesting Napa Valley wines together over the next few years. When I decided I wanted to pursue my passion in the wine industry, Jeff introduced me to a childhood friend of his, Rob Lawson, an amazing winemaker. In the early days of “cult” winemaking in Napa Valley, Rob was instrumental in the crafting of many of the big name cabernets. He was the winemaker/GM at the Napa Wine Company, a custom crush winemaking facility where many of the early greats were made (Bryant, Colgin, and Pahlmeyer, among others) and it was his deft hand that guided these wines. While the consulting winemakers got most of the credit, Rob’s humble personality and workman like attitude kept him out of the limelight. Nonetheless, his hands were purple with the juice of the greats. He has gone on to craft more great wines since leaving NWC including Kapscandy and Ghost Block. His unassuming nature, great sense of humor and competent skill immediately impressed me. We tasted his wines together and talked about his approach.
From those early conversations, I found we shared a common philosophy: a humble approach to making the best wines possible and a desire to over-deliver at every stage. Forget the hype, the glitzy style and the exaggerated price, let’s do something spectacular yet subtle. I had found the perfect project!
The project took an ironic and fateful twist when Jeff suggested we use a name he had conceived for a project he had abandoned – Mirror. Because my last name shares the same spelling as the phonetic spelling for mirror (mirer), I have often been referred to as Rick “Mirror.” The parallel was too good to pass up and the name stuck. The Mirror Wine Company was born.
Sincerely,
Rick Mirer