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“If anyone orders merlot, I am leaving. I’m not consuming any [bleep] merlot!”
It is a throwaway line in Alexander Payne’s 2004 movie “Sideways,” however many — myself included — declare it is had an outsize impact on the best way People drink wine ever since. The movie follows two mates on a wine-tasting trip by means of Southern California seeking ladies and an ideal pinot noir. The principle character, Miles, performed by Paul Giamatti, is the traditional wine snob, oozing pretension each time he raises a glass.
The movie’s biggest irony? That Miles’ most prized possession, a bottle of 1961 Chateau Cheval Blanc, is a mix that includes a large proportion of merlot. The movie, rightly or in any other case, will get blamed for a decline within the gross sales of merlot-based wines all through the mid-2000s. A extra probably model of the reality is that within the Nineteen Nineties, merlot vines have been being planted up and down California to be made into cheap, mass-market wines that could possibly be discovered on grocery-store and gas-station cabinets throughout the nation. When the movie got here out and put a voice to the truth that most of those wines have been, in actual fact, fairly unhealthy, it gave many growers trigger to tear out their unhealthy merlot vines and change them with (usually equally unhealthy) pinot noir.
Even now, some 17 years later, this alteration in client style nonetheless makes merlot a tough promote for lots of drinkers. I’ve had vineyard representatives inform me they usually market their merlot as a “pink mix,” a time period that, for no matter purpose, individuals are extra snug with after they see it on a label. Pouring wine for friends, I usually discovered that folks say they even favor a merlot-based wine, as lengthy, in fact, as they do not know it is merlot.
It is a disappointing development, as merlot, within the fingers of a succesful winemaker, can produce unimaginable wines that run the gamut from delicate and demure to darkish and brooding. I like to consider merlot as one thing of a chameleon, in a position to change its profile dramatically primarily based each on the place it is grown and what different grapes it is blended with. In its native France, the wine is commonly gentle and delicate, with notes of violets, tobacco leaves and leather-based, whereas sun-drenched California produces wines which might be wealthy and fruity, bursting with plum, raspberry and spice.
Subsequent week, we’ll take a deeper dive into a few of the merlots that needs to be gracing your dinner desk.
As all the time, you’ll be able to see what I am consuming on Instagram at @sethebarlow and ship your wine questions and quibbles to sethebarlowwine@gmail.com
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