What Is the Difference Between Merlot and Pinot Noir?

These two popular red wines are far from interchangeable — here's how to know which one to order.

Merlot and Pinot Noir are two of the most popular grape varieties in the world, and in many ways bracket the range of what red wine is capable of. In general, they tend to exist on opposite ends of the flavor and texture spectrum, which is what makes considering each of them in the context of the other so interesting.

Julien Howsepian, the winemaker for Kosta Browne, believes that for consumers, “Pinot is the most exciting variety to explore…Pinots across the world are vastly different from each other, and I find that mysterious and charming at the same time.” He continues: “I revel in the thought that Pinot alone can offer a lifetime of exploration through regional discoveries, to vineyard-specific expressions, to producer peculiarities. You can dive as deep as you want with Pinot, which I don’t think any other varieties offer.”

Burgundy is a great example of how  multi-faceted Pinot can be: The better part of a millennium of growing Pinot Noir there has allowed its different expressions in even neighboring parcels to be mapped and studied and ranked. And while other great Pinot-producing regions, like Oregon’s Willamette Valley and California’s Sonoma Coast, don’t have that kind of history behind them yet, the understanding of how their many constituent terroirs affect the resulting wine grows more granular (and fascinating) every year.

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Of course, Merlot is also capable of expressing the great terroirs of the world; the famous buttonhole of clay at Château Petrus, in Bordeaux’s Pomerol, contributes to one of the most age-worthy and valuable wines in the world.  Merlot proponents worldwide, from the Right Bank to Rutherford, take great pride in that.

Sullivan Rutherford Estate, which produces standout Merlots in Napa Valley, is a great example. “As a producer, we are challenged by Merlot,” general manager Joshua Lowell explains. “It is easy to produce good Merlot. It is extremely difficult to make great Merlot — that’s our mission at Sullivan Rutherford Estate. Great Merlot is a sheer pleasure to drink. It is rich and complex enough to trigger all the pleasure sensors, but it’s also refined and sensual.”

Like all grape varieties, however, accomplishing that is the challenge. “In the vineyard, it is tricky getting the right sun exposure. You want some sun on the fruit because it helps thicken the skin, which is needed to make serious, age-worthy Merlot. Still, too much sun and heat and you risk sun damage, which lessens tannin quality…[color], and aromatic complexity,” he added. And in the winery, its inherently plush texture has to be handled with care: Overusing new oak, employing barrels from the wrong cooperage, extracting too much from the skins—all of this can result in overblown, unbalanced Merlot.

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“One of the key challenges is  taking a patient and thoughtful approach to planting and training our Merlot vineyards in the first place, ensuring we’ve matched the grape with the right soil and climate,” explains Pierre Seillan, vigneron at Château Lassegue in Bordeaux and Vérité in Sonoma. “If planted to the wrong soils, or in an area which is too warm, Merlot can achieve very high sugar levels, yielding wines with an over-ripeness of fruit and high alcohol. On the other hand, when Merlot is planted in the right soils in a cooler growing area, it yields balanced and structured wines of complexity and finesse. Some of our top Merlot micro-crus are found in the cooler Bennett Valley and Chalk Hill AVAs.”

Chris Carpenter, winemaker for La Jota, Mt. Brave, and Hickinbotham, agrees. “If you look at some of the most sought-after, expensive wines in the world, such as Petrus and Masseto, these are Merlot-based wines and they are great, great wines,” he notes. “These wines are from vines grown in the right place with an ideal combination of climate, light, and soils.” Key sites in California also boast that magic combination of conditions. When grown there and vinified with care, he added, the resulting Merlot “has depth, complexity, minerality, and an ageability that is similar yet different from Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s an underdog, and I love the underdog and the challenge of helping establish the prestige of these vineyards in Napa Valley.”

That issue of prestige cannot be ignored when it comes to Merlot, and Joshua Lowell sums it up well: “Merlot is held in high regard everywhere around the world, except for in the U.S. Many of the world’s most collected and expensive wines are Merlot. Yet most American consumers believe Merlot is only meant to be simple, fruity, and inexpensive.” That’s not the case with Sullivan’s top Merlot, the J.O. Sullivan Founder’s Reserve, which is every bit as profound — and priced the same — as the J.O. Sullivan Founder’s Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Carpenter’s Merlot-based wines hold the same pride of place in wine collections as his critically lauded Cabs. Vérité’s La Muse is a reliably profound expression of the variety vintage after vintage.

“More than most other Bordeaux varieties, [Merlot] can offer a supple, gorgeous texture, with brightness, purity, and personality,” noted Renée Ary, winemaker for Duckhorn Vineyards. “At the same time, the very best Merlots can be remarkably structured and sophisticated. And, as you can see with our single-vineyard bottlings, most notably our estate Three Palms Vineyard Merlot, the grape can be wonderfully terroir-driven and site-specific. As both a winemaker and a wine lover, Merlot is a continuous source of fascination.”

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As is Pinot Noir. And for all of both varieties’ remarkable ability to express a sense of place, they also both have their unique challenges. “Pinot Noir is notorious for being particularly difficult to find the perfect balance, both in the vineyard and the winery,” explained Evan Anderson, founder of VOON Wines in the Sta. Rita Hills. “The grapes have thin skins and ripen early, meaning that they’re particularly susceptible to pests and diseases, and can be harmed by early frosts, so they need to be managed very thoughtfully, particularly in organic vineyards like the ones that go into VOON.”

The timing of harvest is of paramount importance, he added, since “picking just a day too early or a day too late can make a significant difference in the final wine. If a vintage is too warm, or you let the Pinot Noir grapes hang on the vine too long, you can get that ‘extracted’ flavor in the wine – too much jammy fruit character flavor…Balance is critical in making all wines, [but] with Pinot Noir, it can be trickier than with other grapes to achieve a balance of acidity, tannin, alcohol, and complexity of flavor because the grapes are so sensitive.”

Kosta Browne’s Howsepian finds similar issues: “Pinot is notoriously difficult to grow, being highly susceptible to mildew, rot, overcropping, and unbalanced vine vigor,” he pointed out. “Partially, that is due to the fact [that] Pinot is a cool climate variety, therefore the environment alone is challenging to grow grapes…Pinot requires lots of canopy management, particularly leaf removal to optimize sun exposure and protection (depending on row orientation and sun exposure); leaf removal also optimizes air flow to allow clusters and leaves to dry out after morning fog and the occasional rain. The ‘delicate' nature of the variety is a result of the constant, gentle pressure required to grow and vinify a great Pinot.”

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Still, when planted in the right place and vinified with care and attention to every last detail, its expressiveness is stunning; It's what Clare Carver, co-founder of Big Table Farm in the Willamette Valley of Oregon calls “its transparency of site and general mutability.” Among her portfolio of Pinots, she pointed out that, though her single vineyard wines from Sunnyside and Cattrall Brothers vineyard are planted with the same Pinot Noir clone, they produce “wildly different wines…one more dark fruit and the other more earth and spice.”

The best Merlot is capable of achieving that, too, though the variety gets less credit for it. Merlot is also a fantastic blending partner, often playing an important role even when it doesn’t comprise the majority of the wine. “In our Howell Mountain Hillside Blend, the combination of Cab and Merlot together is decidedly greater than the sum of its parts,” noted Larry Tsai, vintner and co-owner of Napa Valley’s Moone-Tsai wines. “More specifically, while the Cabernet from this first appellation would make a powerfully structured standalone wine, the addition of the Merlot component delivers added notes of dark cherry and spice, plus a ‘softer acidity’ that creates a tasty counterpoint to the Cab’s bold flavors,  and a rounder, more approachable palate.”

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