blending fruit wines

Winemaking is often as much of an artform as it is a science, and nowhere in the process is this truer than when developing a blending strategy. While we are all familiar with specific varietals like Merlot or Cabernet Franc, many wines (and especially reds) really pop when wines from different varietals are blended. Blends of multiple varietals are especially popular with European wines such as Bordeaux, Rioja, or the Super Tuscan.

I will never forget one of my first wine tasting visits to Sonoma County where I went on a wine cave tour and we got to do a barrel tasting. We were first given a sample of the base Zinfandel wine which was very good but nothing that really stood out. The tour guide then gave us another sample where they added just a touch of a Petit Syrah to the glass and…WOW…it was like a completely different wine with complexities and unexpected tastes that just weren’t present the first time around.

With that in mind, we decided to embark on an exploration of how blending would impact our fruit wines. One of the best parts of crafting a blended fruit wine is discovering how the individual aspects of each wine can contribute to the blended product. In the case of our wines, each has their own unique aspect that can be harnessed in a blended wine. For example, apricot wines have a juicy mouthfeel, our blackberry wines are robust, strawberry has a unique and strong bouquet, and plum has a spicy character. In our blending tests, we often found examples where these individual components could be discerned in the blend.

Being a science nerd at heart, I set up a comprehensive test matrix where each of our eight focus wines would be blended in three different ratios of the two wines, resulting in 168 total two-wine combinations that needed to be tasted. Good work if you can get it, right? While there were some misses in this process, we found that most of the blends showed modest improvements over the base wines with the most common impact being a more balanced and smooth wine.

There were also the standouts.

With both the Rochoso and Vin series wines, we found about a dozen examples each where the blended wine was like my experience in the Californian wine caves: a combination of two delicious wines on their own coming together and producing something that was greater than the original components. I’m excited to continue our blending journey with two wine blends and to create new wines from multiple components, but for now, we picked the best four Rochoso and Vin blends to talk about a little more in this blog post. With any luck, they will be on the shelf at wine stores before too long!