Radiant Red

The wine

Sweetness is carrying this red. The plum and black cherry are ripe and pleasant, and that fruit does give the glass a little structure, but the sugar sits ahead of it. Moderate acidity is present. Light tannin is present. Neither one has the leverage to hold the sweetness in place, so the wine drinks softer and less balanced than a conventional Merlot.

The fruit is not a costume. Plum and black cherry taste like the fruit of a red wine, which is why the sweetness is frustrating rather than merely sweet. It covers a glass that was already doing some of the work. The substitution is easy to taste: sugar standing in where alcohol and a firmer tannin would have kept the fruit in line.

What remains is clean and simple. It is easy to finish, and it is a little too sweet to feel like the red the fruit is promising. That softness is the flaw. Pour it when you want dark fruit without a dry red’s bite. The tannin never takes the glass over. The last impression matches the first: ripe fruit, then sugar, then a softness a Merlot with its alcohol still in it would not have had to borrow.