How do Wineries Blend Different Lots?

On Reddit, there is a forum entitled “Explain to Me Like I’m a 5-year-old”. Usually, complex physics theories, national financial policies, etc, are proposed, and a few experts chime in with simple analogies or metaphors.

I have always wondered about blending barrels, tankers, whatever, in the final effort of creating a finished wine that, in a particular vintage, tastes consistent from bottle to bottle. Big wineries do it with nonvintage wines, Champagne houses do it for the NV Cuvee and the vintage bottlings, and 1,000 case releases from smaller wineries do it for the Single-vineyard Zins, Cabs, Pinot Noirs, and Syrahs that gain such favor on these forums.

Imagine that I have a few barrels of wine that I will sample in different combinations in order to determine how I feel a particular finished wine ought to taste.

I determine that 20% of Sample #5, 12% of Sample #3, and the rest from other Sampled Lots/Barrels/Whatever taste like the best assembly of components for my wine-to-be.

Now, how do I blend all these barrels together? Do I pour them all into one big vat and mix it up? Is this then the finished, consistent wine for Bottles #1-16,000?

Please help.

Good questions, Drew. I can only speak from my own experiences, which have mostly been at very small and small to medium-sized wineries in California. The first 3 places where I worked, we used tanks large enough to hold blends anywhere from 15 to 50 barrels. Once all the barrels were racked into these tanks, we would blend them with a Guth mixer. It’s kind of like a stainless steel Kitchenaid “blender” arm (in a way, not exactly) that you can insert through a ball valve into the tank. When connected properly, it’s a very gentle way to blend a tank. Do a search for a Guth agitator to get a picture of one.

Now that I work at garagiste-sized wineries, where blends range from 1 to 12 barrels, I mostly use a diaphragm or positive displacement pump to mix, or I just use nitrogen bubbled into the bottom of a tank to stir. They both work well. If I have a one barrel blend where I combine half a barrel each from two different barrels, I use a stainless steel barrel stirrer, which is done by hand.

Thanks, Ed!

I am more curious about the smaller end (like your examples) of blending. The size of a container to blend a final “recipe” for small-production wines would appear to be a hard thing to get a hold of when an artisanal operation has set up shop in a little building.

The big guys’ facilities make it seem like they have all the tank space they need to blend.

The many articles and books about winemaking basics never go into detail on the mechanics of making a final blend.

The process is always:
• Destem (or don’t) and Crush
• Ferment/Maceration
• Press
• Rack to barrels (possibly to finish fermentation)
• MLF
• Age
• Rack from barrels periodically
• Fine, Filter (or don’t)
• Bottle