Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
What a fabulous Merlot. Yes, it’s dense in texture, like molten metal, with melted tannins, but it’s kept lively with clean acids. Meanwhile, the flavors are sheer mountain fruit: concentrated blackberries and cherries and decadent mocha. Complex, elegant and addictively good.
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Wine & Spirits
Full and delicious, Pride's merlot achieves a balanced ripeness at the mountaintop border of Napa and Sonoma counties. The wine has density of fruit while it retains a spot-on varietal identity, a flavor of black cherry and rose petal jam. Tannins amplify the richness with a chocolate warmth, evenly meshed with the fruit across the palate. A pleasure to drink now with rare filet mignon, this is well suited to age.
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Wine Spectator
Aromas of cedar, ripe berry fruit and hints of toasty oak offer solid clues as to what comes across on the palate. Intense and well-balanced, the supple blackberry and black cherry flavors pick up a nice dose of creamy mocha and toasty oak on the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2002 Merlot, which comes from both the Napa and Sonoma sides of the mountain, is elegant, with wonderfully sweet black cherry fruit intermixed with a hint of mocha, white chocolate, and some background sappy wood notes. Its beautiful integration of acidity and tannin make for an elegant, polished, and stunning Merlot to drink over the next decade.
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.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.