A Mediocre Merlot

Years ago, the first wine your Two Wine Nuts bought in quantity was a 1990 Clos du Bois Merlot. That Merlot was the first wine we liked enough to stock up on, so we splurged and bought six bottles. Being rather new to wine, six bottles was quite a commitment. Unfortunately, we had very little knowledge about properly storing wine, so we made several vital mistakes:

▼ First, we stored the wine in a room that got a lot of sun. Wine likes darkness.

▼ Second, we stored the wine in a room whose temperature fluctuated. Wines like consistent coolness (we now have a wine fridge that we keep at 52 degrees).

▼ And third, we stored the wine in a rack that sat on the floor. We vacuumed the floor often enough, there was quite a lot of vibration under the wine. Wine likes to be still.

Sadly, we only enjoyed two of those bottles. By the time we found a third special occasion calling for our coveted Merlot, the wine was ruined. It was a sudden lesson in the importance of storing wine properly. If you don't have a cave or a wine cellar or a wine fridge, the best place to house your wine is often something like a dark, quiet closet. Refrigerators are too cold, and garages often fluctuate in temperature too much.

We were reminded of our first bulk purchase when we spotted a bottle of 2004 Clos du Bois Merlot while shopping at Beverages and More on a recent trip to California. On sale for just $8.99 (regularly priced at $9.99), we decided to see how this "historical" wine has held up. Sadly, it really hasn't. Or our tastes have changed measurably over the past 15 years, which is very likely.

We shared this Merlot over dinner with a couple new to wine. As your Two Wine Nuts were smelling mild hints of raisin and heavy fruit, the wife of the couple had one of the best wine descriptions ever. She said, "This smells like Communion." There you have it.

Although the Clos du Bois Merlot opened up its plummy flavor a bit as the meal progressed, it was mostly thin in the mouth and had quite a bit of tannins, reflected by the astringent puckery feeling. So, overall we were not all that impressed with this wine. We would not recommend it, even at the consumer-friendly price of being less than ten bucks. There are much better Merlots out there. Have some fun finding them and skip Clos du Bois's version.

A Red that Misses the Target

Last week while we were at Target, we spotted some wine from a winery we used to know. Folie à Deux used to be a fun boutique wine whose winery was a small farm house on a side road in Napa. Now that we can find their wine in Target and World Market for $10, we’re not sure how boutiquey Folie à Deux is any more. Hoping for the best we picked up a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Last night we opened the red version of 2005 Folie à Deux Ménage a Trois. We were disappointed.

“Folie a deux” is French for “a madness shared by two” or “a shared fantasy.” We won’t bother to define “ménage a trois” other than to say in this context it means the wine is a blend of three different grapes. This “California Red Table Wine” is a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. It sounds promising, doesn’t it?

The look and smell were what we’d expect from of blend of those three grapes. The wine was a deep, rich, purple-red, and it smelled like a nice heavy Cabernet – some berries, some oak, a tiny bit of chocolate or coffee. But the taste was disappointing. It was sweeter than we were expecting, almost like one of those jug wines from long ago. It was also rather light and the taste disappeared very quickly. We expected a lot more flavor and interest from a Zinfandel-Merlot-Cabernet blend, even at $10 a bottle. In our opinion, you can do a lot better for $10 – and probably even for $5-$7.

We still have the white to try. Stay tuned.