Winemaker Notes
On the nose, there are hints of chocolate, sugar plum, raspberry and incense. On the palate, there are flavors of fruit cake, blueberry and cherry. This wine would pair best with a spiced pork tenderloin in a cherry-thyme sauce.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Rounded red-berry fruit meets with vanilla, caramel, smoke and wet soil on the nose of this bottling from a winery near Morgan Hill. Hickory smoke and rich red-fruit flavors start the palate, where grippy tannins lead into a cocoa-laced finish. It needs some time to smooth out.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: While many of the cognoscenti will eschew soft reds because they think they are wines with training wheels, yet many occasions call for easy reds. The 2014 Jason Stephens Winery Merlot fits this category well. TASTING NOTES: This wine is ripe, delicious and smooth. Its aromas and flavors of pretty red fruits should pair it superbly with shredded chicken over a bed of salad greens. (Tasted: March 17, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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.
Home to some of California’s most influential winemaking pioneers of the late 1800s, Paul Masson and Charles Lefranc, the Santa Clara Valley AVA hugs up against the southwestern border of today’s famous Silicon Valley and excels in the production of bold reds, as well as some whites.