Merlot is known for its sweet "jammy" taste and many would-be wine-o's may find it the perfect wine, with its cherry-berry flavored training wheels, to get started down a lifelong path of passionate red wine drinking! I speak from experience, not assumption. Eventually, you experiment with the whites and decide that they just don't really "do it" for you- where's the lust, the journey, the "take me all the way!" that those reds give you every time?

Red wine delivers a whole different experience than white wine and one that I much prefer. With white wine you get giggles and bubbly daydreams of blondes bounding down the beach alongside golden retrievers wearing white sweaters or those crisp fall days in the Granny Smith apple orchard watching the yellow leaves fall. With red wine, you get down into the core of your soul, your heart speaks its deepest thoughts erupting with love, with longing, with gratitude, regret, or hope.  A jubilee of life's experiences explode before your very eyes like Cirque de Soleil. If you are drinking South African or Australian red you get those primal drumbeat inclinations along with visions of naked painted men dancing around large bonfires, armadillos, tigers, exotic birds and the like. And who can deny the conversations you have with other red wine drinkers? Surprisingly more intellectual and introspective than you ever dared dream you could be- even on a pot of coffee, even after sex or before sex (what eloquence!), even after the best news and the worst news you've ever heard in your life! You love it so much so you'll do it again, despite the morning headaches and eventually, you've outgrown your merlot training wheels. By the time you're 19, you are sipping Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, there's a brief affair with microbrewed, artisan beer while you're living in Europe during college but, you come back to your love of red wine and you're onto the blends and the vintages. By the time you are in your early 20's.... you know a fair amount about wine and merlot falls by the wayside. Its the wine that got you started and you've literally had gallons of it in your short lifetime already. You love it but you have to leave it.... its a big wine world out there.

Then one day, after a few years of globe trotting, a few professional successes and romantic failures, after start-ups and let downs... after leaving your dusky, dreary (beloved) Seattle home of the past few years to cross the country, yet again, chasing down a dream.... you go to the wine shop for some inspiration. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed wine clerk who is really rather good-looking is passing you his card after you approach him saying you rode your bike 3 miles to take advantage of that great Pinot Noir sale you spotted online. While the sale is over... be prepared to win big! Let it begin.

"A Washington wine, please. Any recommendations? I want to write an article and I just moved from Seattle. I'm kind of missing it and it is raining outside so..... Obviously, my favorite is Pinot Noir."

"Absolutely! My favorite is Bridgman's from Yakima Valley. They make an excellent Merlot!"

Pause. A cool silence. Merlot? Am I a child? I stand next to him facing this bottle of Merlot in hot pink tennis shoes and a sunshine yellow t-shirt, my face beet red from bicycling while my younger brother waits with our rides just outside. We carry on to the aforementioned Pinot Noir, in my opinion, the Rolls Royce of drinkable red wine and he does his best to sound as genuinely enthusiastic about it. Looking into his bright blue eyes and pale Irish face, I realize that this hot dude has just revealed a secret. The Bridgman merlot really IS one of his favorite wines!!! The sheer sincerity and honesty of that small fact thrills me to my very fingertips and I take the merlot!

Drinking it now... I've got to tell you, I've come full circle! This is amazing! Its like a big fat kiss of wine, right on the pucker! Its got the cherries and the berries and the jammy-mammy love of merlot that made me fall in love with red wine to begin with! Not too sweet, Bridgman 2006 makes a play for your palette with spice and an undercurrent of chocalate leading to long, silky finish.

Hallelujah, I am found! Sweet road of Bridgman Merlot, you are the chariot that is bringing me home. Home sweet home to my red wine lovin' roots! Pick it up folks and don't be afraid to go into your local wine shop, you never know who will be making a recommendation that may impact your Saturday afternoon commensurate with that time you realized your childhood experience really has had a profound influence upon your supposed adulthood. And afterall, wine is not just about wine- its about the people make it and drink it together. Salut!