I have always found merlot to be an uninspiring varietal best suited to the déclassé role of a cocktail wine, as in “I’ll have a glass of merlot, please.”

It does do sturdy duty as stable mate to it’s more interesting and complex Bordeaux sibling, cabernet sauvignon. On its own though, apart from a few rare and extremely expensive exceptions in St Emilion and Pomerol, it tends to be inoffensive and completely innocuous – a quintessential girley wine.

Occasional though I run across an interesting exception as in this gem from California, the Duckhorn Vineyards 2002 Napa Valley Merlot, Three Palms Vineyard, and it just goes to show that for any generalization you care to make about wine, there’s always an exception to prove you wrong.

Duckhorn have been a star of Napa winemaking for 30 years but the secret here, along with their meticulous winemaking, is the source of the grapes. Three Palms Vineyard is owned by the Upton brothers who make no wine of their own but grow some of the most prized merlot grapes in California.

Here the result is a delicious, rich and polished merlot. It is velvety in texture but has real acid structure and is not over-extracted – wine-speak for the new world affliction of jammy, over ripe and over-oaked reds. Cherry and vanilla flavors predominate at first but after a while spicier, earthier notes begin to emerge tinged with hints of licorice and cedar. Duckhorn are known for tannic wines and this version is only just now coming into its own. It will be spectacular in ten years time.