Cakebread Cellars Merlot

Tasting Notes: Cakebread Napa Valley Merlot displays deep aromas of blackberry and black cherry with a background of crushed stone and violet. Concentrated flavors of fresh blackberry and black plum delight the palate, balanced by fine tannins and fresh acidity. A lingering rich black cherry finish with a note of minerality rounds out this complex and elegant Merlot.

The Cakebread Cellars Merlot 2016 comes from our estate vineyards throughout Napa Valley, including our Suscol Springs Ranch in the cooler southeastern reaches. Grapevines at our Suscol Springs Ranch have to struggle through rocky soils—beneficial stress that yields smaller berries of great concentration and supple tannins. Also included are grapes from the warm, nutrient-rich valley floor vineyard in Rutherford. The diversity of these Merlot vineyard sites enables Cakebread to craft a wine that highlights the best of the varietal; deep fruit flavors, silky mouthfeel, bright acidity, and refined elegant tannins.

The grapes are picked during the cool night hours to ensure the fruit retained freshness, purity, and natural acidity. Keeping each vineyard lot separate, they are hand-sorted and destemmed the clusters and done again with the individual berries. After gentle crush, we let the grapes cold soak prior to fermentation in stainless steel; gentle pumpovers during fermentation extracted color, flavor, and tannins from the grape skins. The wines finished secondary fermentation in French oak barrels where they aged until blending in July 2019. Then reintroduced the final blend to barrel for full integration of toast and oak structure. This wine aged a total of 17 months in barrel. 99.9% Merlot,, 0.1% Cabernet Sauvignon, abc 14.9%. Aged 17 months in 48% new French oak, 52% neutral French oak.