Another Blind Tasting for Jen

2003 Duckhorn Merlot
$44.95
Shane’s Notes

This was a very interesting tasting. In our relationship, Jen usually buys the expensive wines, and I usually buy the inexpensive to moderate priced wines. I decided to throw Jen a curveball by purchasing something relatively expensive. I specifically picked the Duckhorn because I think their Cabs are overpriced. I figured the Merlot would not be worth $44.95 and that it would be fun to watch Jen give it a bad review.

Jen’s Notes – Purple-red in color. Aroma - Sweet fruit and spices with a hint of tobacco on the nose. Palate – wood (oaked?), spices some tangy/sweet berry fruit. Concentrates for a bit and then finishes. It’s pretty good but not a whole lot going on. After it opened, fruit flavors were sweeter and more succulent. Woody and oak notes are more pronounced but don’t obscure other flavors.

Jen’s guesses – It’s a New World Syrah and costs around $15.

Shane’s Notes – Beautiful nose – vanilla, sweet and fruity. Palate – chocolate, berry flavor (cherry?), touch of vanilla, some bitter flavor I don’t like, not as much fruit as I expected. As it opened, nice, smooth texture but still more subtle than I expected. Just not complex enough. Not worth more than $25.

When I showed Jen the bottle, she just stared at it in silent amazement. She couldn’t believe that it was a $45 Merlot. We compared out notes and discussed them. Jen disagreed with my chocolate descriptor but I stand by it. The bitter flavor I couldn’t place was the oak. I’m just learning to identify oakiness and not confuse it with tannins. Otherwise, our notes were fairly similar. We both wrote that it lacked complexity. However, we each identified at least three or four flavor descriptors which would seem to qualify as at least moderate complexity.

I am not surprised that Jen guessed incorrectly on the varietal. We hardly ever drink Merlot. In fact, we drink such a wide variety of varietals and blends that it will be difficult for us to correctly identify wines. For example, we had a stretch where our wines included a white Rioja, a 1996 Dom Perignon, A French white blend which included Ugni Blanc and Columbard, A Grenache-based Rhone, a Portugese LBV, a Zinfandel and a Spanish Tempranillo. If our wine drinking were limited to the big six (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling), then we would quickly become familiar with their characteristics. We would also know that a blind tasting would only have one of three varietals (since a quick look would eliminate either the three reds or the three whites), which would make the varietal identification about 100 times easier. In the future, we will have to do some blind tastings limited to the big six and see how we do.

We discussed this wine extensively. We agree that the wine was not well constructed. It was like a disharmonious symphony: the whole never exceeded the sum of the parts. The flavors just seemed disconnected. When we had the Fonseca LBV, a wine we both agree achieved a magical synthesis, the flavors felt completely integrated and the effect was magnificent. On the palate, the flavors melted into one another instead of appearing disparately. This sounds rather vague, but when you have tasted one of these special wines, you will know what we mean. When we pay over $30, this is what we expect to find, and it is why neither of us think the Duckhorn is worth the price.