“Don’t believe everything you think”, a wise feller once told me.

“Sideways killed Merlot!” said a Greek chorus of naysayers within and without the friendly confines of the wine industry.

Here are some facts about Merlot

There are more Merlot acres planted on the West Coast than Pinot Noir
Merlot outsells Pinot Noir domestically within the United States by a noticeable margin
We have gotten double the Merlot requests in the last 24 months than we have Pinot Noir

What gives? Who are these mysterious Merlot consumers that none of us seem to know?

Merlot delivers what many wine consumers say they want. Fruit presence > tannin profile. Mysterious, brooding dark fruit at that. In Bordeaux, in Washington, and in British Columbia, it’s likely the annual qualititatively best producer of these three regions, and the backbone of the world’s most expensive wine, Pomerol’s Petrus.

It wasn’t long ago that most wineries told me that they couldn’t sell Merlot unless they put it in a red blend where the grape varietal was unknown to the consumer. Nowadays, when I’m seeking to fulfill a private label request for Merlot, I need to search high and low.

Questions abound regarding what the “new consumer” wants. Perhaps they’re telling us, even if we’re not listening.