F that Wine: Merlot

Episode Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Wine Pair podcast! I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and wine-pairing partner in crime, Carmela! And we are the Wine Pair.

Ok, in this episode we are back to the F that wine series (which is the polite way of saying Fuck that Wine) where we cover varietals that are popular generally BUT are not among my favorite wines. This time, the wine we are covering is Merlot. Boo! Merlot!! 

Ok, now, I know a lot of you out there in listening land really, really like Merlot, and that’s ok. This is not a judgment on you, this is about me, and how I feel about about Merlot. So, know that we love you and we respect your taste in wine - even if we may not agree. And I have to admit, I am not sure I have ever had a GREAT merlot, so it may just be that I have not met a merlot yet that I like. 

I think most of the merlots I have had have been from  California or Washington state, and that probably has something to do with it, or maybe even a lot to do with it. In general, I find the style to be very fruit forward, and very flabby, and overly oaked. Three of my not so favorite things! So, we’ll see today how we feel about these merlots - all of them under $20 and all of them should be easy to find, and all of them have had ratings for at least some of their vintages that are pretty good. My bet is that you have seen these, contemplated purchasing these but were not sure, and maybe even bought one or two of them. 

Now it is interesting that in some ways my dislike of merlot led me to my admiration and deep abiding love for Pinot Noir. Going into the way back machine, I hadn’t really tried a lot of Pinot Noir, which is now probably my favorite, until I watched the movie Sideways. Probably because most of my wine drinking career has been focused on Italian wines. But, if you have ever seen the movie Sideways, there is a famous scene where the Paul Giammatti character tells his friend as they are going to a dinner that “if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!” His character is a pinot lover, and I think that scene really spoke to me. 

Also, the restaurant from the movie is one that I always wanted to go to in order to try their Pinot, and we did that a few years ago. Do you remember Carmela? The Hitching Post. We actually went to the original Hitching Post in Casamila, but the one in the movie is The Hitching Post II in Buellton. I really like the food - ghere was a lot of food, they do a California style barbecue which is really just an open wood fire, and they do have excellent Pinots that they make themselves. Good stuff. I recommend it, and it is definitely worth a try. 

Ok, but before we get to our merlot tasting, we are going to have a serious conversation, Carmela. Are you ready?

We are going to just totally change gears and have a conversation about security cameras and video doorbells. I bring this up because it is pretty rare these days when the doorbell rings. Don’t you think? The doorbell hardly ever rings. I mean, honestly, what is the first thing you think when the doorbell rings?

I think about two things. It is a solicitor, or it is a wine delivery. But how do you know which is which unless you have a video doorbell. 

So I’ll be honest, this all came about basically a year ago, while we were all stuck at home because of the VID, and I got into some weird head space where I decided we needed to get some security cameras. And, incidentally I also starting obsessing about hummingbirds in our back yard, but that’s another story for another podcast. To fulfill my security camera cravings or maybe obsession, and my tendency to be cheap, or should I say finding things that are reasonably priced, I found some relatively cheap video cameras, and I set the first one up over the front door.

Then, after I found that was pretty easy to set up, I bought another one, and set that one up at the bottom of the stairwell that leads to our front door outside.

And then, because I am nuts, I found a video doorbell that I liked, because it was also reasonably priced, and I set it up by myself, which was amazing in and of itself, and now we have a system where we have video cameras all over the front of our house, and we get pinged on our phones constantly when someone comes home. Which is mostly what we capture. 

So, time for real talk, Carmela. How do you feel about all of the video cameras?

What about the doorbell chime?

Aren’t you a little amazed that I was able to set it up myself?

The other day, our doorbell camera went off because a cat walked by. So we go that going for us. 

Alright, we have talked about nonsense long enough. Let’s talk a little bit about merlot. Merlot is often sold and drunk as a single varietal, especially in the US, but it is probably most famously known, by wine nerds the world over, as a classic part of a Bordeaux blend. So, in Bordeaux, the famous blends contain cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc - along with some other wines sometimes like petit verdot, etc. I have never had the privilege of ever tasting a true Bordeaux blend, from Bordeaux, but maybe someday.

Merlot is grown all over the world, of course, and not just Bordeaux France, and it is very popular. There is a lot grown in Italy, in fact there is a famous wine style out of Tuscany that is not chianti, but rather something called a Super Tuscan, and that is often a Bordeaux style blend. Merlot is also grown a ton in the US - especially California and Washington state, also in Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Australia, Chile, Moldova, and lots of other places. Look it up if you don’t believe me!

Alright. Let’s talk about these wines - which are all from the US, and again should be easy to find and reasonably priced, which have been opened for a while to let them breathe. And that is generally a good thing for a red wine, especially a bigger and bolder red wine, like merlot. 

And we will taste and rate these wines, and then we will talk about when we are done the typical flavor profile of a merlot and see how we did. And remember in this podcast we try to use normal words when we talk about wine tastes, we hope they’re normal, words that you will recognize and not confusing wine nerd words. Our rating system is meant to be fairly easy to understand, on a 1-10 scale with no half points and I generally think of it as above 7 I am going to buy it, and 4 or below I am probably going to pour it down the sink. 

Wines

Wine: Chateau Ste. Michelle Indian Wells Merlot 

Region: Washington State, and Indian Wells is in an area near the middle of the state near a town called Yakima

Producer: Chateau Ste. Michelle

Year: 2017

Price: $13.99

Retailer: Rite Aid

Alcohol: 14.5%

Grapes (if not clear): Merlot, 5% Syrah

Rating: Joe 5  Carmela  5

Wine: Bogle Vineyards Merlot

Region: California

Producer: Bogle (evidently named Wine Enthusiast's American Winery of Year 2019)

Year: 2019

Price: $8.99

Retailer: Fred Meyer

Alcohol: 14.5%

Grapes (if not clear): Merlot

Rating: Joe 2     Carmela   2

Wine: Dark Horse Merlot

Region: California

Producer: Dark Horse

Year: 2019

Price: $6.99

Retailer: Fred Meyer

Alcohol: 14.5%

Grapes: Merlot

Rating: Joe 6       Carmela   5

Taste profiles expected

• Classic flavors are cherry, plum, chocolate, dried herbs, and vanilla
• Washington state merlots from columbia valley often have a black cherry taste, boysenberry, chocolate cream, violet, and mint
• California merlots often have tastes of sweet cherry, sugar plum (so on the sweeter end of the flavors) baking chocolate, vanilla, and desert dust
• Can also include leather, soil, blueberry, fig, fruitcake, strawberry jam, incense, cedar, and baking spices

What is the wine we are finishing tonight? 

Well, that was super fun! 

If you have ideas for wines you would like us to try and give you advice on for future podcasts, let us know. You can visit our website at thewinepairpodcast.com and leave a voice message or send us a note. You can comment or reach out on Instagram or Twitter - on Instagram you can find us at thewinepairpodcast, and on Twitter at winepairpodcast (no “the” on twitter ‘cause it don’t fit). You can reach out to us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com and we just hope to hear you comments. And we hope you’ll subscribe and follow us

Thanks for listening to the Wine Pair podcast, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine