2008 Rockledge Vineyards Merlot The Rocks Napa Valley

Before we give you a crash course on the demise of one of the world’s greatest varieties in Napa Valley — a region that’s better-suited to the grape than most of Bordeaux’s Right Bank, let’s go right to the arithmetic. The grapes that went into this one were farmed to less than 3 tons per acre. The price was over $3500/ton, the same as top shelf Oak Knoll Cabernet Sauvignon. In the particularly propitious 2008 vintage, the Merlot came in at perfect physiological maturity. The vinification was meticulous, nursing out all that soft lushness before the wine spent a year and a half in 50% NEW French cooperage.

Sound like a $40 bottle of wine? It should be — but not in this market. At $15.99/bottle on cases, this is one to buy and drink, buy and lay down — but mostly, buy and wonder what’s happened to Merlot in Napa Valley.

The Sideways Demise

We still remember the 1980s when the sale of Cabernet was largely problematic. Back then, Cabernet was often picked lean and green in attempt to mimic Bordeaux. Too many wines reeked of bell pepper. Consumers were having none of it.

Enter Merlot. The early maturing Bordeaux variety offered ripe, sweet fruit flavors without the bell pepper. Clos du Bois was the poster child brand, and those first wines were really pretty good. Duckhorn followed, made from cooler climate spots like Oak Knoll and Carneros where Merlot ripened more consistently than Cabernet. Clos du Bois’ started small, but sales quickly skyrocketed in the hundreds of thousands of cases per year. Duckhorn became the call brand of choice of the lawyers, bankers and brokers at Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris. Then everyone jumped on board.

And that was precisely the problem. What drove Duckhorn and Michael Havens’s wines was the careful selection of vineyards, the limiting of yields — spending Cabernet money for top shelf Merlot. What drove the bandwagon? Dollar signs and plenty of quick cash.

Suddenly, Merlot was being planted everywhere from Napa to Sonoma, Lodi to Santa Barbara. Everyone was a buyer. How could you have a brand without a Merlot? By the time the dust settled, each of your local liquor stores had a half dozen stacks of Merlot. All were insipid.

Then came the coup de grace. Merlot was already reeling when a Hollywood movie decided to take one more pot shot. And when Miles Raymond exclaimed, “No! If anyone orders Merlot I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any f’in Merlot” — he pretty much hammered the nail in Merlot’s Napa Valley coffin.