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- Blending wines at home
There was a brief piece on WHYY's (Philly NPR affiliate) "A Chef's Table" - currently at http://www.whyy.org/91FM/chef/index.html but after a week moving to http://www.whyy.org/91FM/chef/200907.html - this afternoon with Maureen Petrosky - http://www.maureenpetrosky.com/ - about blending wines at home (during a home tasting, so forth). This certainly hadn't ever occurred to me before, and it seems like it'd be kind of like feeling around in the dark with wines of different vintages and dubious percentages (at or above 85%) pure. Thoughts?
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0390 - Reply by GregT, Jul 25.
Why not? You get some cheese, grate it, and put it on some noodles and some tomatoes and capers, all from different areas and all are good on their own. So why not wine? How else to learn anyhow. Take a real simple example - a cab and merlot from the same producer, same vintage. Pour a little of one into a glass and add some percentage of another. If you've got a few glasses lined up, you can do different percentages. Or do the same with a garnacha and syrah. It's a way to learn, if nothing else.
And those are the traditional blends. Why not see if a garnacha can work with cabernet or merlot? It's exactly what winemakers do. In France they would never mix those or something like monastrell and cab, but in Spain, a few winemakers tried it and liked it and so that's what they make.
And why not vintages? We seem to have developed a fetish about vintages because we want "authenticity" and we define that very very narrowly. Seems pretty limiting IMO. In Champagne, they've been telling us that the blend is what makes the difference and that's what is so special. Then a few people bottled "vintage" Champagne and told us that the specificity is what makes the difference and that's what's so special.
Right.
You bought the wine. You have no moral obligation to respect the winemaker's vision and if you want to blend it, why not?
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12 - Reply by annemarkis, Jul 25.
I wish this site allows you to upvote comments, because GregT said everything that needs to be said.
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73 - Reply by kylewolf, Aug 12.
Well said Greg! As long as this doesn't entirely highjack the thread, I was wondering, are there any blends people really would like to see but haven't seen much of?
(example, I would love to see a high spice/dark fruit Zin with a Large peppercorn/oak/earth Shiraz.... 40% zin, 60% shiraz)
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1139 - Reply by dmcker, Aug 12.
If you get good at the blending, want to bottle and gift some of your mixes, and are going to be near Disneyland in SoCal, you can always try this winery's offer of bottling your own private blends:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=6946763
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0390 - Reply by GregT, Aug 13.
kylewolf - Zin and syrah might be pretty good - there are blends that include those. Sean Thackrey for example makes a blend that has both of those plus some others. But why not try on your own? I don't do it a lot but thinking about it, that might be something interesting. Cline for example, bottles both zin and syrah. The thing is you'd have to get the qualities you're looking for in the individual bottles first. And keep in mind that if the wine is from CA, it need not be 100% monovarietal to be labeled as such. So theoretically, you may have 15% syrah in your zin already.
Or head down to Disneyland. . .
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there is a chain distributor, I think their name is Vintners Cellar. They specialize in making custom wines for people. Similar to what the place is socal is doing. Except you can make your own batches. Their wine starts from juice, and you can add oaks or vanilla or artifically spice/flavor your wine as you wish. Depending where you live you can make an entire batch (25-30 bottles) for around $250.
I will try to get more info on that.
GregT. Thanks for the info. I think I have seen the Cline before but for some odd reason I didn't buy it.
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1245 - Reply by mark, Aug 20.
If you want to play around and have a few bucks, Crushpad makes a home blending product called Fusebox. I saw one at one of their events. Pretty cool.
http://www.crushpadwine.com/blend/fusebox
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02 - Reply by MF1217, Aug 26.
Obriens Seduction encouraged me to try mixing my own blends. My biggest problem was that there are so many wines and so little time. Good luck with your blends and if you mix a masterpiece, please share the recipe.
