Rock Hollow Merlot Six-Pack

The three most important factors in wine quality: location, location and location. I’d rather have a good Sonoma or Napa Merlot than a warm region Cab any day. Prior to the 1980’s very little Central Valley wine was varietally labelled, but the large wineries came to realize that crappy Chardonnay was easier to sell than great Columbard or Chenin Blanc or “Chablis”. When the “fighting varietal” boom took off in the mid 80’s and early 90’s there was already huge acreage of Cabernet Sauvignon in production in Sonoma and Napa (and all coastal) counties, but not so much Merlot. Producers like Duckhorn, St. Francis, Newton and Matanzas Creek had made reputations for serious Merlot - wine similar to Cabernet in flavor profile but “fatter” or “fleshier” and therefore more approachable when young. It also has a sexy sounding name. There were legions of wine drinkers who didn’t know that Merlot and Chardonnay were the names of grapes, just that they sounded nice. Huge acreage of Merlot was planted in warm interior regions where it made insipid wines - good “teething” wines for beginning wine drinkers. Remember the ads aimed at white wine only drinkers?: “#$%^#@ $)&* Merlot doesn’t have that harsh aftertaste”. If your introduction to Chardonnay or Merlot was that flavorless, gutless, often even sweet, generic plonk no wonder you look down on it. Yes, Merlot did become primarily a commercial, not-so-elitist wine because a large proportion of it was made from lousy grapes. The screenwriter of Sideways admittedly was not into wine - he just took what he heard and wrote it into an engaging sub plot in the movie.

No, Cotes du Rhone are mainly Syrah. Over the past decade, they have been a great value, and when I was in the mood for something different, perhaps a bit meatier, than a simple Burgundy for daily drinking, Cotes du Rhone was (as I put it) a great choice for variety.

For at least a decade, good inexpensive French and Italian reds were widely available in the east, whereas California wine became increasingly expensive – no more excellent $10 Zinfandels like there used to be. So, the discerning drinker, even with a California palate, who wanted value for money, drank French and Italian far more than California (except when dipping into the cellar for special occasions).

Very good and informative post. I’ve often thought the large plantings of Merlot in the San Joaquin Valley were a huge mistake. Valley fruit certainly commands lower prices (for good reason) than Napa and Sonoma fruit. You will recall that UC Davis was promoting their various Cabernet/Carignan and other crosses like Ruby Cabernet and Carnelian for Region IV and Region V – and those hybrids made really quite decent and sound commercial generics. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the cachet when the varietal revolution hit (although I think someone did bottle some Ruby Cabernet under the name for a while). Likewise the almost complete displacement of the large amounts of French Colombard and Chenin Blanc – both of which used to be varietally labeled – with Chardonnay grapes that were far less suited to Regions IV and (gasp!) V. Chenin Blanc, of course makes great wines in the Loire, and made good, refreshing light whites in California that were great summer wines - mostly finished slightly off-dry, but a few very dry and quite charming. French Colombard had the acid to stand up to the climate in the Valley and a very few quite fine thoroughly dry wines were made from it – perhaps the closest thing to an American version of Muscadet – and a whole lot of sound but uninteresting medium dry white wine.

and Petrus Merlot.

Thank you wine.woot for providing such a venue as this. Where else could we get such an amazing, and free, education? Much of it is a bit over my head, but I’m absorbing all I can, and enjoying every word!

…and of course, thank you rpm and sb (and all the other worthy contributers) for the education itself.

OK, I am not here to talk about the Merlot…I am here to ask:

Did anyone get Rock Hollow’s 2004 cabernet sauvignon from Monday’s Wine Woot?

~ Well, I just got my Rock Hollow 2004 cab~sauv… opened it; smelled it; poured and aired it via the glass; tasted. I am curious… what’s your place? Being a US citizen, I want to earnestly adore my own country’s product, but, when there’s a wine that drifts from across the seas (shhhhAustrailia) for a price that is 1/2 that of it’s US counterparts (not implying Rock Hollow, mind you) in quality (Yellow Tail, and I am not talking tuna!), well…what should we do? Seriously…is it time to embrace a true global economy and allow consumer demand to regulate, or, should we turn our back upon imports (less cost, higher quality) and protect our own economy?

I’ve noticed that there are fewer sales from the west coast than other states. Is that because this available more readily there?

Or are merlots finally on their way out?

There are so many wonderful wines available in the world. Why do we see mostly merlots and chardonnays for sale? (We see cabs as well, but since they are generally too heavy for very warm weather and cost more money, they get pushed less.) If California was a smaller place, you could tell me that only those grapes grow well there. And while they do grow well, so does almost every other kind of grape!

Stop the quest for boredom! Bring out some primitivos and chenin blancs, woot!!! Rock Hollow, plant some shiraz and sangiovese! Cultivate viognier! Get into the 21 century!

Wooters! Don’t settle for wines for limited palettes! Demand grape diversity!

The very short answer (the longer version would be book length) is that some grapes do better in California than others, and, of course, some grapes do better in some regions in California than others. Long before California wines were fashionable, and everyone was into specific AVAs, the guys at the Unversity of California experimental station at Davis (before it was a full fledged campus) divided potential grape producing areas in California into five growing regions, based on the climate. The Davis people recommended different grapes for different regions. Up through the mid-70s, people heeded these recommendations, but the huge demand for varietals, especially cabernet and chardonnay at first, and then merlot, let to the planting of vast quantities of grapes that are not suited for the temperature regions in which they’re planted. Leading to inferior fruit, leading to mediocre wine. The fact that the wines made from all of this Valley Chardonnay, Merlot and Cab are even drinkable at all is a testament to the technological skill of the oenologists and staff at the huge commercial wineries that make the stuff.

Because the demand has not been there, there has been no rush to plant some of the other varieties you mention. There’s some planted, and in fact there has been some for a very long time – Swiss Colony planted Sangiovese in Asti in the 1880s.

Primitivo, of course, is genetically the same as Zinfandel. Zin was once the predominant fine wine grape in California, but lost its cachet in the late 70s as Cab and Merlot took off. It wasn’t until 1992 or so that there was more Cab than Zin grown in California, and the huge difference there is now is a 1998 and on phenomenon. There was less Merlot than Pinot Noir until 1994 or so, and less Merlot than Zin until 2001. Other than in a few places, the various Rhone varietals have not done particularly well in California.

As to whites, Chenin Blanc and French Colombard, once major grapes – indeed there was as much as 7x as much FC as Chardonnay in the mid 1980s – have been in decline since the 1980s. There just isn’t the demand, despite the fact that those grapes probably produce relatively better fruit in the hot regions IV and V (FC especially) than does Chardonnay.

I used to post ALL the offers. I think I gave up in early Feb, or something…

I hope it’s not quite that bad when I get mine on Monday! The simple economics answer is that you should buy whatever is priced right so that you like it, whatever it is that you care about; this can include price, area of production, etc… So buy wines from wherever gives you pleasure! That said, the lower end American wines you are probably talking about are either priced right or won’t improve terribly much in quality. I would think that the cheaper producers people most commonly are drinking do not need our help and support. They produce such a large volume of wine that they’ll do fine. It’s the smaller wineries that are more likely to die without our support. Of course, it has also been my experience that they produce superior wines for the price, which causes no moral quandries for me! Free trade is the only way for consistently high quality wines to continue to make their way here, whether from Australia, Spain, Chile, Frace, Italy, or wherever.

This is a case where the weak dollar has been particularly mean to the American wine drinker. In addition to the annually escalating prices of european wines - as recently as 5 years ago you could find an aisle’s worth of Cote du Rhones for less than $10 whereas they now trade for 15-18 - increasingly i suspect the more reliable California wines are becoming more attractive exports as their relative price decreases comparatively to their european counterparts and increases the demand.

So, throw in higher energy prices, and it becomes harder to find a ‘bargain’ on either side of the pond. All of this makes woot so much more exciting for me.

a clue?

Best start on Saturday, this may take a couple of days.

Wow the earliest clue ever!
Lets see, Saturday is named after the planet Saturn which is named after the Roman god of agriculture Saturn. In Greek mythology he was known as Cronos (Kronos). Also Saturn is the father of Veritas the goddess of truth, and the term in vino veritas comes from that.
My guess is Corison Kronos Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon.

Nice thought process and that would definitely be cool. I liked the 2001 Corison and still have a couple of the 2000s left, but I think the Kronos would probably be out of the woot.wine price range at ~$100/bottle. Although the earlier Corison offering was at an incredible markdown, so you may be on to something.

If, by this, you’re referring to the “Woot Heat” map, then the answer is, “maybe so, maybe not.”

The map is a representation of “Per-capita Per-capita sales of this Woot” which, contrary to woot’s own statement – “The brighter the state, the more its residents bought.” – is not an indication of anything. We don’t know how many wooters are in each state, so we don’t know how many sales a percentage from any state represents.

Look at the map for this current offering. As I write this, Colorado and Idaho are the brightest states (meaning the highest percentage of wooters in those states bought). For all I know and without any additional information, there could only be three registered wooters in Idaho and two of them bought putting the state at 67%. California could have 2000 registered wooters, but if as many as 200 bought, that would only put the state at 10%. Thus, California would look less busy than Idaho even though it had 100 times the sales.

Woot Heat as it stands is easily the most useless product stat up there. It makes an interesting graphic, though.

iByron

i would be in need for a case if this is true.

inexpensive mass produced wine is always going to be there , whether or not you decide to support it.

Except WD’s clues, which are rarely of the six-degrees variety, tend to relate to the winery itself, not a vineyard.

There’s a novel by Tony Vigorito called “Just a couple of days” but it takes place in Ohio and I can’t think of or find a winery that would be relevant.

I’m not sure what you’re asking, and it’s the sentence-breaking examples that are confusing me.

Yellow Tail does equal lower price, but does not equal quality in my book. Had a YT Shiraz just last night – it was the only red in the house – and quality was not a word that leapt to my lips.

I’m just sayin’

i think he believes the rockhollow is just really bad