A blend may be made between different varietals from different vineyards or a single grape from a single vineyard fermented and aged in different vessels, all giving a slightly different character and complexity. I wrote this for myself to help with the mental process. I have put in on here as it may be helpful for others studying wine or winemaking or just starting out in the game.
Photo: All the components of the L.A.S. Vino Albino Pinot blend from 2017.
1. If you want to understand meaning visit the site, look at the vines, dig a hole, look at the dirt. Meditate for a few moments about what the wine is or can be. This is obviously not essential, but can help to find some clarity around what you are hoping to achieve. Start with the following
a. Why are you creating this wine?
b. What do you want the wine to be?
c. Who will be drinking the wine and what do they enjoy?
d. Where will the wine be drunk?
e. What food will go well with this wine?
f. How will you sell this wine? Why will someone drink this as opposed to the thousands of other wines on the market.
2. We go into blending with a few aims.
a. First and foremost, the aim should be to make the best possible wine with the material you have available. The hard bit is what ‘best’ actually means. Quite simply we look at it as balance in flavour, texture, and aroma. How the wine feels in your mouth and how it smells. If you have good material the question moves beyond this and into style. If all blends are balanced, what style are you looking for? This is a much harder question. Normally we decide based on the answers to the questions above
b. The second priority is using all the material you have in stock. If you have achieved the best blend possible using all of your barrels than that’s the best outcome, it rarely works out that way. There is often a balancing act, you may be left with a few barrels of pressings or a barrel that isn’t quite right. This is eventually going to need a home too. If your best blend is 1 barrel. But you have 20 you haven’t really achieved anything. So balance the aim of making the best wine possible with using all of your material.
c. There also maybe other priorities for example it may be a single vineyard wine, or certified organic fruit that can’t be mixed. You will need to incorporate into the decision making.
3. Where to start. There are a lot of ways to do this, and everyone has a certain method. You can taste all the material and grade it then make up a blend with the best material. You can put everything into a trial blend and slowly take out barrels to see what works. Another method is to get analysis on each barrel and choose from there. For example. If you have a few barrels with high residual sugar or high VA or high acid, find those particular outlier barrels and take them out or which numbers look the best and start at this point. The quantity of material you have and how different the material going into the blend is will determine your method. This year I started from 2 different points. I had a wine in 16 barrels and most barrels looked fantastic. I started with everything in the blend and started taking barrels out and ended up with a 10 barrel batch and went to step 4. For another blend of 20 barrels I had high residual sugar in quite a few and needed it under 3g/L . I tested every barrel for RS and also acid for balance and then made a 10 barrel batch that was 2g/l with higher acid to balance the sugar. Then went onto step 4. From here go onto blend options and taste them against each other. It’s also helpful to taste against previous vintages.
4. When tasting the blending options, say up to 5, compare each to one another and start asking questions like:
a. Why is this blend good?
b. Why is this blend better than the other?
c. How could we make this blend better than it already is?
d. Is there something that we could add to the blend or take out that would reduce a negative quality or enhance a positive quality.
e. For example you may really enjoy a blend but find that it has texture that is slightly bitter. You can eliminate a pressings barrel associated with the bitterness and this may enhance the overall wine.
5. Depending on material quantity and quality, you can keep repeating step 4 . Eg. you have five blends and choose blend 2. Using blend 2 as a base create five more alternatives to this blend altering it by 10-20% each time to see the effect by adding or taking away material. And repeat until you are happy.
6. Once you have decided on a blend its often helpful to do analysis: Residual sugar, malic , ph, TA, free and total SO2 , VA and alcohol to see how the wine looks on paper. For example you may all enjoy a wine but the residual sugar on the blend is super high, or the VA is above legal limits ect. If you have the money and time you can do this for each of the blends and look at the results while you are tasting and comparing. It will skew your perception of taste but can also be really useful in the determination of why you enjoy a blend or why it is balanced.
7. The final thing to note before actually blending the wine into tank
a. Think about how the wine will change when finishing the wine
i. Cold stabilisation will reduce your final acid
ii. Filtration will take out flavour
iii. Fining agents can be used to reduce bitterness but also will reduce flavour.
iv. Bentonite will strip a little flavour and colour but give clarity and could reduce the need for filtration.
b. Think about how the wine will change as it ages in bottle
i. A red could have high tannins now but you may need that for the wine to age.
ii. Is the wine made for now or later and how long will it be in bottle prior to release?
8. Create the blend.
FINING/FINISHING THE WINE
We find the gentle way we approach winemaking. Hand picking, chilling the fruit, hand sorting, small bins and gently pressing leads the wines to be quite balanced and lacking the harsh phenolics and tannins that are often in commercial wines. Because of this we rarely need to add any fining agents. If you are machine harvesting fruit and putting the fruit through a macerating crusher/destemmer you may need to reduce the phenolics (bitterness) or round out the tannins using fining agents. There are numerous on the market with their own specific instructions. My thoughts, blend the wine, wait a few weeks and taste the wine, if you think something tastes out of balance, look for a fining agent that can help. But it will alter flavours in your wine in unintended ways. Eg. you will take out phenolics, but may also take out flavour and texture. With our wines the standard protocol for whites is to blend with the addition of sulfur to tank, leave no ullage if possible and chill the tank down to less than 5 degrees for 3 weeks to limit tartrate crystals in the bottle. Then turn the cooling off just prior to bottling. A light filter at bottling if necessary.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I guess for me the most challenging aspect of blending is who will be drinking it. I often find I love a particular wine for some reason but then wonder if the person drinking it will. I often wonder whether a reviewer or judge will think of a wine in a certain way the differs from me and from the final drinker. It's a question of style more than substance. But a challenging question nonetheless.
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