Winemaker Notes
Deep red almost black in color. The aroma bursts of ultra ripe fruit, cedar and fine leather. The air is filled with fruit of blackberry, plums and currents with some licorice. The Mouth-feel is lush, concentrated yet extremely elegant and classic. There are layers upon layers of ripe velvet tannins balanced by wonderful berry notes and supported with some toasty oak. The finish goes on and on with complex mocha, black chocolate and elegant sweet berry notes. This is a concentrated classic Merlot that has tremendous aging potential but is ripe and full to be enjoyed early on.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The nose is offered a stunning amalgamation of fresh plum, dried cranberries, soy, Syrah-like bacon fat, beef marrow, blood pudding, and iodine. Had I been told it were a 7-to-9-year-old Right Bank Bordeaux, I might well have believed it, and for all of its young age and its layered profundity, it is improbably drinkable. The palate is marked by expansive flavors of black and red fruits, mean, and minerals. The wine exhibits plushness and elegance, offering a seemingly paradoxical sense of weightlessness allied to enormous richness and palate saturation. Its finish is superbly long, with deep marrowy, minerally undertones, faint plum pit bitterness, and persistently bright, juicy, slightly tart berry fruit.
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.
Increasingly garnering widespread and well-deserved attention, New York ranks third in wine production in the United States (after California and Washington). Divided into six AVAs—the Finger Lakes, Lake Erie, Hudson River, Long Island, Champlain Valley of New York and the Niagara Escarpment, which crosses over into Michigan as well as Ontario, Canada—the state experiences varied climates, but in general summers are warm and humid while winters are very cold and can carry the risk of frost well into the growing season.
The Finger Lakes region has long been responsible for some of the country’s finest Riesling, and is gaining traction with elegant, light-bodied Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. Experimentation with cold-hardy European varieties is common, and recent years have seen the successful planting of grapes like Grüner Veltliner and Saperavi (from the Eastern European country of Georgia). Long Island, on the other hand, has a more maritime climate influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, and shares some viticultural characteristics with Bordeaux. Accordingly, the best wines here are made from Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The Niagara Escarpment is responsible for excellent ice wines, usually made from the hybrid variety, Vidal.