A SUPER Deal on a Napa Merlot

It's been a while since my last post, probably because of how busy I've been with running a marathon and planning for vacation. My family and I are on vacation this week at Oak Island, NC. It's a great place, imagine Myrtle Beach with about 10 people for every mile of beach. So here's the interesting wine story related to our vacation at Oak Island. On our first night here we went to the local (small) Food Lion to stock up on some goods for the week. In the wine section I noticed a sign that said Weekly Wine Special - St. Clement 2005 Merlot $7.99. I could hardly believe it! When we were in Napa last summer my wife and I visited St. Clement winery on recommendation from a friend at work. It's a beautiful small winery that sits on a hill, and I could clearly remember that NONE of their wines were much less than $30 a bottle. So even though I couldn't remember their Merlot that well we agreed to buy 1 bottle to see how we liked it then come back for more if it really were as good as we expected. Well the wine is terrific. Very dark with a deep cherry nose; very soft in the mouth with hints of chocolate and berries. So next we looked it up on their website to confirm what we thought - the wine retails for $28 a bottle. This wine was $20/bottle off - needless to say we headed right back to the Food Lion to buy them out. There were 7 bottles left out and I talked to their wine guy to see if they had anymore. Unfortunately he explained that each week their distributor brings one wine to put on special and whatever they have is out on display. Funny enough I've never seen St. Clement in a store, but come to a small Island about as far away from Napa as you can get in the U.S. and there it was for 75% off. Oh well, we've got 7 bottles of this terrific bargain to bring home!