Winemaker Notes
This wine has a pale ruby color with subtle garnet hues. It offers flavors of plum, fig, and blackberry, with juicy expressions, a suave mid-palate, and a lingering finish. It also has notes of dark cherry, raspberry, and clove. It pairs well with pappardelle pasta with a savory and herbaceous Bolognese sauce.
Blend: 5% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Readers Merlot starts with plummy notes, hints of rich dark chocolate and vibrant black raspberry aromas. It's a fruit-forward delight with a medium to full-bodied profile, offering a succulent and spicy palate. The wine finishes strong, leaving a lingering spicy note that adds to the freshness. It punches above its weight class for the price.
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James Suckling
Blueberries, purple plums, tobacco leaves and ground coffee on the nose. It’s medium- to full-bodied with approachable tannins and a straightforward finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
This Merlot is showing a little heat at 15% abv, but it doesn’t detract too much from the wine’s other qualities. Blackberry and vanilla cupcake aromas are joined by wisps of fresh basil and wet slate. The wine’s ripe blueberry and orange pekoe tea flavors are ably supported by silky tannins and just enough acidity.
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Wine Spectator
Generous and appealing, with easygoing flavors of red currant, cherry and savory spices that finish with perky tannins. Drink now through 2028. 1,500 cases made.
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 and geographically diverse AVA capable of producing a wide variety of wine styles, the Columbia Valley AVA is home to 99% of Washington state’s total vineyard area. A small section of the AVA even extends into northern Oregon!
Because of its size, it is necessarily divided into several distinctive sub-AVAs, including Walla Walla Valley and Yakima Valley—which are both further split into smaller, noteworthy appellations. A region this size will of course have varied microclimates, but on the whole it experiences extreme winters and long, hot, dry summers. Frost is a common risk during winter and spring. The towering Cascade mountain range creates a rain shadow, keeping the valley relatively rain-free throughout the entire year, necessitating irrigation from the Columbia River. The lack of humidity combined with sandy soils allows for vines to be grown on their own rootstock, as phylloxera is not a serious concern.
Red wines make up the majority of production in the Columbia Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon is the dominant variety here, where it produces wines with a pleasant balance of dark fruit and herbs. Wines made from Merlot are typically supple, with sweet red fruit and sometimes a hint of chocolate or mint. Syrah tends to be savory and Old-World-leaning, with a wide range of possible fruit flavors and plenty of spice. The most planted white varieties are Chardonnay and Riesling. These range in style from citrus and green apple dominant in cooler sites, to riper, fleshier wines with stone fruit flavors coming from the warmer vineyards.