March 7 Wine and Burlington Beer Co Tasting
Join us anytime between 4&7
| This week’s three red wines: The classic Napa Merlot from Frog’s Leap (see details below). A rich and earthy Pinot Noir from Willamette, Oregon. An old friend from the Biodynamic winemaker Judith Beck, Austrian winemaker Beck Ink red wine, is from the grapes St. Laurent and Zweigelt. |
| Taste why Merlot is one of the best red winemaking grapes ever. The 2022 Merlot: Drought conditions continued unabated for a third straight year in 2022, and its effects continued to ripple through our Merlot vines, which posted historically low yields once again. A warm summer hastened ripening somewhat during the growing season, but things got a little weird in the second week of September. A week-long, historically extreme heat wave passed through Napa, punctuated by temperatures in Rutherford approaching 118°. I’m not going to lie; we were a little nervous, and I was honestly stunned at how beautifully balanced the wines were when we sat down to blend the ’22. In fact, there seemed to be a silver lining to the heat—while our Merlot wines typically need 9-12 months of bottle aging to come out of their shell, the ’22 is much more fruity, open, and accessible early on than what is typical. The wine tastes like cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, with tons of richness and a developing dark herb or tobacco note that bodes well for the future. Far from being merely an early bloomer, we are excited to see this wine develop over the long term, as it has the bones to make it work. —RW |
