This Bordeaux inspired blend is seductive, velvety and loaded with personality. Merlot leads, Cab Franc follows, and Cabernet Sauvignon fills in any tiny gaps that are left. This is a thinker’s wine—deep, complex, but less in your face than its cab-led sibling. In the Matthews style, it delivers a lot of power and concentration, but with more nuance than you might expect from new world blends. In Bordeaux, the Merlot-led right bank blends are revered for their nuance. Washington Merlot shares many similarities with the French tradition—more so than with California even—but we’re not striving to copy Bordeaux or Pomerol. We’d rather to pay homage to it while celebrating a grape that is too often (and unfairly) maligned in the new world. This is truly one of the world’s most classic blending styles, with each varietal providing the one small thing that the others are missing to create a remarkably balanced, complex and approachable wine.