People with basic understanding of wine would probably be familiar with the fact that Merlot = red wine. Merlot, after all, is one of the most common yet legendary red grapes; notorious for its soft tannins, and is the grape behind the famous Château Petrus. So imagine the amazing discovery I made in Cyrano Wine Selections (Palanca cor Legazpi, Legazpi Village, Makati): WHITE MERLOT.
It is NOT a myth, it’s NOT fake, and I sure wasn’t THAT drunk to not know what I was drinking. I think to be able to shed light into this mystery, we should understand how wines get their colour in the first place.
In general, wines get their colour from the skin of the grapes, and depending on how the skins are used in the fermentation process, you could come out with three possible wines with three possible colours: red (ranging from garnet to purple), white (from very light amber to grassy lemon), or rose (your salmon, pink, girly coloured wines).
Basically, you get white wines by discarding the skins of any colour grape before fermentation. You make use of the skin of red grapes during fermentation to produce red wine. For rose, the most common method is to get rid of the skins halfway through fermentation.
In essence, you can therefore make any coloured wines (red, rose, or white) from red grapes, as is the case of our mythical wine; Foffani White Merlot from Italy (2010). Pretty good stuff: Made me think of guavas, blueberries… Rich, fruity wine with a relatively hefty texture. A must try for those who want to experience something unusual. Cyrano also serves roast duck, which surprisingly went beautifully with the wine: creamy textures harmoniously playing off one another, that delicate yet intense marriage of flavours generating a slight hallelujah chorus in the back of your head… Mmmmm.
