Grape of the Month: Merlot

"More than a month between posts? For shame, sir. For shame."
(-My friend Evan)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Spare me your slings and arrows. (I'm mainly talking to the judge who sits in my heart. Quiet, you.)


Ahhh, Merlot. The grape that vies with Cabernet Sauvignon for the title of Red Grape of Bordeaux. Blend this with some Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot and you have the mixture used by vintners in St.-Emilion and Pomerol for centuries. It grows heartily in Virginia, and is renonwned for its pleasing aroma of red berries, black cherries, and currants, as well as its surprising smoothness on the palate.

Yet movies like "Sideways" tap into the popular bias against Merlot. (This is perhaps the red wine analogue of the previously mentioned "Anything but Chardonnay" trend.) It isn't quite as pronounced, but there is a definite prejudice on the part of the consumer to the point that some customers (as with Chardonnay) ask to pass on the Merlot during their tasting flight.

Part of this, I think, is due to the fact that Merlot is grown in California in places where it simply does not belong. I talked with a gentleman who came into the winery the other day, and he mentioned that he was from the Central Coast of California (where "Sideways" was filmed). He said that Pinot Noirs from that region are excellent but that Merlots are mediocre at best. This mirrors the opinions of the protagonist from the film, as well as the book which "Sideways" was based on. Now, were this a bigger blog with a larger readership, I would no doubt receive howls of indignation, demanding to know on what grounds I could claim that Merlot should not be grown in certain areas of California. I would reply: None. None at all, except the tastes of a consumer who finds missing in certain California Merlots--certainly not all!--from certain regions the strengths and character that good Merlots contain.

The other part of this bias, I think, is a mistake that we particularly here in America make with regard to our red wines. Drink a young (2004-2006) Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz vintage and compare it to a Merlot of the same year. Many red grapes such as Cabs and Shiraz are heavy-bodied, spicy in both aroma and flavor, with hard-hitting tannins that please the fans of "big" reds. Merlot is lacking in those qualities--the berry and cassis notes are subtle compared to the more straightforward Cabernet Sauvignon. However, when you compared older red Bordeauxs from either side of the Gironde, the smoothness and richness of bouquet that is a result of the reductive processes that take place during bottle "aging" is present in both wines--one primarily Cabernet Sauvignon (Medoc and Graves), the other primarily Merlot (St,-Emilion and Pomerol).

Therefore, our basis of comparison is somewhat more skewed than it would have been 30 years ago, when very few people were bottling straight varietal labels of Cabs and Merlots. Obviously, times and tastes have changed and we have discovered that American Cabernets have excellent flavor, body, and aromas. That's well and good, and to be expected with the advent of new vinification practices. But as always, our basis for grading the quality of a wine should always be expections prior to opening the bottle vs. expections met once the wine has been drunk. We do not expect a Merlot to be similar to a Cabernet Sauvignon in aroma and flavor--we appreciate it instead for its texture, the silkiness and smoothness which adds so much foundation to fine Bordeaux wines.

As long as we continue to grade Merlot on the scale of other red grapes, it will come up sadly lacking. Instead we should consider it on the merits listed above, and choose more carefully from regions where it is more suited for growing. After all, there is surely more to this grape's popularity than "It grows well on the right bank of the Gironde estuary."

News from the Harvest

Ouch. A bad omen, I suppose, that only a few weeks into this venture I' m late with promised posts. Oh well. Nothing new as far as my track record goes.

Today, at the winery where I work, we finished up the very last of this year's harvest. Yesterday several tons of Petit Manseng (remember Petit Manseng?) came in, and got put into the crusher/destemmer as usual. The job of the crusher/destemmer is, obviously to crush the grapes so the juice starts to flow and remove the stems from the grapes. After they're crushed it's fairly easy to pump the semi-solid mass of crushed grapes through a hose from the crusher into the press.

In this case, though, the Manseng was severely dehydrated from being left on the vine this long. (Which is good in the sense that it will provide sweeter juice, which equals more alcohol after fermentation. More sugar is always better.) It turns out the grapes had lost so much water that there was actually not enough moisture for them to form any sort of mass whatsoever. This resulted in the destemmer being clogged with a mass of un-destemmed grapes, which put a serious dent in our winemaker's plans. It also put a dent in his lower back muscles, as he ended up having to shovel the remainder of the grapes into the press via pitchfork; this is called "whole cluster pressing" (as opposed to the less attractive but more effecient "chewed-up grape pulp method").

The severe drawback to this method was that every pressload is about half of its usual capacity (which is 2.5 tons or so on a good day). This meant we had to do a second run on the Manseng, since they were unable to finish pressing the entire crop last night. So this morning I was up bright and surly to pitchfork 1800 lbs. of grapes into 30 lb. "lugs" (small red boxes), which our winemaker and his assistant would then dump into the press. To everyone's relief, we were done by 2:30, which left us plenty of time for playing darts. (I bet no one ever told you that's how all harvests end, with sharp thrown objects.)

All in all, I was surprised by how harvest ended up turning out, at least on my end. I mean, sure, there was physical labor and some pain (less than I expected--also fewer injuries resulting in bloodstained clothes), but nowhere near as bad as, say, the time I had to weedwhack the bank of the river behind the winery. Overall I say harvest opened my eyes to new aspects of winemaking without damping my enthusiasm.

Plus, darts AND heavy machinery? I think P.J. O'Rourke would concur that that is the definition of a good time.

We interrupt our currently nonexistent broadcasting...

Okay, here's the deal. I know I haven't posted much lately, and I know I meant to make this an at-least-every-two-days deal. So far I've done...fairly well...at that, and I'm going to make every attempt to do better from here on out.

It's actually been a bit tough, coming up with subjects. Not that there aren't plenty--I just want to have enough to write about without being repetitive. Also, I'm still broadening my horizons as it is. Current post ideas on the books include:

-Getting a more in-depth look at the Virginia wine industry by focussing on individual wineries (ones I've visited and know something about, naturally)
-Wine stores in Charlottesville, Virginia (Market St. and Tastings, mainly)
-The enology program at Virginia Tech
-Wine and food pairings (stick with the classics, yeah?)

Anyway. One of those, or maybe something that comes to me between now and tomorrow, will be appearing as soon as regularly scheduled posting resumes. Until then...

We haven't been lax, we've been drinking

Charlottesville, Virginia is the home of one of my favorite places--The Downtown Mall. The Mall was created when they put brick over the original main street (at least the eastern end) and turned it into a pedestrian area only, leaving up the original storefronts. In one particularly delicious case, they left the lettering and marble front of the Keller and George jewelers up. (It's now a bookstore.) So on days like today it's a great place to kill a few hours and get a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or maybe something to eat.

And now there's a place you can do all three if you want. It's called Enoteca, and I just visited it for the first time on Thursday. It specializes in Italian wines--reds, whites, sweet, and sparkling--along with different types of bruschetta, panini, and a lot of really cool desserts (like fairly inexpensive tiramisu).

The only danger is if you live anywhere in Charlottesville, you'll probably get addicted to it and end up blowing your paychecks trying all the wines they've got, especially the white wines. For someone like me, it's a constant frustration to go to a wine store and look under the white wines in the "Italy" section, only to find a surfeit of Pinot Grigio. There are so many other grapes grown in Italy--Malvasia, Trebbiano, Verdicchio--and yet you rarely see those, either as varietals or proprietary blends.

And now you can! You can enjoy a glass of wine for between eight and ten dollars, which may seem steep but is (somewhat more) reasonable when you consider that you'll get a glass of wine at local wineries for about six dollars or so.

Plus--what could be wrong with a place that serves wine, coffee, AND beer?

I know this is a lame excuse for a post, but...

...I'm out of ideas for the moment.

Besides, I needed an excuse to put this picture up anyway.

(Photo: http://icanhascheezburger.com/)

Tabling The Discussion

One of the more obvious questions I got when I first started working the tasting room at the winery was "What does 'table wine' mean?" (We have three, two white and one red.) I was lost for words, because my take on table wines was that, while they print "Table Wine" on the label, it's sort of a subjective interpretation. The standardized definitions (I use "standardized" loosely, I got 'em off Wikipedia. Sue me.) score pretty high on the vague-o-meter:

"In the United States, the official definition for table wine is a wine that contains a minimum of 7 percent alcohol and a maximum of 14 percent. This definition does not define quality in any way, although some connote table wine with lower-quality, inexpensive wine. That's a mistake because many wines that simply say "Red Table Wine" or "White Table Wine" are excellent and not at all inexpensive."

So, basically, it's an inexpensive and lower-quality wine. Or it's not! Take-home message: the important part is, it's stronger than Natty and lighter than Aristocrat.

Really, though, what IS a table wine? It's a good question and deserves more than a blog post (and has recieved more; if you don't believe me, Google "table wine"). There are several details, facets, of table wine that I have noted whilst touring and tasting. They include:

1) Blending. Not all blends are table wines, but most table wines are indeed blends (enough for me to generalize, anyway). Usually this allows the winemaker some flexibility. In Virginia, in order to be a varietal (i.e., named after a specific grape like Chardonnay, Riesling, Merlot, etc.), the wine has to contain 75% or more of that grape. Using blends of grapes (the classic Bordeaux blend of Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc/Malbec/Petit Verdot being one of the most popular) means that the winemaker is not subject to restrictions or percentages. As long as he accurately lists the amount of wine somewhere (usually on the label, though not always), he is under no obligation to deliver the same amounts or even varieties of grapes on a given blend. Thus, one year he might put Seyval and Chardonnay together as a specific table wine; the next year, the same label might contain Riesling and Vidal. This is especially handy when it comes to fluctuations in the supply and availability of certain types of grapes.

2) Vintage. A lot of times table wines will be listed as NV (non-vintage). In order to qualify as a vintage, 95% of the wine has to come from grapes picked in a specific year. With the advent of stainless steel tanks, it is possible to keep wine for longer with no change in quality--the wine is the same coming out of the tank as it was going in. Thus the NV doesn't have to carry the stigma of "old, low quality wine the winemaker is trying to get rid of." It also means the winemaker can keep coinage (leftover, smaller amounts of wine that aren't enough by themselves to bottle) in variable capacity tanks, for blending purposes.

3) Variety and innovation. I've seen some pretty interesting blends so far on the trips I've taken to local wineries. Jefferson Vineyards does a red table wine called "Terre Rouge", which is a blend (I believe) of 90% Chambourcin and Cabernet, with an incongruous 10% white wine (I want to say Pinot Grigio was one) thrown in. Plenty of wineries release Bordeauxs or Clarets--usually blends heavy on the Merlot and Cabernet Franc. White blends can be surprisingly creative (when was the last time you saw a white blend in the wine section at Harris Teeter?), throwing in old European favorites like Chardonnay, Viognier, and Riesling with American hybrids like Seyval, Vidal, and Traminette.


Table wines are far too often sold short. They're dubbed "easy drinking" or "unassuming" and a variety of other things that damn them with faint praise. Part of this is due to, basically, reliance on straight varietals--French Chardonnay, Italian Pinot, etc. In America we're used to buying wine where the grape we're drinking is on the label. However, blended table wines can sometimes have more complexity in their taste and aroma by virtue of the simple fact that you really can't predict what a blend is going to do. Will flavors cancel each other out? Complement each other? Create new flavors heretofore unexplored? It makes blends a lot more exciting, in my opinion, and a lot more novel. Perhaps that's part of the reason Virginia wines are branching out so much into this exciting area.

Whatever the case may be, I say pull up a chair, pour yourself some Chateau Chunder, and table this discussion.

Don't table your glass, though. At least not till it's empty.

Exploring the "Anything But Chardonnay" Phenomenon

(Obligatory bias alert) I have to admit, my position in this situation isn't entirely neutral. In the short time that I've been drinking wine and developing an interest in the subject, I've had my fair share of Chardonnay. In doing so, I've noticed two things: 1) there's a lot of it 2) not very much of it is enjoyable. It's curious to me why this is the case. Usually when you have such a large amount of any kind of product, there are roughly equal portions that are excellent, acceptable, and poor. Why, then, with the glut of Chardonnay on the market, is the distribution tails-heavy towards the "poor" end of the spectrum?

Several answers spring to mind.

The first is that Chardonnay is inherently an inferior grape. I find this pretty unlikely. White Burgundy wines like Chablis and Pouilly-Fuisse stand up to the test any day of the week. Therefore, we need to focus less on the grape itself, and more on how it's being produced.

Here in Virginia, pretty much every winery you visit has a Chardonnay. Some have several--there are all kinds of experimentations being done with oak aging versus storage in stainless steel tanks. However, overall you'll find a tendency towards the drier, oakier, more buttery Chardonnays and less emphasis on the crisp citrus and fruit notes that are also inherent in the grape variety. Why is this? My guess is that old chestnut, "that's the way it's always been." Think of all the cheap storebought Chardonnay you get these days. Odds are good it tend towards the dry, oaky, etc., etc. style rather than the stainless-steel fermented style. This is brought on laregly by attempts to ape the French style of aging in oak barrels, which is just the way Chardonnay is done in France.

However, the dumbed-down, simplified version of aging done in oak (which is the only version I know at the moment, sadly) is that French oak adds more subtlety and nuance, while American oak adds more body and texture to the wine. (This difference is due in part to the fact that the French have, for some time, been growing oak with a tighter grain specifically for the cooperage of wine barrels, whereas here in the States we use straight white oak with a much looser grain.) This tends to add a lot of character to red wines, but in the case of even a medium-bodied white like Chardonnay, it overpowers the natural flavors innate to the fruit and imparts a distinct, often unpleasant, woody and bitter taste.

So what does this do? It gives rise to the mistaken notion in the American mindset that Chardonnay is a strong, buttery, often pungent wine whose showing is often poor enough that it's safer to skip it than take the chance that you've got an exceptional one on your hands. Thus, in the tasting room, I am often privy to the words, "I'll try the white wines--but skip the Chardonnays."

How do we break this cycle? A good first step is probably to give the stainless-steel fermented/stored Chardonnays more press. A lot of white wines benefit from never seeing the inside of an oak barrel. This isn't to say that we should do away with oak entirely--it's always been my position that there's a place for tradition even in the midst of innovation and breaking old rules. However, I have found (in the past few months) that drinking non-aged vintages has given the lie to my long-held belief that trying to find good Chardonnay wasn't really worth the effort. Perhaps more "ABC" people would feel the same way if "that's the way it's always been" ceased to be the determining factor in how a wine is produced.

Grape of the Month: Petit Manseng

So I've been learning about a lot of new grape varieties on my visits to wineries in the Central Virginia region--new to me, that is. Virginia's climate lends itself to an interesting blend of grapes; we've got the Bordeaux favorites--Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc--as well as that famous white grape of Bourgogne, Chardonnay. There's also a duke's mixture of French-American vinifera/labrusca hybrids like Norton, Chambourcin, Traminette, Vidal, and Seyval thrown in, which leads to a lot of interesting blends and tastes that are definitely distinct from the old European styles.

With that in mind, it's interesting to see more obscure European varieties popping up and becoming popular in this great state. Case in point--the Petit Manseng grape. It hails from the Southwest region of France and is used to make the famous wine Jurancon. Now wineries such as Veritas and White Hall are bottling it as a straight varietal.

The bottle I currently have shelved is the 2005 vintage from Veritas (an absolutely spectacular place, if you have the chance to visit rural Afton, Virginia, in the heart of the Central Virginia wine country). It displayed flavors that I've never experienced before in a white wine--a lot of tropical citrus flavors like mango and pineapple, with hints of cinnamon and--it took me a while to figure this out--persimmon, of all things. It tastes sweeter than it really is, actually qualifying only as semi-sweet in terms of residual sugar. Even at $25 for a 500 mL bottle, this wine is definitely one you don't want to miss. (Though with a serving that small, I'd reserve it for a special occasion, when you know ahead of time that only two people are going to be drinking it!)

Overall, I'm interested to watch the success of Petit Manseng in this state. I'd say it's safe to be sanguine about its future, especially as a choice for late harvest dessert wines. Keep an eye out for it.

A New Venue

First off, greetings. Maybe you wandered in here from my other blog, the musings and ramblings of the adventurer, Gryffilion Darkblade. If so, I promise that this will be a bit more focused, if still sentimental and borderline pretentious. Or perhaps you stumbled in here courtesy of the quirky and oft-capricious whims of a search engine. Either way, welcome. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a generous glass of wine, and hopefully enjoy.

This whole thing isn't meant merely for wine connoisseurs--although if you are one, more power to you; your comments and knowledge will be welcome here. The journey into learning about and appreciating wine isn't one that starts with a single path and ends at the same place. Like any other journey, it's not where you're going but how you get that's the worthier part. And like any other love, it's more about the depth of passion than the breadth of knowledge on the subject.

That being said, breadth of knowledge is totally awesome and is welcome here. It's a personal habit of mine to immerse myself in a subject so thoroughly that my sermons on said subject annoy even the most patient of my friends. So let's get started, shall we? There's a world of wine that awaits.