Merlara DOC

A border denomination on the flat land between the Colli Euganei and the Veronese, straddling the provincial line: five communes in the province of Padua, three in Verona, and part of a ninth. The protective consortium was constituted on 26 January 2001, and the zone covers a little over 600 hectares worked by around 180 growers.

The Name Merlara is not named for Merlot, though the coincidence has done the denomination no favours and the zone does grow a great deal of it. The name is simply that of the commune at its centre, in the Bassa Padovana south-west of Padua.

The Terroir The registered file is unusually explicit about cause and effect. A temperate-Mediterranean climate with flat ground lying at a crossing point towards the East made these territories suited to the vine from the tenth century AD. The soils are alluvial and predominantly sandy, which the file calls a perfect habitat for international varieties: they give wines of stable colour and clean, intense, lively aromas, fragrant even in the less aromatic varieties, with good phenolic ripeness in the reds and excellent sapidity in the whites.

Grape Varieties A long list dominated by internationals — Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Carmenère, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Bianco and Chardonnay — but the consortium itself names Malvasia and Marzemino as the two most characteristic of the area. Raboso and Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso carry the local red tradition, and Marzemino is bottled frizzante.

The Critical Take Merlara is being quietly hollowed out. Roughly 400 of its 500 planted hectares are tied to the Cantina di Merlara, itself part of the Collis Veneto group, and only about five operations bottle at all — and growers here have increasingly planted Glera for Prosecco, which pays better than anything the DOC can offer. That is the real story of this denomination, and it is the story of a good deal of the Veneto plain: a small appellation with genuine local varieties losing its vineyard to a name with a market.

Marzemino The one wine here worth going out of your way for. Marzemino is an old northern Italian red, dark and low in tannin with a sharp black-cherry fruit, best known from Trentino and immortalised in Don Giovanni, where Mozart’s Don calls for it by name in the final act. Made frizzante, as it is here, it is a lunch wine of real character and no pretension.

At the Table The cooking of the Bassa Padovana: boiled meats, roast duck, risi e bisi, salami, and the freshwater fish of the Adige plain. Serve the reds at 15–16°C, the frizzante Marzemino cooler at 13–14°C.

Benchmark Producers Cantina di Merlara accounts for most of the denomination. This is a cooperative zone, and there is no private estate that functions as a benchmark.