MERLOT RISING

“Merlot’s a bit of a bore on its own – it really needs friends,” moaned a winemaking friend of ours a few years back when we first decided to highlight merlot in this magazine. We felt that was a tad unfair. But what he really meant was we should open the tasting up to include all those wines where merlot was the hero, but also had tasty sidekicks in the blend. So we dusted