The 1996 Merlot (from a 22-year old vineyard) reveals none of the vegetal/pickle barrel, coffee, and washed-out berry flavors (from appallingly high yields) that are so common in 90% of the under $20 Merlots found in the marketplace. This wine possesses a deep ruby/purple color, dense, sweet, chocolatey, black-cherry fruit, not much complexity, but copious quantities of glycerin, extract, and fruit in its low acid, surprisingly bold framework. With 13% natural alcohol, it offers a blast of berry fruit in an easy to understand, delicious, silky-textured style. Drink it over the next several years. I find it ironic that importer Robert Kacher, who is justifiably renowned for his portfolio of top-flight Burgundies (aged largely in new oak casks), does especially fine work in under $20 wines that never see one day in oak! The Domaine du Campuget wines are tank-fermented and aged. Excellent values.The wines reviewed in this segment are the finest Campuget wines I have yet tasted. Many readers are already familiar with the glorious wine bargains that this domaine has produced in the past from this region, just south of Avignon in the Mistral-beaten, lunar-landscape-like area that is the corridor between the southern Rhone valley and Languedoc-Roussillon. Many of our nation's small quality importers have discovered that the finest wines of Costieres de Nimes merit serious attention. Prices are still a bargain, but do not expect that to last long given today's international wine market.Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083
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