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December 2002
Dan’s Cellar Notes
Whether you make your wines from kits, from fresh juices, or from grapes you pick, crush, and press yourself, there comes a time when the wine is clear, reasonably mature, and ready to be bottled. Most of the time most of us will simply put that Cabernet Sauvignon into a bunch of bottles and label it Cabernet Sauvignon. Well what could be more reasonable? When we go to the store and buy the most typical wines, whether from California, New York, France, Italy, Australia or elsewhere, they are labeled as varietals; that is, they are named after the variety of grape that makes up the largest percentage of the wine. Did you know, though, that many Cabernets actually contain some amounts of other grapes, such as Merlot, or Mouvedre, or Cabernet Franc.
What’s more, some of the most famous and expensive wines in the world are always blends of multiple grape varieties. Until recently, nearly all of the world’s wines were blends, whether everyday table wines or very expensive First Great Growths. While some famous wine regions, such as Burgundy in France and Germany’s Rhine River Valley typically produce single-grape varietal wines, the rest of France and all of Italy much more typically produce blended wines.
Should you blend? Each of us home winemakers needs to answer this question: is the single-grape wine in my carboy the best it can be, or can it benefit from blending? The simple answer is that most wines can benefit from blending if you have the proper wine to blend it with, and you do so in the proper proportion. The reason for that is that a blend of two or more wines is likely to have a more complex aroma and flavor than will a single-grape wine. Blending is typically used to achieve added complexity and finesse. It is also used to “correct” certain shortcomings of an otherwise sound wine.
Let’s say that you have made a Cabernet Sauvignon with a kit that used grapes from Italy. Perhaps you find the wine to have good varietal characteristics, but it is just too high in acid. You could try to lower acidity by introducing a malolactic culture, by adding alkali in the form of potassium or calcium carbonate, or you could blend with a wine of similar character that is, perhaps, a bit too low in acid. The latter is, of course, the ideal situation. If you happen to have a big round California Central Valley Merlot (typically full of flavor, but low in acid), that might be the best possible solution!
Besides blending to balance acidity, we may choose to blend to boost (or cut) alcohol content, to deepen (or lighten) colors, to enhance (of ameliorate) tannic astringency and bitterness, and to intensify (or tone down) levels of flavor or aroma. Ideally, we blend to add values to the base wines. In general, it is usually a mistake to blend in order to cover serious faults.
How can you tell if a blend will “work?” The way I do it is to try potentially promising combinations and proportions. I bulk age wine in carboys. I use a plastic turkey baster for a wine thief (and I do NOT also baste my turkey with it!). About once a week I settle into an evening session of tasting my bulk-aging wines. To do this, I thoroughly sanitize my wine thief and then I extract a sample of one of my wines from a carboy. I do a careful evaluation of appearance, aroma and flavor, and I write these notes into my cellar book. Over time, I develop a pretty good record of the major characteristics of each my aging wines.
Once I feel I know my wines pretty well, and I am seeking out good potential blends, I will re-sample and re-confirm my assessment of the wine I want to blend into. I then select another wine that I think may enhance the first wine in a blend. After re-sanitizing the wine thief, I draw a sample from the first wine and add a sample from the second wine equal to about 1/3 the quantity of wine #1. I carefully do another evaluation and again enter my notes into my cellar book. If the blend seems to be working right, I then try a blend using only 25% (or less) of wine 2, and then one with a 50-50 blend. Each time I carefully evaluate and make notes. That’s about it for one session—any more and I’d be getting woozy and my taste buds and nose would be jaded. The next week I may take my best blend from this week and try adding a third wine, especially if I feel it will further enhance the flavor, aroma, color, or other attributes of the combination. Otherwise, I may attempt to fine-hone the “best” proportions of the first two wines.
I perform such tasting/blending sessions about once a week throughout the bulk-aging process—which for me always lasts at least nine months for white and one year for reds, so that by the time bottling time comes around, I have a pretty good idea what I want to blend with what. This has the benefit of helping me become very familiar with my various bulk-aging wines, helping me to properly schedule rackings, sulfite additions, and bottling, as well as working up possibilities for blending. What’s more, it gives me a great excuse to spend one or more evenings a week drinking wine!
What if you have a wine that is a little high in “volatile acidity” (vinegaryness) or some other fairly serious wine fault? It is almost certainly a mistake to try to blend away a wine that is faulty due to bacterial infection or oxidation. If, for instance, you blend a 6-gallon carboy of sound Cabernet with some amount of a slightly vinegary merlot, guess what! You’ll end up running the cabernet and making even more vinegar. Please don’t try to “lose” bad wine in a blend with some sound wine. In fact, what you’ll “lose” is the good stuff!
Please note: each time you withdraw a tasting sample from your bulk storage container, whether carboy, demijohn, or barrel, you MUST immediately top up your container with a similar sound wine. Some folks top up with sterile water, and that is fine if you don’t do it very often. However, to keep up the tasting/blending schedule I prefer, that means a lot of samples may be drawn over a year or two, and these need to be replenished with sound wine of a reasonably similar sort.
If you happen to have lots of bottles of homemade, and you’re willing to use that for topping-up purposes, go for it! Personally, I value my own wines too highly for that. Instead, I keep in my pantry, just for such purposes, one box each of Franzia Cabernet Sauvignon and Franzia Chardonnay. These five-liter boxes are a terrific value! Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t drink these Franzia wines on their own. I do, however, find them to be perfectly suited as neutral, clean red and white wines, generally with low to moderate acidity and very little or no volatile acidity. They have probably been sterile filtered, and the bag-in-a-box container system does an excellent job of maintaining soundness without offering opportunities for oxidation or infection. What’s more, a 5-oz sample replacement costs a mere 40-50 cents!
I will discuss other aspects of blending in future columns. For the time being, however, if you have only bottled “varietal” wines (or blends produced by a kit manufacturer), please consider making your own wine blends. As home winemakers, we are free from the legal fetters that bind our commercial-wine cousins. We can blend across varieties, across viticulture areas, across countries, and across vintage years. Our only goal is to make the best possible wine from the source materials we have at hand. Should you blend? Sure you should, as long as you have the proper material to blend with, and you take the time and effort to work out a proper blend through measured, careful, taste assessments.