Remeber Merlot? It’s better than ever.
When it comes to iconic Merlot vineyards in California, none surpasses Three Palms Vineyard in Napa Valley. The trademark palm trees, two quite tall and the third a bit stubbier, are visible from both Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail in Calistoga.
Duckhorn winemaker Renee Ary concedes that Calistoga is on the warm side for growing Merlot, but the river rocks that spilled out of Dutch Henry Canyon and were deposited in this 73-acre vineyard give the plush Merlot enough stony structure to balance that ripeness. Ary calls it a “wet stone” flavor.
Duckhorn has made a singlevineyard Three Palms Merlot since its inception in 1978, and in 2015 purchased the property and seized control of the vineyard’s 50 acres of Merlot. “With Merlot’s popularity waning, we picked up some unbelievable sources of fruit,” says Duckhorn Vice President of Marketing Carol Reber.
Duckhorn is hardly the only winery in Napa that makes great Merlot. Shafer, Pride Mountain, Rombauer, Blackbird, Keenan, Swanson, Truchard and a few others still have notable Merlot programs, but Duckhorn is still a benchmark in terms of pricing and brand recognition. Up until the last year or two, Duckhorn sold more Merlot than Cabernet Sauvignon. Even for Duckhorn, though, Cabernet now outsells Merlot.
In Napa, Cabernet has been displacing everything else. But many of Napa’s greatest Cabernet Sauvignons are blended with small amounts of Merlot — as is customary in Bordeaux. “The irony is that you can’t make great Cabernet without Merlot,” Ary pointed out.
Though Merlot may be less popular than it was two decades ago, steadfast fans of the grape are banking on its gradual recovery. One thing’s for sure: The roster of California Merlot may be smaller than it once was, but the quality of California Merlot is better than ever.
Merlot has had a tough recovery from its peak popularity in the 1990s. Sales soared, but a lot of bad Merlot flooded the market. By the early 2000s the Merlot brand had taken a bashing and growers started re-planting to other varieties.
“I think what happened with Merlot is that it got so popular that planting started to go into areas where they shouldn’t be,” says Eric Aafedt, director of winemaking at Clarksburg’s Bogle Winery. “It was being grown really far south and over-cropping was occurring, so you started to get washed-out wines that lacked structure infiltrating the market. People started to pick up $8 Merlots, and they weren’t very good. Then they start feeling that way about the variety”
Bogle has always been known for making great value-priced Merlot, partly because they still do it the right way, maturing the wine in real American oak barrels rather than seasoning large tanks with oak flavorings. Aafedt says Bogle never really felt the backlash against Merlot that other wineries felt; four years ago Bogle's $10 Merlot was still the winery's most popular wine. Today Merlot has been surpassed by its Chardonnay and Essential, a red blend.
Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon are yin and yang. This goes back to their origins in Bordeaux, where they were first separated into finely parsed climates and soil types, then reunited in the blending process. They flourish in similar climates, but Merlot prefers a cooler climate. That’s why the wines of Bordeaux’s Left Bank tend to be Cabernet-based, with Merlot the co-star, and the Right
president Jeff Bundschu says.
Matanzas Creek Winery in Sonoma’s Bennett Valley has stayed steadfastly committed to Merlot, partly because it does it extremely well and partly because growing lots of Cabernet in the area isn’t really an option. The very chilly ocean breezes that penetrate Bennett Valley through the Petaluma Gap make it virtually impossible to ripen Cabernet in most of the valley. “What makes our Merlot interesting is that it has these boysenberry and blueberry fruit flavors that I don’t get that much from other areas. In Bennett Valley, Cabernet might not get ripe until the fourth week of October, and it always rains in the third week of October,” says winemaker Marcia Torres Forno. “For us, demand has been steady. I think this is a good time for Merlot consumers. You can get good quality for a great price.
One Sonoma winery that has built up a major Merlot program in recent years is Rodney Strong. Winemaker Justin Seidenfeld says, “We’re probably making 25 percent more Merlot than we were seven years ago. I see Merlot becoming a variety that’s attractive to wine drinkers that are a little better educated. I think we’re going to see a resurgence of higher-end Merlotdriven blends that are essentially a California play on Right Bank (of Bordeaux) wines.”
It has taken a couple of decades, but California Merlot is mostly now planted where it should be, and that means that quality is higher than it has been in ages. Maybe it’s due for a bit of a resurgence in popularity in the near future.
“My dad was always telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Merlot will come back!’ ” said Jeff Bundschu. “I listened to him for five years and told him it isn’t coming back quick enough. … I would still love it to come back to its glory days because it does so well where we are, but we’re not making enough of it that our life depends on it.”