Winemaker Notes
Blend: 77% Merlot, 23% Malbec
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Including 23% Malbec, the 2016 Merlot Reserve is brilliant and offers a vivid purple/ruby color as well as a smoking bouquet of black cherries, cassis, tobacco, smoke earth, and cedary spice, Full-bodied, rounded, supple and seamless, it has polished tannin, beautiful purity, and a great finish. It's a rockingly good Merlot from this estate to enjoy over the coming 7-8 years.
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Tasting Panel
Wonderful sensations occur in this creamy-dreamy textured red with 23% Malbec blended in. Chocolate and plum on the nose lead to cherry, oak, and sandalwood as melted chocolate, licorice, and hints of black olive add additional layers to the opulent, dark red fruit. Chili powder seasons the earthy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Merlot Reserve, deep ruby-purple in the glass, is intensely scented of cassis, black plum, blueberries and blackberries with notes of blackcurrant bud, cedar, clove and violet. Medium to full-bodied, it's bold and broody in the mouth with firm, grainy tannins and satisfying freshness to lift the long, sweet-spice finish. Give this another couple of years in bottle. 510 cases produced.
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Wine Enthusiast
Thick, rich and spicy, this wine is robust in tannin structure and powerfully dense black fruit. For fans of a fuller style, it delivers plenty of concentration around accents of leather, clove and cigar.
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.
Perhaps the most historically significant appellation in Sonoma County, the Sonoma Valley is home to both Buena Vista winery, California's oldest commercial winery, and Gundlach Bundschu winery, California's oldest family-run winery.
It is also one of the more geologically and climactically diverse districts. The valley includes and overlaps four distinct Sonoma County sub-appellations, including Carneros, Moon Mountain District, Sonoma Mountain and Bennett Valley. With mountains, benchlands, plains, abundant sunshine and the cooling effects of the nearby Pacific, this appellation can successfully produce a wide range of grape varieties. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gewürztraminer, and most notably, Zinfandel all thrive here. Ancient Zinfandel vines over 100 years old produce small crops of concentrated, spicy fruit, which in turn make some of the Valley's most unique wines. These can also be made as “field blends” (wines made from a mix of grape varieties grown in the same vineyard) along with Petite Sirah, Carignan and Alicante Bouschet.