Winemaker Notes
Winery Chef Chris Kennedy pairs our Estate Merlot with savory cuisine like his famous wood-fired mushroom pizza, Merlot glazed barbecued chicken, or grilled ahi tuna. Chef suggests integrating thyme, rosemary or cracked black pepper in your dish to enhance the beautiful fresh spice notes in the wine.
Blend: 95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Fresh and poised, with sweet tobacco notes to jammy red and dark fruits, prunes and chocolate. Complexity and textural wealth.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deeply evocative of red fruit, dried herb and cedar, this soft supple wine offers an elegant style of complex structure and approachable texture and weight. Balanced and impressively quiet, it finishes in a woody note of oak.
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.
As one of Napa’s coolest sub-appellations, the area begs for diversity among its vineyards. Merlot and Chardonnay firmly compete with Cabernet Sauvignon for a place here. Some of Napa’s best Zinfandels also come from the Oak Knoll District.
Situated far in Napa’s southern end, Oak Knoll receives a strong cooling influence from both the San Pablo Bay and the Pacific Coast’s evening fog and breezes. Summer days are warm but on average ten degrees cooler than in St. Helena farther north up the valley; summer nights are chilly. A long growing season promotes for leisurely ripening of grape berries, resulting in an impressive balance of sugars, phenols and acidity.
Notable producers include Trefethen, one of the appellation’s oldest wineries, Robert Biale, legendary Zinfandel producer and Lewis Cellars, a family-run, hands-on establishment.