Ep 456: The Grape Mini-Series -- Merlot Revisited

<p style="font-weight: 400;">This podcast is a refresher on Merlot (it’s been 12 years, so it’s time!). It’s one of the titans of the wine grapes, and yet it’s not often that we encounter it as a varietal wine. Because it is frequently blended, Merlot can often be forgotten or not given its due.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400; text-align: center;"><img src= "https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/show/45638/1.png" alt= "Merlot grapes" width="400" height="225" /><br /> <em><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Photo: Merlot. Getty Images via Canva</span></em></p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">But Merlot will not be forgotten! It is the second-most planted grape in the world, the most widely grown grape in Bordeaux, and its pedigree as part of some of the world’s most prestigious and well-known Bordeaux and Bordeaux-style wines makes it royalty in the wine world.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;"> </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">But Merlot is not without challenges. When it’s not grown on the proper soils or managed meticulously, wine made of Merlot bears little resemblance to great wines of Bordeaux or other regions that are famed for blends that use it. The reputation of Merlot as a boring, flabby, dull wine is not the fault of the grape, and although it was a convenient scapegoat, it’s also not the fault of the movie “Sideways.” The fact is that Merlot is not as easy to grow as people thought, and in 1980s and 1990s, opportunistic companies used high-yielding clones on bad rootstock and in bad sites to churn out high alcohol fruit bombs, lacking all the nuance that make the grape esteemed in its homeland.  </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;"> </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">This says nothing about the grape, but much about the people who defiled it. Although it is entirely capable of making boring, cheap wine, Merlot simultaneously makes up 95% of Château Petrus, Bordeaux’s most expensive wine and is used in fine wines all over the world for its ability to elevate a blend. In this show we pay homage to Merlot, and this time,