As Winter Storm Fern wraps up her national tour, I’m stuck inside for a couple more days. (I love you, Dallas–but your roads don’t function with snow and sleet.) On the plus side, there is plenty of wine at home. In fact, it’s about time I got around to tasting some of these bottles from The Wine Fairy‘s private collection.
Confession time: My wine stash consists of a few poorly organized shelves and a 14-bottle wine fridge that came with the house. I’m not a collector or a cellar-er. I rarely open a bottle of wine at home except to write about it.
My wine studies keep my calendar full of classes, tastings, and other scheduled activities…and that means the few bottles I do buy for the house tend to pile up messily. I’ve stubbornly resisted cellar-tracking apps–so most of the time I’m not even sure what wines I have to choose from until five minutes before dinner is ready.
Might there be a Merlot for this #MerlotThursday in that dark, jumbled cabinet? Yes, luckily there is! It’s a Total Wine bottle: The Dubourdieu “Liaison,” from Graves on the Left Bank of Bordeaux. (This is the Liason Merlot that we’re tasting–they also make a similarly packaged Cab-Merlot blend.)
While it’s chilling in the snowdrift on the back porch, here’s some Merlot trivia:
A Left Bank Merlot is not as odd as it may seem at first. Most people associate Bordeaux with Cabernet Sauvignon–but unless you are drinking the most prestigious and age-worthy wines from the Médoc, it’s more likely that Merlot will make up the largest proportion of a Bordeaux red.
The sub-region of Graves, in particular, grows a whopping amount of Merlot compared to the other Left Bank appellations. A 50-50-ish blend is the norm in Graves–however, our bottle today is 100% Merlot, a trait it shares with some top wines from the Right Bank.
But Liaison Merlot is no Petrus, as we shall shortly find out.
A pretty color in the glass, medium ruby with magenta highlights. Medium-intense, developing aromas of cherries, chocolate, vanilla, almond creme, pie crust, and traces of violet. Those yummy pastry-shop scents segue into dried red cherry, meat, cedar, and milled lumber. It’s all smoothed over by a creamy note of Andes mint-chocolate.
Alas, that elaborate, entertaining nose is just the setup for a cruel fake-out. What follows is a wine that’s shy in body, tannin, acid…really, almost everything.
The flavor intensity is very light, offering up a suggestion of cherry juice, oaky sawdust, and a shadow of yeast. The wine evaporates into a dry, short finish, and the only way I can taste it at all is by trying to breathe in deeply as it sloshes across the rim of the glass.
It’s startling how slight this wine is. It’s like…well, the metaphor that comes to mind is when you run into an old acquaintance and, due to the influence of a hard life or Big Pharma, there’s just so much less of them than you remember. (“Merlot, is that you?”)
It’s in these moments that I’m glad I’m an ordinary consumer and not a real wine critic. Because I’m truly unsure how I would respond to wines like these if professional courtesy loomed larger.
As I skim pro reviews for validation, even the always-charitable James Suckling concedes that the 2022 Liaison is “slightly lean at the end.” Slightly, JS? It’s more like someone took a really nice-tasting Merlot-dominant Bordeaux and replaced half of it with water. (Print that on a shelf talker.)
It’s puzzling. I’ve bought Dubourdieu’s “Liaison” Sauvignon-Semillon blend and found it to be flavorful and concentrated–a good-value white Bordeaux to open while cooking and entertaining. Their Sauternes is more than decent for the price, too. And 2022 was a much-lauded vintage in Bordeaux for Merlot and every other black grape. Maybe I got a bad batch? I guess I’ll just chalk it up to Total Wine letting their quality control lapse on this one.
While it’s far from the worst bottle we’ve come across for Merlot Thursday, I can’t call it good. Merlot needs a bit of richness–or presence. Fittingly enough for a wine poured on this treacherous icy day, Liaison Merlot is a misstep.
Bottle: Dubourdieu “Liaison” Graves Red Bordeaux Merlot (2022) – France
Variety: Merlot (100%)
ABV: 14%
Suggested retail: $24.99
My rating: 7.1
On Thursdays, we Merlot! Pour yourself a glass and join in. (You can view archived #MerlotThursday reviews here.)
Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.
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