I feel old.
Between reoccurring injuries, a limitless workload and constant travel, I’m sensing a slow shift from a wide-eyed student to a jaded veteran. Things that had once felt like a privilege now seem like work. No matter what once-in-a-lifetime experience is on the agenda, it is still time away from home, my partner and puppy. The nights begin to blend to the point I no longer can tell you what city I am in without real concentration, especially on the back end of a two-day hangover.
A recent trip to Duckhorn Vineyards in Napa Valley helped shift my perspective. Between glasses of rare wine festooned about the gorgeous tasting room, Kay, our host, recounted America’s well-documented love/ hate relationship with merlot. We all know the story by now. How a movie that came out nearly 20 years ago gave us a memorable, expletive-filled rant and tanked sales of one of the world’s most planted grapes … or so I thought.
On one of our host’s many tours last year, while entertaining a particularly young group of sommeliers, she was amazed that nobody in the group had heard of Sideways and its impact on the wine industry.
“They didn’t know they were supposed to hate merlot,” she says. “We have truly come full-circle.”
Shoshin, a concept borrowed from Zen Buddhism, roughly translates to “beginner’s mind” and refers to an eagerness to learn with no preconceived notion, no matter how much expertise you may have. I’d like to thank Kay and the team at Duckhorn for helping me to strengthen that practice.
Here are two examples of excellent merlots from properties that I was fortunate to visit during my recent travels.
Duckhorn Vineyards, Merlot, Napa Valley, California
When Dan and Margaret Duckhorn opened their eponymous winery in Napa in 1976, there were only 42 producers in the valley. Today, it is home to more than 470 and each one of them have the Duckhorns to thank for pioneering luxury merlot.
If you have ever enjoyed a bottle of Napa cabernet sauvignon, this wine has a place in your cellar. Cabernet sauvignon and merlot are related genetically, so they exhibit many of the same properties, but merlot is softer in tannins and will show more red and blue fruit than the hallmark black fruit of cabernet. In fact, the Duckhorn Napa merlot will contain around 20% of cabernet sauvignon in the blend vintage-to-vintage.
Cost: $50/bottle.
Ancient Peaks Winery, Merlot, Santa Margarita Ranch, California
Located just 14 miles away from the cool Pacific Ocean lies Ancient Peak’s family-owned Margarita Vineyard. When the days heat up, the rising air creates a vacuum that pulls cold, ocean breezes over the vines and blankets the peaks in a hauntingly beautiful fog and cools the vines.
There are five distinct subsoils in the vineyard and a large portion of fossilized oyster shells. The result is that the same grape can be grown in a multitude of soils that will each express different flavors and textures in the finished product. This merlot is blended with a dollop of cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel, which add even more depth and complexity to this balanced, everyday red.
Cost: $18/bottle.
Chris Ramelb is an award-winning master sommelier, and director of education and restaurant sales manager of Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits of Hawaii. Watch him on the “Wine & …” podcast, and follow him on Instagram (@masterisksomm).
