Merlot

Identity

Merlot is France's most planted red grape, and one of the two most planted worldwide alongside Cabernet Sauvignon. Yet it is anything but an ancient variety: its name shows up in writing only at the very end of the eighteenth century, on the eve of the Revolution, and its global expansion is a phenomenon of the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Bigger bunches and berries than Cabernet Sauvignon, a thinner skin, an early budbreak: Merlot gives wines that are less tannic, less acidic, fleshier. It is a generous grape, easy to enjoy young, yet capable — on the best clay-limestone ground of the Libournais — of wines with real density and staying power.

History and origin

For a long time Merlot sat in Bordeaux's shadow, mentioned everywhere but examined closely nowhere. Its parentage was one of the last major puzzles of molecular ampelography, solved only in 2009 by a team led by Jean-Michel Boursiquot and Patrice This, who screened 2,305 cultivars from the INRA germplasm collection against twenty microsatellite markers, confirmed by a further thirty-five.

The finding: Merlot is the offspring of Cabernet Franc and a variety nobody had ever catalogued, which the authors named Magdeleine Noire des Charentes. That parent survived only as a handful of ancient relict vines, first found in Brittany, at Saint-Suliac, and later in Charente, where it was known locally as "raisin de la Madeleine" for its earliness: it could ripen as soon as Saint Mary Magdalene's day, 22 July. The same obscure variety turned out to be the mother of Cot (Malbec), Mourtès and Guignard de Saintours as well.

Merlot, then, is a half-sibling of Cabernet Sauvignon, the two sharing Cabernet Franc as a common parent — a kinship that helps explain both their aromatic overlap and how well they complement each other in blends. The same study established that Cabernet Franc itself has no fully resolved parentage, and that Merlot Blanc is not a simple mutation of Merlot but a separate cross with Folle Blanche.

In the vineyard

Merlot buds early — just two days after Chasselas, the reference variety — which leaves it squarely exposed to spring frost, a risk that shows up most years across Bordeaux and the south-west. Its ripening, though, falls at mid-season, roughly two and a half weeks after Chasselas: the same gap given for Syrah elsewhere in this corpus. Merlot genuinely does ripen ahead of Cabernet Sauvignon, which is where its reputation for earliness comes from, but it is no earlier than Pinot Noir.

Its vigour runs high, with a marked tendency to throw lateral shoots and suckers that demands careful canopy work. It is particularly prone to downy mildew on flowers and bunches, fairly susceptible to grey rot and to leafhoppers, and carries a coulure risk depending on the weather at flowering. It also dislikes pronounced drought, lacking the water reserve to cope on the most free-draining ground.

Its natural home is cool clay-limestone: the clays of the Libournais hold just enough water for Merlot to finish ripening ahead of the autumn rains, whereas the fast-draining gravel of the Left Bank leaves it struggling the moment a summer turns dry.

In the glass

Dense colour, often more purple in youth than Cabernet Sauvignon's. On the nose, prune leads in ripe vintages — a sharper marker than in Cabernet, somewhere between fresh plum and dried, confected fruit — alongside black cherry and blackberry. In lighter, less extracted versions, strawberry appears, with a touch of violet.

At high ripeness or low yield, a note of dried fig can settle in, a mark of over-ripeness found in the sunniest Pomerols. Oak ageing adds cocoa and vanilla, without ever burying the fruit in a well-built wine.

On the palate, acidity stays low — 2 to 3, among the lowest in this corpus — and the round, enveloping tannins run from 2 in a flatland Merlot to 4 in a great Pomerol. Body and alcohol climb readily, since the grape's earliness and easy ripening push degrees upward in a warm year.

With age the fruit gives way to undergrowth, leather, and, in the very greatest wines, truffle.

Great terroirs

Merlot is the most widely planted red grape across the whole Bordeaux vineyard, but it reaches its highest expression on the Right Bank, in the Libournais: at Pomerol, whose rules admit five varieties — Merlot overwhelmingly dominant, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cot and, rarely, Petit Verdot — on terraces of sand, gravel and clay shaped by the river Isle; and at Saint-Émilion, across 5,500 hectares in nine communes around the UNESCO-listed medieval town, where it likewise dominates alongside Cabernet Franc. Saint-Émilion has its own entry in this encyclopedia; Pomerol does not yet.

On the Left Bank (the Médoc, the Graves), it plays a supporting role: the Médoc AOC rules admit it alongside Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Cot and Carménère, where it brings flesh, suppleness and an earlier ripening that hedges the vintage.

Beyond France, Merlot has travelled widely: north-eastern Italy, California, Chile, Australia and Portugal's Douro valley all make serious versions, often varietal rather than blended.

Commonly confused with

Cabernet Sauvignon is the most frequent mix-up, the two being half-siblings through Cabernet Franc — but Cabernet brings higher acidity, firmer and more angular tannins, and notes of green pepper and graphite that Merlot lacks.

Cabernet Franc can deceive in a young, lightly marked blend: it stands apart through livelier acidity and a cleaner green-pepper note than Merlot ever shows.

Carménère, long mistaken for Merlot in Chile before being identified as a distinct variety, shares part of its DNA through Cabernet Franc but develops peppery, herbaceous notes that Merlot does not.