Merlot 101

Is Merlot supposed to taste dry and watery?

I just bought a bottle of Merlot out of curiosity, got a corkscrew and tasted the wine. It has a watery and dry taste. Is this normal? I paid nearly £16 for an imported bottle from California.

Public Comments

1. depends on the brand dear... you do get what you pay for.
2. Yeah pretty much. It is a very dry wine.
3. One of my favourite reds. It should be dry, but it shouldn't be watery. French Merlot-based wines usually have medium, soft velvety body and a hint of plum and/or blackcurrant. However, it appears that, in California, Merlot-based wines can range from very fruity simple wines (sometimes referred to by critics as a "red Chardonnay") to more serious, barrel aged examples. I suspect that you may have bought one of the former. Sometimes with wines, you don't get what you pay for. My advice would be to stick to the French ones. The DOC ones are the best, of course, but even the "Vin de Pays" ones I've had, whilst lighter than the DOCs, have still retained the core taste, bouquet and body.
4. Merlot's typically are a medium to full bodied, juicy, jammy, plummy flavoured wine. You should not get any sort of wateriness from any well made wine of whatever price bracket you purchased. One of the best (and Most Expensive), wines in the world is made from Merlot, that wine is Petrus from the right bank. Merlot from California and that price should be a full bodied wine with fruit enough to almost spread on toast. If you'd like to IM or Email me with details of it, producer, vintage, terroir, I'll be able to give you further advice. It should definitely not taste watery and dry the way you describe it. AOC wines in France are not a guarantee of excellence in wine, it is a guarantee of certain standards and traditions in grape selcetion, viticultural and vinification methods. Some Vin de Pays are a lot better than some AOC wines. And the same can be said for wines from any wine production areas. As a for instance there is a wine from tuscany that is labelled as a Table Wine because it doesn't use recognised traditional grape varieties from that area, but you won't get a bottle of it for less than £25.00.