Real wine drinkers know that Merlot wrongly got a bad rap in that infamous movie "Sideways," becoming "the red-headed step child of the Bordeaux wine grapes," as Paul Kalemkiarian Jr., president of The Original Wine of the Month Club®, puts it.

Kalemkiarian runs the oldest mail-order wine service in the U.S., born and still bred here in Southern California. So he knows his wine, and says Merlot has always been great, producing one of the greatest Bordeaux bottled (and the most expensive bottle of wine sold last year).

So he was delighted when Pig & Poke Winery in Napa Valley, focused on producing wines that represent both the grape and terroir of the vineyard, asked him to be a flavor profile consultant and provide his opinion as they developed a 2007 Merlot. The winemaking team chose a Merlot clone that produces fewer grapes per vine, resulting in a complex yet elegant flavor profile.

Now, The Original Wine of the Month Club® is offering Pig & Poke Merlot for an exclusive price of only $15.99 per bottle. You can order it online at wineofthemonthclub.com

Read Kalemkiarian's tasting notes and your mouth will water: "Deep rich magenta ... red dark fruit ... cedar components ... full bodied on the palate and the mid-palate is huge. Layers of flavors that tend to linger in the finish."

Kalemkiarian says he appreciates that Pig & Polk wine makers consider Merlot a "noble grape" and weren't intimidated by the damaging reputation built by a "fictitious character in a fictitious movie."

“I’m proud to have played a role in the planning stages and development of this very exciting wine selection,” he says.

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL WINE OF THE MONTH CLUB^®

Serving both novice and educated wine enthusiasts nationally for more than three decades, the Original Wine of the Month Club® is a highly-rated mail order wine service that offers its members hand-picked selections of fine wines from the world’s finest growing regions in such diverse areas as California, Oregon, Washington, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Australia. Each month more than 400 wines are tasted and evaluated for club selection and brought to the members at extraordinarily low prices.