Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine & Spirits
Yiannis Tselepos has grown merlot on the flanks of Mount Parnon in the eastern Peloponnese since he established his winery in 1989. Grown in rocky red clay at 2,460 feet in altitude, the vines enjoy plenty of sun, as well as cooling breezes -- a distinct advantage in the warm, dry summer of 2012. The wine feels rich and sunny, all-enveloping in its plummy fruit and cocoa-fine tannins, with the complex earthiness of a forest floor. It's not at all heavy, presenting itself with an ease and lightness, a lack of pretention that quietly signals the degree of mastery Tselepos has acquired with merlot in this vineyard. This is elegant enough to drink now, and it should age well for another decade.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Merlot Kokkinomilos is a Merlot aged for 15 months in new French oak. It comes in at 14.8% alcohol. This is a very big boy in a pretty big year. It seems reasonably elegant in the mid-palate, but the fruit is very ripe, almost to a fault. There are some hints of alcohol in the background and the tannins become more aggressive with aeration. As it sits, the tannins get harder, but I very much liked the way the fruit shed some baby fat and showed some underlying steel and complexity with an hour of air. The alcohol seemed to get pulled in, too. The winery sometimes makes these very big, but I have also seen evidence that they come around with time. They very much need time, however. I suspect this will be showing much better around 2020-2022, but today is not that day. Despite raising some concerns here and there, this should pull itself together well. At that point, it will, hopefully, be a tamer beast that is both sexy and well structured.
Rating: 90+
With generous fruit and supple tannins, Merlot is made in a range of styles from everyday-drinking to world-renowned and age-worthy. Merlot is the dominant variety in the wines from Bordeaux’s Right Bank regions of St. Emilion and Pomerol, where it is often blended with Cabernet Franc to spectacular result. Merlot also frequently shines on its own, particularly in California’s Napa Valley. Somm Secret—As much as Miles derided the variety in the 2004 film, Sideways, his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc is actually a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
A large southern region of Greece, the Peloponnese contains the famous appellations of Nemea and Mantineia. While connected to the mainland by a tiny strip of land, essentially the region is a large Mediterranean island and excels in the production of red wine from Agiorghitiko, white from Moscofilero and sweet wine from the Mavrodaphne grape.