gwg wine #2: Columbia Crest 'Grand Estates' Merlot

This is really an excellent Merlot. I keep coming back to this one after flirtations with other more expensive bottles. What I especially like, besides the backbone this wine brings to the table, something often lacking in an inexpensive Merlot, is the subtle oak flavor.

You can find a good and cheaper Merlot, and, of course, you can always find an excellent expensive bottle, but for 12 bucks (sometimes 10!), this is the best value I have been able to find in my forays with the marvelous Merlot grapez.

OK, let the experts from Wine Spectator describe it with their poetry:

Light in texture and ripe in flavor, 

with a nice package of cherry,

tobacco and cedar flavors 

lasting impressively through

the fine-grained finish. 

Drink now through 2005.

255,000 cases made.

Score: 88  

OK. They say cedar, I say oak. Tobacco? What have these reviewers been drinking?