Wondered if anyone on the board has tried to blend their own wine at home？ Now that there are several single varietal wines options. Usually Rhone like, and some single varietal wines used for Bordeaux like wines. Thoughts, I’ll probably try it anyway if I don’t like the single varietal bottle as a standalone.
Well, you have some wine makers on the board and I’m sure they’ve done plenty of blending. But we do it from time to time. Not frequently, but sometimes a wine just doesn’t seem the way we want it. I had a French business partner many years ago and he thought doing that was criminal, berating a waitress once for accidentally trying to top of his glass with a different bottle. But then he smoked, so what did he care.
I’ve done it a couple times. I remember being at a themed tasting (single variety/region), and one wine was too much X, and another wine too much Y, so I put the two together and the sum was much better than the parts. I have also attempted that and the sum was way worse than the individual parts. I usually just do it with multiple wines from the same producer to satisfy my curiosity and analytical brain. That brain is part of why I got into wine-making and started our winery.
The handful of times I’ve experimented with it, it’s been somehow less good than I would have thought, considering the wines which were mixed.
Which I guess makes sense, given the skill and effort that goes into making these wines in the first place?
But I think there was once when I had some partial success. I think I had one bottle which was thin and screechingly acidic, and I mixed it with a bit of a plump wine, and the result was a little better than either wine standing alone.
Once I tried to make a Wine at my home using my favorite fruit watermelon. But the taste was really awful. I just felt stale taste. what could be the reason for this condition…I used
1 package active dry yeast
4 cups of sugar
350 ml watermelon juice concentrate
12 cups of cold water. and kept if for six weeks with covering a ballon. what fault have I done?
I have done this in two scenarios:
Hard, ungiving Burg with New world Pinot, usually results in a better wine than either alone.
Over the hill bottle with newer bottle, same varietal. This usually “works” after playing with the proportions. Of course that newer bottle might have evolved into something better than the blend.
I’d never open two bottles of well-made wine and try to make my own blend out of those two.
However, if there are wine events, fairs or other tastings where there are lots of opened extra bottles that are going to go to waste otherwise, every now and then I make my own blends for fun and curiosity.
In one BYOD wine tasting there were two bottles of sparkling wine nobody cared about: one old Champagne that was flat and quite oxidized and one obscure fizzy that tasted like cheap Prosecco. Neither was interesting in any way on their own. First I tried a 50/50 blend, but it tasted pretty much like the oxidized Champagne, only with a little bit of carbonation. Next I tried a blend of approx. 90% of that young anonymous bubbly and approx. 10% of that old, tired Champagne. The result was a terrific sparkling wine that had wonderful fizz, lots of youthful fruit and a good deal of that nutty complexity that one can taste in Champagnes that employ a large dose of réserve wines.
it is interesting to ponder how one could go to say TJ’s and pick up a few bottles then mix it up, fun but maybe not epic
Our annual Christmas party usually had about 45 bottles opened and not all were finished. The next morning I would blend the leftovers, usually a drinkable but not especially notable result.
I sometimes buy wines that I haven’t tasted first based on discussion here and since shipping costs are what they are will often buy six. If the first 2-3 don’t turn out to be something we like, the rest go on the cooking rack.
Yesterday, I was making a boar ragu and pulled a Russian river Pinot. Opened it and tried and and while good it still seemed a bit lighter than what I wanted. So then grabbed a Washington Bordeaux blend that was too big by itself. But at a 50/50 blend this was perfect and to my tastes better than either wine by itself. The blend even tasted a bit Italian with the PN adding acidity and cutting the body of the other.
It was good enough that I drank a glass of the blend while cooking before turning to a Brunello with dinner.
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