Remember the 90s? The economy was booming, “alternative” music filled the air, Clinton’s sex life dominated the headlines, Seinfeld was our favorite show, and merlot was the popular wine with which everyone washed the decade down.
Now, it seems, merlot has fallen from favor. Wine snobs (some of them anyway) sniff in disdain at the mention of its name. The recent movie Sideways had its main character screaming “I’m not drinking any f**king merlot!”
How come?
I admit to knowing next to nothing about wine. Is there an objective reason merlot has fallen from favor? (Or was it never really in favor with the cognoscenti in the first place?)
Is the merlot-hating just an artificial way for wine snobs to separate themselves from the unwashed masses? Or are there valid objections to merlot?
Is it all just trendiness? Have other wines experienced similar falls from grace?
I think it’s those last two sentenced, combined. Pinot Noir is apparently the new merlot, although shiraz was in there for a while in between. Heck, they’re all good to me.
I’m not a wine snob, but I’ve never really liked Merlot. There’s too much berry (cherry, I think) flavor. I think that it is probably just being rejected because it was so popular.
Merlot is still my favorite. I had no idea it was trendy back then or untrendy now. I tend towards more full flavored stuff, like dark chocolate, stouts and porters, and red-meat.
I’m in wine-snob central, and the one thing I’ve found truer than anything else is true wine snobs don’t turn their noses up at any wine.
That said, Pinot does seem to be the ‘in’ wine, and it has the movie Sideways to thank a bit. I read an article online regarding this very thing about a week ago. I’ll have to see if I can call it up.
Pinot Noir, when done right, does tend to have a little more respect than other wines, because it’s not an easy wine to produce.
It’s known as ‘the bad boy’ of varietals, and when it is done nicely, it really is a work of art.
This Christmas, I attended a wine and cheese party at the house of some of my parents’ friends. They had four bottles of white wine and one bottle of Merlot. I picked up the Merlot bottle, and realized it was quite chilly. The host noticed what I was pouring and said, “If you need more, there’s another bottle chilling in the fridge.” I’m no wine snob, but chilled Merlot has no flavor. I guess they were only used to dealing with white wines…
Trendy is very important to a lot of people, and the best way to keep the marketing monster alive is to keep coming up with new trends for the trend-followers to follow.
Beyond that, when Merlot (properly capitalized) became hot suddenly demand skyrocketed. Production was ramped up to meet demand, and a lot of quality went out the window. Vineyards with 50 year old cabernet vines were buldozed to plant Merlot, and those young vines grapes went into the vat with all the rest. As a result, the Merlot of today is crap compared to that of 10 years ago.
Good quality winemaking isn’t consistent with demand for a variety changing by a factor of 10 in just a few years.
So now, having destroyed Merlot, they’re gunning for Pinot Noir. Philistines.
I just don’t like merlot because it’s often not as smooth as cabernets or pinot noir. However, I’m more than willing to try to see if I like it.
My cousin, on the other hand, has been dubbed the “wine nazi” in our family. You want wine snobbery? Go to him. He’s got a special temperature controlled cabinet that only he holds the key to, and he insists on picking out the wine for every family event because God knows what swill we’ll choose.
I’m not that fond of Merlots just because they are so…ordinary. I think the big selling point when they were the “Flavor of the Week” was that they are unoffensive and go with just about everything. No thank you. I’d rather have a wine that I have to work with, that is more complex and a challenge. Cabs are good, but I’ll maim for a great Zin!
I was down in Key West in September. When I travel I like to see if there’s any regional or unusual wines I can pick up. It’s fun.
I know that wine is made with Key Lime/Grape combinations in the islands so I stopped into one of the two wine shops in town (this one is one Duval Street) and the wine master, when I asked, shouted, “NO! And we don’t have any damn white zinfandel either!”
I wish I could say I’d replied cuttingly but the ‘Oh my, aren’t WE self-important for some guy in a small shop in a tourist village’ line didn’t occured to me for at least half an hour.
On the other hand, when I found the other shop I found some Key Lime wine (not all that great) and had a blast tasting with the wine master there. He had some tomato wine that was great (but best you avoid the tomato-jalapeno combination. Just a bit of advice.)
It’s wine, you morons. Shut the fuck up with your pretentious snobbery! If you get your self-worth through wine snobbery you need to go do some good works or something.
I still haven’t seen Sideways. Everyone’s been telling me to catch it, I just hate going to the theatre. I was going to wait for it to come out on DVD and just buy it.
But, looks like we’ve got nothing planned for this afternoon anyway, so we’re off to catch the 4 o’clock showing.
Last Valentine’s Day my husband and I had a Pinot Noir with dinner at a great restaurant in Jenner (River’s End) that immediately became not only our favorite Pinot, but our favorite wine. Merry Edwards Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
That night we had the 2001, and bought half a case a week later. We also purchased half a case of the 2002, and it’s just as delicious, though could stand another year or so of cellaring. There’s a couple of 2002’s on our rack now earmarked for this Valentine’s Day.
She only sells direct, though, so I don’t think it’s one you’ll find in a wine shop. Smooth, rich, perfectly balanced wine.
If any Merlot haters have a bottle of Petrus 82 in the cupboard just collecting dust, could they please send it to me - I’ll dispose of it humanely.
It’s not the wine snobs who are driving this, it’s those Chardonnay (or is it Pinot Grigio?) swilling Madison Avenue types. The actual taste of the wine is irrelevant, it’s just marketing. New grape = new Ad campaign = more bottles of Champagne (or it Cava these days?)
I’m becoming a wine snob alarmingly quickly, and here are my thoughts about merlot.
I like merlot. If a glass is offered to me, I’d never turn it down. But it’s a nice safe wine- I’ve never had a merlot I didn’t like, but I’ve never had one surprise me with its awesomeness, as has happened to me more than once with pinot noirs and zinfandels.
So I choose other reds most of the time if I’m buying for myself.
Many people who shun Merlot or who denigrate “blends” in favor of pure variatals would probably be shocked to find out that many, if not most, French wines are a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. The backlash you’re talking about is probably nothing more than pretentiousness and/or trendiness.
I went to a “wine party,” where a local bar had a few different bottles of mid-range wine in addition to its normal menu of beer and cocktails, and entertainment was scheduled. You paid a flat rate for entry, all you could eat and drink as long as you ordered off the event menu. The main idea was to get some customers they wouldn’t normally have and promote the place a bit. The wine was nothing special, but not bad at all.
One woman from California declaimed that the wine was “shitty” and the bottles “didn’t even have a variety” on the label. The wine was from France. They don’t put varietal designations on the labels in France. Open mouth, insert foot. She thought she knew a bit about wine, but if she’d really known much of anything other than the trendy crap she’d picked up from friends, she would have known about French labeling conventions. That’s so elementary even I know it.
