Ken Deis Napa Valley 2018 Merlot as Alec Baldwin

We all have our go-to varietals when we pick out bottles of wine for ourselves. However, the range of a single varietal can be incredibly wide, and therefore, it’s not actually a great measure of it if you’ll like a wine. But we still have to use something, and I will admit that Merlot is never my go-to. In general, I find it too earthy and tannic for my taste. But flashback to last Saturday night when I went over to my friend’s rooftop for dinner. They ordered pizza from the famous Mama’s Too in NYC I brought a merlot I thought would go well with the pizza, the Ken Deis Napa Valley 2018 Merlot.

I was floored by this wine. The fruit flavors are some of the darker, jammier fruits – blackberry and dark cherry. I think I liked it so much because the tannins do not punch you in the face – they are on the lower side (or at least feel that way) creating a really smooth finish. This wine is velvety. It has a nice long finish where you get the tertiary flavors. These are the flavors imparted on the wine by the oak. In this case, it’s leather, tobacco and vanilla. I always used to wonder about these descriptive words, like who wants to drink leather and tobacco? I don’t? When those words are used, it’s usually to describe the tannins (that’s where “tanning leather” comes from) so you can think of those smells as describing the structure of the wine as opposed to actually tasting like leather. It almost always indicates a bold red wine.

That’s why this wine as a celeb is Alec Baldwin. This wine is round, deep, and feels like hug. It’s acidic, tannic and bold. So he’ll hug you and then maybe tomorrow… yell at you. And I am certain he smells like leather, tobacco and vanilla. And he’s a smooth talker, just like this wine. Alec could probably talk me into anything, including liking this Merlot.

Full disclosure, I reserve my right to use Alec Baldwin as a celebrity again if another Alec-like wine comes along. He is SUCH a good celeb to use so early. He definitely seems like he would a $400 Cabernet, so using him on a $25 Merlot seems premature. But I’m not usually drinking $400 wines, so I’m workin with what I got. And deep down, he’s probably a scotch, not even a wine.