Red Meritage Blended Wines

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Part of the video series: Blended Wine Facts

White Meritage Blended Wines

Summary: Red Meritage is a type of blended wine. Learn what tastes and aromas to look for in a Red Meritage wine from an expert sommelier in this free specialty wine video.

Views: 428 | Tags: wine, tasting, sommelier, beverages, alcoholic, blended, wines, tasters, exerperts

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About the Expert

Jane Nickles Jane Nickles is the author of "Wine Speak 101." She is also a wine writer for "The Texas Wine and Food Gourmet" and "Eat and Drink Magazine." Jane is a certi... read more

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Video Transcript

Red Meritage Blended Wines

I'm going to talk about an interesting blended wine, and it's a wine called Meritage. If you've ever heard people say "Meritage", it's the same thing. However, I can tell you that the original and proper way to pronounce the term is "Meritage". A Meritage is a blended wine made in the New World from the wine grapes and in the blended style of the historic wines of Bordeaux. A red Bordeaux is a blend of five different grapes. which include Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Now over in America, if we want to make a wine and call it by a nice name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, it has to be at least 75 percent of that grape varietal. However, red Bordeaux is usually kind of 60-40-10-10-10 or something like that. So when American wine makers wanted to make a blended wine in the style of the blended wines of Bordeaux, they had to come up with a different name, because a wine that's 50 percent Cabernet and 20 percent Merlot and ten percent something else would have to be called red table wine. Now that's not a very interesting wine name, especially when you're going to charge a whole lot of money for these wines. So they held a contest to come up with a name of a new blended wine, made with the grapes of Bordeaux and in the style of Bordeaux. They had a contest, and somebody put the words "merit" and "heritage" together and come up with the word "meritage", which is now an American or New World name for a blended wine made in the style of and with the grape varieties of Bordeaux.