Touchstone Eight Merlot

With the inviting flavors and aromas of ripe red fruit and a hint of chocolate, Touchstone Eight Merlot is a wine that delivers on flavor in a reduced alcohol format. Carefully crafted from choice Merlot and other classic Bordeaux varieties, the wine's bright red color, complex flavors and soft, rich texture make it something to enjoy before, during, or after a meal.

With 8% alcohol, as its name implies, Touchstone Eight falls in the middle of TFC's range of lighter style wines, and it is one of the most extensively researched of that range. The wines themselves were designed to live up to the promise of “The New Lighter California Style of Wine” and to be particularly compatible with California lighter-style healthy cuisine. Both product and packaging underwent particularly rigorous testing, including focus groups and an extensive quantitative study. In blind tastings, the wines themselves were characterized 95% of the time as being comparable in structure to market leading benchmark wines (i.e. the lower alcohol went undetected) with very highly positive references to aroma and flavour. The label design received over 85% approval in the quantitative study for its combination of elegance and modernity, yet traditional quality wine cues.