Winemaker David Ready Jr. loves to name his wines after playing cards and poker. The Single Deck uses grapes from the producer's Kelli Anne Vineyard. The wine has opulent tropical fruit notes with a dash of vanilla and oak.

Winemaker David Ready Jr. calls it the “perfect after-work cocktail.” No disputing that. It’s got that steely acidity tempered with tropical fruit complemented by the spice and mouthfeel of just a little oak. Grapes are from Santa Barbara, Mendocino, Lake County and Arroyo Seco.

An approachable chardonnay that over-delivers. Nice tropical notes coupled with bright acidity. Notes of apple, lemon, pear and a hint of vanilla. Nice length.

This beauty that exhibits an enticing honey/floral nose was aged in French oak barrels. Very round , smooth and unctuous in the mouth with tropical fruit flavors and toasty notes. Absolutely delicious!

We tasted this in a flight of a half-dozen chardonnays and were most impressed with its restrained oak. The oak flavors are there, but in moderation. The flavors are of tropical fruit and pear with a dash of mineral and vanilla.

Smooth and supple, from cooler sites in California, with a mix of apple, pear, lemon and vanilla.

Here's a nice, rich white wine. It gets the Chard job done in a direct way, offering creamy flavors of pineapples, peaches, pears, vanilla bean and buttered toast, along with mouthwatering acidity. Tastes a little sweet, but it's really easy to drink.

Big and rich, with oak and sweet pineapple aromas and flavors; creamy; long finish.

Top Wines of Sonoma from Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, August 2009

This Chard is California distilled. It's big, oak-laced and tropical, and finishes buttery. It's baked apple, mango, melon and honeysuckle on the nose - notes that are all mirrored on the palate and finish. This wine is not for newbies. It takes a palate that can appreciate the legacy of these vines and accept the French oak and malolactic fermentation. It's sensational for fans of this style. Pair it with something powerful: Try it as a foil to rich shellfish, juicy pork, or wild game.

This wine is similarly showy, with a cornucopia of ripe fruit: Think sweet and tart apples, bananas, honey, tangerines and just a bit of durian (the custardy texture and flavor, not the dismaying aroma). there is also just a hint of something resembling fresh chilies on the wine's finish.

2002 Island Block Estate Chardonnay - Alexander Valley Wood smoky, vanilla-tinged buttered toast aromas leading to a fruity, spicy finish. The flavors suggest golden-skinned tree fruits and honey.

Giving the gift of fine wine And now two wines that will make any red wine drinker fall in love with Merlot again, thanks to Jackson Family Wines and winemaker Christopher Carpenter. Carpenter established a premier reputation as the longtime winemaker at the highly regarded Kendall-Jackson owned wineries Cardinale and Lokoya. “If farmed right in the proper locations and treated similar to cabernet sauvignon, merlot can be great, just as it is in other countries.” In this case Carpenter is talking about the high-elevation vineyards that source the 2015 Mount Brave and 2015 La Jota. These are serious, complex, full-bodied wines. Mount Brave, from vineyards on Mount Veeder, is fleshy with deep fruit, cocoa, spice and mint. LaJota, from Howell Mountain, is densely packed with earth, mocha, spice and lovely freshness.

10 Merlots From Around the World That You Should Be Drinking Now The gorgeous Merlot comes from Mt. Veeder in Napa Valley. Mt. Brave’s winemaker Chris Carpenter focuses his passion for Merlot on producing the very-best expressions of the grape from mountain sites. The concentrated berries of the Mt. Brave vineyard produce a Merlot with a complex texture with distinctive minerality and floral aromatics. Flavors of blue fruits and mocha abounds with a rounding texture that lifts this wine on your palate. The long, steady finish exhibits why mountain Merlot stands alone.

The Weekly Dozen Both this wine and the La Jota below are Merlots owned by Jackson Family Wines and made by winemaker Chris Carpenter. There the similarities end. This west side Napa mountain wine is dark and murky, a seriously complex wine with mature fruits and savory hints of the forest with integrated tannins – just marvelous.

Tasting Fine Napa Valley Merlots Mt. Brave and La Jota Vineyard Co. winemaker Chris Carpenter described the challenges of mountain vineyards in dealing with rocky soils, angles to the sun and tree lines. He produced 250-300 cases of the 100 percent 2015 Mt. Brave Merlot, Mt. Veeder that had all the elements of an extraordinary wine with dark fruit and espresso flavors that lingered.

The 5 best wines for International Merlot Month These grapes are grown in higher elevations and the yields are smaller. It smells like blue fruit and a touch of bacon fat. This is a big, concentrated wine with mocha and it is something special. Buy two. Drink one now and save one for a couple of years. It will be fun to see how it ages.

The Best Merlot Wine To Enjoy Now: MerlotMe A Napa Valley Merlot that I adore comes from Mount Brave. This wine is made by one of the most incredible winemakers in Napa Valley, Christopher Carpenter who also makes Lokoya Wines, Cardinale Wines, La Jota and also Hickinbotham. For those of you who have not been to Lokoya Winery it’s quite possibly the most beautiful and unique settings of any winery I’ve visited in Napa Valley and suggest it to all wine lovers. Read more about Lokoya here and get yourself in there soon and you’ll thank me… The Mt. Brave Merlot may be one of my favorite Merlots on this list as I’d describe it as a Cabernet Sauvignon drinkers Merlot. It’s super rich in flavor with dark fruit expressions, an extremely full body texture with incredible tannins and that big mountain fruit taste. The terroir of Mt. Veeder is evident on the tongue of this rich, delicious 2015 Mount Brave Merlot. Merlot that will melt in your mouth.

Overall score: 17.6 (9.1 for quality, 8.5 for value) Our tasters: Gave it a unanimous recommendation with a high score of 9.5. “Black plum and blackberry. Rich and velvety but with a fine minerality.” My score: 9.3 “Checks all the boxes for New World merlot.” The grapes grow at elevations ranging from 1,400 to 1,800 feet, well above the fog line. The soil is thin, resulting in tiny berries that deliver intense, complex flavors. Wine Advocate Robert Parker awarded a score of 94, calling the wine “full-bodied, firmly textured and with impressive freshness.”

Wines from California We are Currently Loving With intense and impressive fruit, it’s time we admit that Merlot is back! And we’re not mad about it. This is a special occasion wine, a wine to gift to your host. Its price is hight, but it is so worth it. The grapes have been given great care and in turn, the barrel-aged wine gives off bright fruit with just the right amount of earthiness and a hint of florals on the nose.

From Toad Hollow to Mt. Brave: A Surprise Choice for Thanksgiving Yowee! The Mt. Brave is the wine that got Dottie (and, OK, John, too) so excited. We had the 2015, which is very young (it needs decanting), but already gorgeous. The first three words we used were “classy, structured and impressive.” But the word we kept coming back to was “spicy.” We guessed it had some Cabernet because of the structure, some Petit Verdot because of its nice weight and maybe even a touch of Malbec because of the spice. Nope, it’s 100 percent Merlot. This is the kind of wine that truly shows what the U.S. can do with Merlot – it was not only delicious but endlessly fascinating to us -- and therefore would pair perfectly with this great American dinner.

The 2015 Mt. Brave Merlot isn’t cheap at its $80 retail price, but it is worth it. You can find it for as low as $65 on wine-searcher.com (scroll to the bottom for some options). It is a substantial wine with layer upon layer of complexity. Give it a good two to three hours in the decanter now and it’ll sing for the following two days. This makes it contemplative wine as well, meaning that if you can take nurse small pours over a long time and think about what you’re smelling and tasting throughout, then you’ll go through an intellectual exercise that demonstrates why wine can be magical: it’s a performance art just like ballet or an orchestra. It moves, it sings and it dances. Try this wine because merlot can be great, and this one is.

Wine of the Week The transporting nose is fresh with eucalyptus and fresh mint leaf and anchored by denser aromas of kirsch-filled chocolate ganache and a hint of blueberry. These turn to a magnificently structured palate of black cherry, mulberry, and purple plum, with a touch of fenugreek and mineral at the edges, that is absolutely impossible to stop drinking right now, but that also has the potential to age for more than a decade. Still, I’d pop the cork in the short term: The fruit here is so irresistible, and at such a beautiful stage of its evolution, that I wouldn’t want to miss the up-front pleasures it offers right now. This is the wine to serve to people who claim to hate Merlot: If they have any chance of being cured of that issue, this is the wine to do it.

The merlots from mountain-grown grapes are the best, as this one from atop Napa Valley’s Mt. Veeder will attest. Because of the elevation and rocky slopes, there is a lot of labor and care devoted to this wine. Plum, blueberry and blackberry flavors laced with mocha highlight this outstanding merlot.