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Winery
Somerston
Varietal: Merlot
With its dark blue colored fruits and high juice content, Merlot varietal grapes have long been a favorite of wine producers around the globe, with it being found in vineyards across Europe, the Americas and elsewhere in the New World. One of the distinguishing features of Merlot grapes is the fact that they have a relatively low tannin content and an exceptionally soft and fleshy character, meaning they are capable of producing incredibly rounded and mellow wines. This mellowness is balanced with plenty of flavor, however, and has made Merlot grapes the varietal of choice for softening other, more astringent and tannin-heavy wines, often resulting in truly exceptional produce. Merlot is regarded as one of the key 'Bordeaux' varietals for precisely this reason; when combined with the drier Cabernet Sauvignon, it is capable of blending beautifully to produce some of the finest wines available in the world.
Region: California
California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.
Country: United States
For three hundred years now, the United States has been leading the New World in wine production, both in regards to quantity and quality. Wine is actually produced in all fifty states across the country, with California leading the way by an enormous margin. Indeed, as much as eighty-nine percent of all wines to come out of the United States are produced in California, where the fertile soils and sloping mountain sides, coupled with the long, hot summers provide ideal conditions for producing high quality, European style red, white and rosé wines. With over a million acres of the country under vine, the United States sits comfortably as the fourth largest wine producer in the world, where imported grape varietals from all over the Old World are processed using a successful blend of traditional and contemporary techniques.
Appellation: Napa Valley
California has long been recognized as a wonderfully rich and fertile location for viticulture, and hundreds of years now, vintners in the United States of America have used the valleys and mountain sides of California for gradually building their own wine culture, based on techniques and practices brought over from the old countries. When it comes to Californian wines of real quality and distinction, however, there is nowhere quite like the Napa Valley, which is now widely considered to be one of the world's premier wine regions, and very much the standard bearer for modern, American wines. With Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Zinfandel varietal grapes all growing well in Napa Valley, the region produces an impressive range of wines, which have had an enormous impact on the Old and New Worlds, and have changed viticulture forever.