Bodega La Rural San Felipe Merlot Barrel Select

Bodega La Rural San Felipe Merlot Barrel Select from Mendoza, Argentina. Soft, elegant and also attractive as a young wine. Round and complex, it leaves an impression of blackcurrants, plums and cherries.
For the Barrel Select from La Rural San Felipe, only hand-picked grapes are used. The wine has matured for 12 months in French or American oak for a unique and complex result. Goes hand in hand with lamb and refined meat dishes.

Merlot comes from the word merle, which is French for blackbird. Merlot is a classic grape variety used in Bordeaux wines in combination with cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc. It was long regarded there as an inferior grape that lacked personality of its own and was used in the Médoc and Pessac-Léognan/Graves just to take the edge off cabernet. Where it did appear on its own and showed a surprising, full-bodied, ripe, lush personality with an inviting juiciness was in Saint-Émilion and Pomerol. Only when both wine regions stepped out of the shadow of their neighbours could merlot step out of cabernet’s shadow. Since then, it was successfully planted in California and later followed by just about every region of the world. Merlot is one of the king of grapes in Bordeaux but is also successfully grown in Languedoc further afield in France. It is also loved in California, Italy, Eastern Europe, Chile and even as far away as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.