Well-balanced, and with good concentration to its blackberry, toasty oak and plum flavors. Herbal tones integrate with firm tannins on the finish.

Chocolate and berry aromas vie for the spotlight. Soft, almost sweet in the mouth, with solid berry fruit and dried herbs. Finishes with a healthy dose of buttery, chocolatey oak …

Bright, deep red-ruby. Red berries, plum and smoky oak on the nose. Supple, ripe and harmonious, with good sweetness but modest flesh and depth of fruit. Initially light tannins turned a bit dry as the wine opened in the glass.

Full ruby red. Distinctly oak-accented aromas. Dry and well gripped on the medium-bodied palate with oak dominating the ripe, plummy black-fruit flavors.

Red berry, coffee and oak spice on the nose. Finishes with very fine, dusty tannins.

"Serves up an attractive core of ripe plum, cherry, and berry flavors with light toasty oak shadings; it loses its focus on the finish, when the flavors become more diffuse." (Also appeared 6/30/96).

Serves up a pretty array of ripe, supple cherry, plum and strawberry flavors with appealing spice notes. Ready now through 1998.

As you can imagine, the Jackson Family have enormous vineyard sources from which to get their Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Their 2014 Merlot Grand Reserve comes from Sonoma and is 95% Merlot and the rest Malbec and Petit Verdot, with a tiny dollop of Cabernet Sauvignon. It is aged mostly in French wood. The wine is soft and ripe, with mocha, roasted herbs, cocoa bean, and some chocolaty plum and cherry notes. The wine has good, rich fruit and is straightforward and attractive. Anticipated maturity: now-2026.

It should be easy to drink this sweetish Merlot with everything from a hamburger to a steak. It’s rich in cherry flavor, with lots of palate-stimulating spices.

The 2008 Vintner's Reserve Merlot (98% Merlot and the rest Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc aged 14 months in two-thirds French and one-third American oak) exhibits a dark plum color along with notes of cherry cola, raspberry, garrigue, loamy soil and spice box. This medium-bodied, juicy Merlot is somewhat monolithic, but it displays an appropriate varietal character. Drink it over the next 2-3 years. Kendall-Jackson enjoys a well-deserved reputation for over-delivering quality vis à vis price for its wines. Any offering from Kendall-Jackson bearing the Vintner's Reserve designation will offer much more quality than its humble price suggests.

Peppery, spicy, prune, tobacco, cherry jam, cedar bark, chocolate, black olive aromas. Round, dry, somewhat tart, light palate. Herbal, tobacco, cedar bark, cherry, resin, leather flavours with a prune note.

Its aromas of red cherries also suggest notes of loam and chocolate, and those enjoyable themes are repeated in comfortable flavors that seem likely to hold on for a year or two.

Black cherry and hints of briar highlight the aromas of this cassis-tinged wine, but the suggested tilt towards Cabernet Sauvignon is less evident in the wine's flavors than in its nose, and save for some finishing astringency, the mouth tracks like Merlot in character.

There are few bells and whistles about this bottling, but it gets the job done in terms of delivering clean Merlot fruit. Its themes of cherries and dusty oak spice in the nose are carried forward in its nicely proportioned, medium-deep flavors. Its slight sense of polish makes it accessible now, but a touch of last-minute tannin says it will keep for a while.

Deftly balanced, with a mix of rich currant, cedar, tobacco and sage. The tannins are firm and end up drying out. Drink now.

If a little in the light and fruity mold, this likeable young wine is one to remember when the gang comes to call. Its directly cherry and vanilla character is carried by a somewhat rounded, slightly supple texture in the mouth, and while never a strong wine, it is well-balanced and reliable.

A nice, plummy wine with some real richness. Round, full-bodied and firm, with a coffee-earthy finish that sets off the fruit. Fairly tannic and very dry.

Everything that money can buy has gone into this wine, but it cannot rise above its vintage. It's rich in oak, with firm, rich tannins, and the winemaker squeezed black currant, plum and tobacco flavors from the grapes.

The elegant 1999 Grand Reserve Meritage offers aromas and flavors of red currants, spice box, and dried herbs, along with firm tannin in the medium-bodied finish. This St.-Emilion-styled red...

The 2012 Red Wine Blend Avant is a pretty, fruit-driven wine to drink now and over the next few years. Plums, mocha, chocolate and spices flesh out in this sweet, supple red.

Made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel, this blend is stylishly dry and smoothly balanced. It offers upfront blackberry, cherry, cassis, chocolate and licorice flavors for drinking now.

A Meritage-style blend based mainly on Cabernet and Merlot, grown in Mendocino, Sonoma and Napa counties. Slightly rustic in tannic structure, it has sleek flavors of berries, currants, charred oak and spices. A pretty good value for this sweetly charming wine.