What is Meritage?

The short and sweet answer is... old world wines (European) were known and labeled according to the region of their origin, while new world wines (the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc) were known and labeled by the grape or varietal. When they began blending different grapes they had trouble defining the wines, and knew that these wines would be better than just "table wine"...so they needed a term to use in order to get closer to old world processes. They had a contest and the winning term was "Meritage" (pronounced like "heritage") which was a combined form of Merit and Heritage.