Merlot's Reputation Problem, and Why It Was Always Unfair

Merlot is one of the most widely planted red wine grapes in the world, and for most of the 1990s it was one of the most popular. Then a single film changed everything. Today's episode covers the Sideways effect — what actually happened to Merlot's reputation and why — and makes the case that the dismissal was always unfair, built on a caricature of the grape rather than an honest assessment of what it can do at its best.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Daily Decant, your five-minute briefing on the world of wine. Each episode delivers practical insights to help you choose, order, and talk about wine with more confidence in everyday social settings. Let's get into today's decant. It's a new week, and this week we're doing something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. A full, dedicated rehabilitation of one of the most unfairly maligned grapes in the wine world. We're spending five days on Merlot, and I want to start by telling you the story that most people know in broad strokes, but almost nobody knows in full, genuinely ironic detail. The year is 2004. A film called Sideways is released, following two middle-aged men on a wine tour of California's Santa Barbara region. One of the main characters, Miles, it's wine obsessive, who loves Pinot Noir and has a visceral, almost personal hatred of Merlot. At one point, he says, I'll paraphrase because I won't reproduce copyrighted material. If anyone orders Merlot, he's leaving. This line was funny, and it landed. And the effects on the wine market were immediate and measurable. U.S. Merlot sales dropped significantly in the years to follow the film's release. Pinot Noir Sales Spiked. The gap widened for years, and the cultural perception of Merlot as a soft, boring beginner's wine has persisted in many wine circles ever since. So here's the irony that most people who reference Sideways don't know. The wine that Miles treats as his personal holy grail throughout the film is the one he finally opens at the end in a quietly moving scene as a 1961 Cheval Blanc, a legendary vintage from a legendary estate in St. Emilion on the right bank of Bordeaux. And the 1961 Cheval Blanc is made from approximately 60% Merlot and 40% Cab Franc. The wine Miles spent the entire film celebrating and protecting and finally drinking in a moment of bittersweet transcendence was essentially a Merlot. The grape he declared he would never drink. The irony could not be more complete. So what actually happened to Merlot's reputation and is it deserved? The honest answer is some of it is and some of it isn't. During the Merlot boom of the 1990s, the grape became one of the most widely planted varieties in California, and much of that planting happened quickly in sites that were not well suited to it. Merlot is a grape that, grown in too warm climates with excessive irrigation and high yield, produces exactly what the critics accuse it of producing soft, jammy, undifferentiated wine without much structure or complexity. The worst California Merleau of the 1990s genuinely deserved criticism. It was often thin or overripe, heavily oaked to compensate for lack of character, and priced at a premium it just couldn't justify. But here's what the backlash missed. And what this week it's going to demonstrate clearly. Merlot in the right conditions, from the right producers grown on the right soils, produced some of the most profound and age-worthy red wine in the entire world. On the right bank of Bordeaux, Merlot dominates the blends of some of the most expensive and critically celebrated wines ever made. Petrus, 100% Merlot from a tiny plateau of blue clay in Pomerol, sells for thousands of dollars a bottle and is universally regarded as one of the greatest wines on earth. Cheval Blanc itself is a first-growth equivalent estate built largely on Merlot. In Tuscany, Maseto makes 100% Merlot that commands over $300 a bottle. And in Washington State, the Columbia Valley and Walla Walla regions are producing Merlot that genuinely rivals palm or at a fraction of the price. The through line of the week is that Merlot is not a lesser grape. It's a sensitive teririard-driven grape that expresses its environment with great fidelity, which means it's extraordinary in the right place and ordinary in the wrong one. The same is true of Pinot Noir, and nobody called Pinot Noir boring because some of it is mediocre. This week we are going to find the right places, the right producers, and the right bottles. And here is a broader point underneath all of it. The way fashion moves through the wine world creates genuine opportunities for the attentive buyer. When a grape or region falls out of favor based on a caricature rather than an honest assessment, price stays rational even as quality continues to develop. Merlot is in that position right now. The reputational damage from two decades of dismissal has not been fully repaired, which means serious Merlot from the best producers and regions is still under price relative to what it actually delivers. This week is about finding those bottles, and tomorrow we're going to go to Bordeaux Right Bank, where Merlot has been making the case for itself for centuries. You won't want to miss it. That's today's Daily Decant. If you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you can continue building your wine knowledge in just a few minutes a day. See you tomorrow for the next Decant.