Markham Vineyards Merlot California Red Wine

Pick this up at the price it carries and a fair question follows: who is Markham? The winery answers the first part plainly. Markham Vineyards says Bruce Markham founded it in 1977, so the brand carries the name of the man who started the place.

The grape is Merlot, which grape guides describe as a red that can stand on its own or soften a Cabernet-led blend. It tends to ripen earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon, they say, and often comes out rounder, with plum and other dark fruit and less forceful tannin than Cabernet in many bottles. The same guides note that climate and blending can leave a Merlot fresh and medium-bodied or broader and richer, so the grape by itself does not tell you which of those this bottle is.

The numbers here are few, and they come last. We do not have a shopper rating for this wine. It was priced from $30.99 to $44.49 in our September 2026 checks.

Markham's own history page credits itself as an early California producer to focus on Merlot, calling it the winery's flagship wine, and adds that Bruce Markham first bought the Yountville Ranch vineyard in 1975, two years before he founded the winery itself. The Merlot currently listed on Markham's site draws on that vineyard along with Rockerbox and a third estate parcel called Little Cannon, sourced across the Calistoga, Yountville and Oak Knoll growing areas of Napa Valley, and carries its own technical sheet, 94 percent Merlot with small amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. As with the Cabernet above, our own retail record names only California, with no Napa Valley or smaller appellation stated, so we cannot confirm this is the same wine as the producer's current Napa Valley listing, and we are not importing that sheet's specific numbers as fact for this bottle.

Our call: this suits a shopper drawn to Markham's history as an early California Merlot specialist and its named estate vineyards, including a vineyard purchase that predates the winery's own founding by two years. Pass if the appellation gap matters to you: our retail record lists this bottle simply as California, while the producer's current Merlot page describes a Napa Valley wine, and we cannot confirm the two match; no shopper rating is on record either.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.