Photo taken from Coppola’s website.
The first time I came across a Francis Ford Coppola wine was after our wedding. Good friends of ours had visited the winery earlier in 2010 and brought us a 2008 Director’s Cut Zinfandel. We had that wine in 2011 and I liked it quite a bit.
Ever since moving to the US, I see Coppola wines all over the place. I have to say, I like their labels and I have decided to go on a mission to try more of the wines. I have a Petit Syrah waiting at home when I get back, and when I arrived at our friends’ house in San Antonio, I saw this bottle of Merlot on the shelves. Naturally, we opened it.
Let me give some background on the wine: The Diamond Collection is a series of 12 different wines, all sourced from California. The Merlot was first made in 1997 and the grapes come from Napa, Sonoma and Monterey. It is a blend of 80% Merlot, 19% Petit Syrah and 1% Syrah grapes and has 13.5% ABV. The wine was aged for 12 months in French oak.
The wine poured in a dark, rich red. The nose was fruity, red berries, kinda what you expect. On the palate, it was a bit on the sweeter side (just a tad), but had a great fruit aroma of raspberry. Add some vanilla to that and the fact that was very smooth, and it was a pretty enjoyable wine. I could see myself drink that on a lot of occasions. A rather simple, yet pleasant wine…
You can find the wine description of the winery here.
the winegetter 
The Diamond Collection is excellent! Love the Merlot and Chardonnay. The winery in Napa Valley is a must- see..
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!!
We enjoyed our visit to Niebaum-Coppola many years ago, and we booked their special tour and tasting package, months before we went to Napa. It may have been the largest tasting I have ever done at one time. The Diamond Collection was very good, though I see more labels with a cinematic tie-in now. We bought several wines that day, but especially the Rubicon.
Thanks for sharing, John! I have also seen the Director’s Cut labels more as of late…and will look out for the Rubicon!
If you ever get the chance, you should certainly visit the winery–beautiful place with a lot of movie memorabilia. The wine, though,….
That might change with the Inglenook name purchase, but I am not so sure.
Hahaha, thanks for sharing that…sometimes my budget doesn’t allow for more than this…:)
Please help me with the Inglenook name purchase, I have no clue what you are talking about.
The Coppola line is a big seller in our store [$13-19 price range] with the Claret and Chardonnay probably high up on the list. The Merlot does well also in this market. I recently had their 2009 Diamond Malbec and was a bit disappointed. I also recently had the lower end [price-wise] Rosso blend and found it to be delicious. Looking forward to hearing about what you think of the Petit Syrah.
Thank you.
I definitely will try the other wines, too (except for the Chardonnay, I guess). The Claret, to me, looks the most intriguing. I will let Nina judge the Malbec, since she is the Malbec lover in the family…
What I have tried so far suggests rather solid wines, maybe not really worth the 13-19 price range, but then again, we are in the US, where wine is expensive…
Wine names are sometimes interesting. Will soon post about Aalto wine (if you have ever heard about Alwar Aalto)
No, I have not heard of Alwar Aalto! I am intrigued and looking forward to your post!
The bottle label looks quite nice.
Just looked at wine-searcher for this wine and saw that in Germany it retails for 20€+ whereas in the United States it’s available for around 10$. That’s not fair :P
That must be the ONE and ONLY wine that is cheaper in the US than anywhere else…:) It is by no means a 20 Euro bottle…
So true! Usually it’s the other way around.