Complex Numbers

International Merlot Day

Inspired by "Invalid Item"  , today is...

    International Merlot Day  

I know I talk more about beer in here, but let's not forget, I'm a wine snob, too. There was a time, before craft beer started really taking off in the 90s, when I would always choose wine over beer, if only because the "beer" available was that rice-water swill from the Big Brands.

One reason I don't write more about wine is that, while I enjoy it, I don't have the language for it. I don't mean French; I know some French (at least enough to know that Merlot is pronounced like mare-low and not murr-lott). I mean things like "this dry wine features delicate notes of plum and clover on the nose, and produces a deceptively tart tingle on the palate, where overtones of cherry and fig predominate; the lingering finish is subtly redolent of spices."

I just can't.

It's okay to say that you detect almost any fruit flavor in a wine... except grape. I imagine we can make an exception for wines made from other fruits. One definition of wine is fermented beverage made from fruit; in practice, this is usually grape, but can be any fruit. But in the case of most wines, made from grapes, "grape" is utterly off-limits in the tasting notes.

So I won't describe the difference between Merlot and other red wines, except to say that it tastes almost completely unlike grape.

The most widely-known reds include Merlot, Cabernet Sauvingon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah/Shiraz, and Malbec. They tend to get blended together a lot, too, which is an art in itself. There are, obviously, a bunch (pun intended) more, but those are ones I find at a lot of wineries, and many of them come from the internationally-famous Bordeaux region of France.

But I've had better Merlot right here in the US. This is not to rag on France; I'm guessing that, like most grape-growing regions, they keep the really good stuff for themselves. One day, I'll find out for myself.

Like California. I wasn't overly impressed by California wines until I actually went there and did wine tastings. I'm still not overly impressed with a lot of their beverages; as with beer, there's a rough inverse correlation between how big the producer is (i.e., how many liters they spit out in a year) and how objectively tasty their offerings are. It's not a perfect correlation; you also get real dogs from small vineyards.

And Napa is severely overrated. Seriously. Napa is for tourists. Or, as the bumper sticker here in Virginia asserts: "Napa makes auto parts. Virginia makes wine."

One big difference between wine and beer, apart from what agricultural product they're made from, is that, with very few exceptions, beer has a much narrower range of prices. You rarely, if ever, see a bottle of beer going for thousands of dollars. Not so with wine; I've seen bottles as high as $30,000—in Vegas, where they're obviously catering to jackpot winners and expense-account holders. They also use that as a decoy price; after seeing a $30K bottle, that $100 for a $20 bottle of Merlot seems almost reasonable.

But Merlot is a very common grape, found in many regions that aren't France, as well as being, by some accounts anyway, the most widely-grown grape in its home country. Lots of winemakers in my area produce it. In other words, economically speaking, there's no shortage of supply. So there's no bloody excuse for paying more than around $20 for a bottle; anything more than that, you're just showing off.

And I'll always pick it over Cabernet Sauvignon, but when it comes to reds, well, give me an Argentinian Malbec or an Australian Shiraz.