Cabernet Sauvignon vs MerlotMovie Sideways Issue Sender: Ian

I have to say that for the better estates in the Bordeaux region, it can sometimes be quite hard to tell whether Merlot or Cabernet is predominant.

Grin... I'd argue that you could leave out the words "specific" and "varieties", and add an 's' to wine.....

Although I'd be the first to agree that the most important factor in the flavour of a wine is the grape variety from which it's made, I'd suggest that Merlot and the Cabs are sufficiently close in flavour for winemaking techniques and terroir to be quite capable of blurring the differences. For ME that's not a problem at all, I can see that it could be, for "New World Wine" drinkers, whose reactions to a wine are very much varietal based.

I suppose that's as much a matter of taste as to the style of wine you like as anything else. Both Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot can be made into great fruit plants, and both can be made with great restraint and subtlety. I happen to enjoy both styles, and I'd argue that the overlap is far more important than the differences. For ME Pétrus and the other greats from Pomerol are going to be the wines by which I judge all Merlot based wines, and Latour etc the yardstick for Cabernet based wines - even if both may contain other grapes. But that's not to claim they're anything other than the "best in their clbuttes". Top CS or Merlot from Napa or Washington could well be considered the yardsticks by someone who is used toprefers wines in that style.

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