Merlot is the world’s great crowd-pleaser — soft, round and generous where Cabernet is firm and demanding. It is the most planted grape in Bordeaux and the second most planted red on earth, the velvet heart of some of the most expensive wines in the world. And yet, thanks to a single line in a Hollywood film, it became for a while the grape it was fashionable to despise1.
Quick facts
- Merlot is a Bordeaux grape, the star of the Right Bank — Pomerol and Saint-Émilion.
- Its name comes from merle, the blackbird that loves its ripe grapes.
- It is the second most planted red grape in the world, after Cabernet Sauvignon.
The soft heart of Bordeaux
Merlot is, above all, a Bordeaux grape — in fact the region’s most planted variety. It ripens earlier and more easily than Cabernet Sauvignon and gives a wine that is plush, fleshy and full of soft plum and blackberry fruit. In the classic Bordeaux blend it is the flesh on Cabernet’s bones, rounding out the firmer grape; on its own, it can be gloriously supple1.
A grape named for a blackbird
The name is charming. Merlot comes from merle, the local word for blackbird — either because the bird was so fond of eating the sweet ripe grapes, or because of their glossy blue-black colour. The grape was first recorded in the Bordeaux region in the 1780s, praised even then as one of the best of the Libournais, the Right-Bank country around Libourne2.
A family of grapes
Merlot’s parentage was a mystery until DNA testing revealed it: it is the offspring of Cabernet Franc and the almost-extinct Magdeleine Noire des Charentes. That makes it a half-sibling of Cabernet Sauvignon — which shares the same Cabernet Franc parent — and a cousin of Malbec, so that Bordeaux’s great red grapes turn out to be one closely related family3.
The velvet of Pomerol
Merlot reaches its zenith on the cool clay-limestone soils of the Right Bank, in Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. There, in tiny Pomerol, the clay of a single estate — Château Pétrus — produces an almost pure Merlot that ranks among the rarest and costliest red wines on the planet, proof that this “easy” grape can scale the very heights4.
On the clay of Pomerol, humble Merlot makes one of the world’s most coveted wines.— on Château Pétrus4
Too much of a good thing
Merlot’s very approachability nearly undid it. Through the 1990s its popularity exploded, and growers around the world planted it everywhere, much of it in unsuitable places. The result was a flood of cheap, soft, forgettable Merlot that dulled the grape’s once-fine reputation and set it up for a fall5.
The Sideways effect
That fall arrived in 2004, when the film Sideways had its wine-obsessed hero declare, in a memorable and unprintable outburst, that he would not drink any Merlot. The line struck a nerve: Merlot sales dipped and Pinot Noir’s soared. Yet the grape endured, and today — its cheap plantings pruned back — fine Merlot is quietly winning back the respect it never truly lost6.
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on October 22 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
Read more
- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot’s half-sibling
- A history of Bordeaux wine
- Malbec, a cousin through Magdeleine Noire
References
- Bordeaux.com (CIVB) — Merlot. www.bordeaux.com ↩
- Wine-Searcher — Merlot. www.wine-searcher.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Merlot. www.britannica.com ↩
- Wine Folly — The Comprehensive Guide to Merlot. winefolly.com ↩
- VinePair — How Sideways Almost Killed One of the World’s Great Grapes. vinepair.com ↩
- NPR — The Sideways Effect: How a Wine-Obsessed Film Reshaped the Industry. www.npr.org ↩
Recommended reading
Rod Phillips
Good on Bordeaux’s grapes and the modern fashions that shape wine.
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