Merlot

Merlot is in fact the more widely planted of Bordeaux’s two great reds: it dominates the Right Bank appellations of Pomerol and Saint-Émilion, where the region’s most expensive wines (Petrus chief among them) are built almost entirely around it. The Left Bank’s Cabernet-led fame overshadowed that story internationally for decades, and Australia’s early plantings followed the Left Bank template: Merlot as the supporting act, not the star.

Global fashion did the grape no favours either. A wave of cheap, over-cropped varietal Merlot in the 1990s and 2000s (particularly out of warm, high-yield regions overseas) left the grape with a reputation for softness bordering on blandness, exactly the opposite of what it does when grown with restraint.

A well-made Australian Merlot is not a soft red for people who find Cabernet intimidating. Done properly (lower yields, careful canopy work, real oak rather than a dusting of it), Merlot gives plum and dark cherry fruit, a cocoa-dusted mid-palate, and tannin fine enough to drink young but structured enough to age. Margaret River’s gravelly loams, the same soils that make the region’s Cabernet serious, do the same job for Merlot: they keep vigour in check and concentrate what the vine produces.

Coonawarra’s terra rossa tells a similar story from the other direction: famous for Cabernet, but the same red dirt over limestone gives its Merlot real structure rather than the flabby softness the grape is unfairly known for elsewhere.

Beyond Margaret River and Coonawarra, Yarra Valley’s cooler sites produce a more perfumed, red-fruited style, and King Valley (better known today for its Italian varieties) has a long and less-celebrated history with serious cool-climate Merlot of its own.

The grape’s comeback isn’t really a comeback at all. It’s a correction: Merlot was never the problem. Low expectations and lower yields were, and the regions that stopped treating it as an afterthought are the ones now pouring it with its own name on the label, first and only.