THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603260487
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM RAPER, SPECIAL TO SUNDAY FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 220 lines
MERLOT. Americans have learned to pronounce the French word - mair-lo - just as we learned years ago to say shah-blee and cab-air-nay.
And just as chablis and cabernet have had their runs as trendy wines, merlot has become the hot red wine of the '90s. Top quality merlot, in fact, has become downright precious. In Hampton Roads, as in the rest of the country, retailers and restaurateurs are finding they cannot meet demand.
``Merlot is flying out of here,'' said Bobby Huber, chef/owner of Bobbywood restaurant in Norfolk. By the glass, he said, ``it's selling better than chardonnay. Cabernet sauvignon is dead in the water.''
While Huber grumbles that he cannot get the Firestone merlot from Santa Barbera County that is on his list, Willie Moats, chef/owner of Timbuktu restaurant in Virginia Beach, sums up his predicament: ``Raymond merlot (from Napa Valley) is my best seller, except I can't get any more.''
For the wine distributors who supply retailers and restaurants, the extraordinary surge in merlot demand could not have come at a worse time. The areas of California that produce the most sought-after merlots have had three straight years - 1993, 1994 and 1995 - of short grape crops because of bad weather and vine pests.
``It's not good and it's going to get worse,'' said Carol Fling, a sales manager for Associated Distributors in Chesapeake. ``Prices will rise and there will be shortages for two or three years at least.''
When she talks to a restaurateur who wants certain highly rated merlots for a wine list, Fling said, she can only shake her head and say, `` `I'm not going to be able to make you happy. Let's get off the subject of merlot. Let's talk zinfandel.' ''
The same message, if in stronger language, comes from other distributors.
``Merlot is the word from hell right now,'' said Jim Stansbury, a sales vice president for Country Vintners in Northern Virginia. ``I'm sold out of what people are clamoring for.''
Said Debi Atkins, a fine-wines consultant for Broudy-Kantor Co. in Norfolk: ``We taught people to drink it, and now we don't have enough. I wish people would learn to pronounce something else.''
Health benefits Merlot began to catch on after the 1991 ``60 Minutes'' television report about ``the French Paradox.'' In a few short minutes, newsman Morley Safer managed to convince millions of Americans that wine - particularly red wine - was an antidote to the fat-laden diet of the French.
Suddenly, health conscious consumers who either had not drunk wine or who had favored white wine began shopping around for a red wine.
Merlot, which is fruitier and less bitter than cabernet sauvignon, just happened to be the right wine for the times, although sales did not skyrocket right away.
Sales manager Fling said many people first tried exceptionally fruity and low-tannic red wines, such as the Gamays from California or Beaujolais from France, ``but as their palates got better, they turned to the more complex merlots.''
Hampton Roads retailers agree that the soft taste of merlot is the main reason for the surge in sales. Publicity about the health benefits of red wine may have gotten consumers to try merlot, but the easy-to-like taste is what hooked them.
Earlier this month, Peter Coe, an owner of the Taste Unlimited gourmet shops in Hampton Roads, conducted a tasting of Blackstone 1993 Merlot Napa Valley ($10) at his location in Norfolk's Ghent. ``Every single person who tasted it liked it,'' he reported. ``They said, `Gee, it's wonderful.' If it had been a cabernet sauvignon we were tasting, a certain percentage of the people would have found the tannin (bitterness) objectionable.''
Coe, who remains a proponent of cabernet, said that fuller-bodied wine tends to taste better when taken with food. Merlot, while also hailed as a food wine, has the reputation for being a good sipping wine. It is soft enough to be drunk without food.
Retailers say they have been able to keep merlot on their shelves, but not necessarily the specific merlots they want to offer. ``Many of the ones we would like to have are not available or not available in enough quantity,'' Coe said.
At East of Napa in Virginia Beach, owner Andrea Burke Simek said her shop is able to stock only 16 different merlots, compared with about 25 a year ago. She also is selling unfamiliar labels. ``I've done well with a California merlot, the Smith & Hook 1993 ($18) from Santa Lucia Highlands. But it was new to me, and my customers had never heard of it,'' she said.
Simek said she has even sold a lot of a Romanian merlot, labeled as Legacy, at $6 a bottle. ``I feel lucky to get it,'' she said.
George LeCuyer, owner of 22 Wine Street Gourmet in Hampton, had 39 merlots in stock in mid-March, ranging from the Silverado 1992 Limited Reserve Napa ($57) to the La Playa ($6) from Chile. But, he said, he cannot get some merlots that he wants and has a small amount of some of the better bottles.
Top quality merlots are so sought after, LeCuyer said, that buyers are coming from outside his primary market to ``cherrypick'' ultrapremium examples such as the Silverado Reserve or the Beringer Howell Mountain ($35), Matanzas Creek Sonoma County ($37) and Duckhorn Napa Valley ($37).
At P.J. Baggan on Laskin Road near the Oceanfront, owner Patrick Daly said savvy customers have snapped up small quantities of Arrowood 1992 Merlot Sonoma County ($38) or Fess Parker 1993 Merlot Santa Barbara ($20).
But, he added, only about one in 10 of his customers is ``really aware of good merlot.'' He said the typical buyer asks for merlot but not for a specific label.
Daly and several other retailers said a wine will sell if it has the word ``merlot'' on the label, no matter what its pedigree.
The better to blend Praise of the plump, blue merlot grape shows up as early as the 1700s in vineyard records of the Bordeaux in southwestern France. The variety gained popularity as a blending grape that softened the fuller bodied and more tannic cabernet sauvignon.
Almost all of the great wines of the Haut Medoc on the left bank of the Bordeaux's Gironde River are made mostly from cabernet sauvignon. Smaller amounts of merlot and other grapes such as cabernet franc make up the remainder of the blends.
But the Bordeaux is a large territory, and on the right bank of the Gironde, merlot became king. In the communes of Pomerol and St. Emilion, it reached its peak of quality, so much so that the merlot-based wines of chateaux Petrus and Le Pin in Pomerol cost $250 or more per bottle today, much more than the first growths such as Lafite-Rothschild and Latour in the Haut Medoc.
Merlot plantings in Bordeaux have increased over the years, and today the vineyards of the region have nearly twice as much merlot acreage as cabernet sauvignon. This means that there are scores of Bordeaux wines made mainly from merlot.
Nevertheless, France has a long tradition of favoring geographical names, not grape names, for wines. Some humble wines have in recent years won French government permission to use variety names such as merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay on the labels. But the best merlots from France are labeled with places of origin, such as Pomerol, and not as merlots.
Of his customers, retailer Daly said, ``Less than 1 percent realize that Chateau Petrus and other fine Bordeaux from Pomerol are merlots.''
He and other Hampton Roads retailers said few of their merlot customers seem interested in Bordeaux wines as substitutes for their sold-out domestic favorites.
Clement Brown, the Eastern Division vice president for Seagram Chateau and Estate Wines, a large import company, has asked retailers to put up a sign over his company's merlot-based Bordeaux wines proclaiming, ``Try these wonderful French, chateau-bottled merlots.''
Brown conceded there is some difference in taste between Bordeaux's merlot-based wines and the merlots of California that have become so popular in the United States.
``I find the California merlots very obvious with upfront fruit and a lot of vanillan from the oak,'' Brown said. ``. . . There's wood in (the Bordeaux wines), but not enough to knock you in the face. It's more in balance.''
Cheap imitations Merlot was introduced in California as a grape to blend with cabernet sauvignon, mimicking the practice in the Haut Medoc. It wasn't until 1968 that the first domestic merlot varietal was bottled by Louis Martini winery in Napa Valley.
LeCuyer, the wine merchant from Hampton, is one of the area's premier collectors of Bordeaux wines. Yet he praises the strides made by the best of the California merlot producers. ``The good wines, the Beringer Howell Mountain, the Matanzas Creek, now they'll talk to you,'' LeCuyer said.
What worries him and others is the flood of thin, cheap merlot that is hitting the market to take advantage of the wine's popularity. ``It's wet and it won't hurt you, but there's no real flavor to it,'' LeCuyer said.
Stansbury, the distributor, called some of the inexpensive merlots ``weird stuff made from mystery juice'' and said he feared that some customers who taste it might be turned off to all merlot.
Daly echoed industry sales figures in pointing out that there is plenty of ``red water labeled as merlot'' in the marketplace and that the ``good quality merlot is very scarce.'' MEMO: See sidebar in illustration field for more information. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Andrea Burke Simek, proprietor of East of Napa win shop, and Michael
Belvin of Oasis vineyards show off Virginia's Oasis Merlot.
Graphic
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE BUYING
Q. How fast are merlot sales growing?
A. Sales in the United States of domestic and imported wines
labeled as merlot have more than doubled since 1991. Last year, the
volume of California merlot sold was 44 percent higher than in
1994.
Q. Why is merlot fruiter and softer than cabernet sauvignon?
A. Merlot is a plumper grape than cabernet sauvignon, which
means that it has a higher proportion of pulp to pip. Pulp is the
luscious part of the fruit. Pip is the bitter seeds. Tannin from the
seeds, as well as the skins, makes cabernet more long-lived but can
also cause it to taste faintly bitter.
Q. What should top-quality merlot taste like?
A. Good merlot may not be as full-bodied as cabernet sauvignon,
but it smells and tastes of lush, sweet berry fruit. This impression
of sweetness, even though the wine is dry, is an identifying
characteristic. Cabernet may taste of tart cherries and semi-sweet
chocolate; merlot will taste more of black cherries and milk
chocolate. Sometimes there is a telltale pine-forest aroma that
carries over into the taste of merlot. Cabernet is more likely to
smell of green peppers and cedarwood. Since many merlots have a
little cabernet blended with them and many cabernets have a little
merlot in them, it can be hard to tell them apart.
Q. What California wineries produce the best merlot?
A. Any list will be highly subjective. Here are some reliable
producers: Arrowood, Beringer, St. Clement, Clos Pegase, Duckhorn,
Matanzas Creek, Ferrari-Carano, St. Francis, Franciscan, Justin,
Kenwood, Markam, Raymond, Rutherford Hill, Shafer, Silverado, Stag's
Leap Wine Cellars, Whitehall Lane. Most of these producer price
their merlots from $20 to $35.
Q. Do we have to pay more than $20 for a good merlot?
A. No. And less expensive examples will be easier to find. Look
for these California labels: Beaulieu Vineyards (BV), Estancia,
Sebastiani Sonoma Cask and St. Supery. Washington State produces
very good merlot, with good values coming from producers such as
Columbia Crest and Staton Hills. Some Virginia wineries that make
sturdy merlots are Afton Mountain, Montdomaine, Oasis, Prince
Michel, Totier Creek and Williamsburg. In the price range below $10
are some thin, but reasonably tasty imported examples. Look beneath
the producers' names on the labels for these words: Merlot Vin de
Pays d'Oc (France), Merlot Piave or Veneto (Italy), or Merlot Maipo
(Chile).
Q. Which Bordeaux are made mostly of merlot but are not labeled
as such?
A. Most wines from Pomerol and St. Emilion have high proportions
of merlot in the blend. Here are three others from elsewhere in
Bordeaux: Lauretan Bordeaux Rouge ($9), Greysac Medoc ($12), Coufran
Cru Bourgeois ($23). Of the great wines of the Haut Medoc, Chateau
Palmer Margaux and Chateau Pichon-Lalande Pauillac are two with
large amounts of merlot in them. Both cost about $45 to $60,
depending upon the vintage.
by CNB