A Closer Look at how Blends are Made!From the outside looking in, winemaking is a glamorous profession filled with days spent drinking wine, nibbling cheese, and wandering the vineyards. And while we do all of that, that is a small percentage of the job. As our winemaker Russell often says, “Winemaking is 70% sanitation, 20% perspiration (doing the sanitation), 9% inspiration, and 1% degustation but only at the end of the day!” However the exception to that is blending season!
One of our favorite winemaking activities are blending trials. This is fascinating and often painstaking process of selecting the best expression of a wine in that particular vintage.
When you are making a blend, be it red or white, you have two main courses of action.—field blend or a traditional blend. Field blends are made up of two or more types of grape varietals that are harvested together and co-fermented in the winery. The other method—which we employ at Suhru & Lieb Vineyards—is a traditional blend. In this case, we harvest, ferment, and barrel age each varietal individually. This allows each to develop independently before bringing the flavors together.
Each Spring—typically in April and May—we blend our reds. The two that take the majority of our focus are the Suhru Ember and Lieb Meritage or Reserve. Once our winemaker has deemed the individual varietals ready, he puts together a series of blends for us as a group to blind taste. After collecting barrel samples of each of the blending wines, he pours them into labeled beakers and assesses each individually. The goal, to identify each wines strengths and weaknesses. It is these strengths and weaknesses that determine how the wines will be blended. For example, if we had an early winter then the later ripening reds (think Petit Verdot) may not have developed as fully. That results in a wine with less tannic structure. In that case, we will lean more heavily on the early ripening varietals (think Merlot and Malbec), and barrel influence.
Once the wines are assessed individually, Russell measures out samples of each variety into a graduated cylinder using a pipette. By doing this, he is meticulously selecting the amount of each varietal as he blends them together into a series of different blends (typically 4-5) that best showcase the different directions we can take the wine. Of these 4-5 blends, he typically makes one that he feels is the best overall expression. A second that mimics as closely as possible the previous vintage, and then 2-3 that fall in between those two starting points.
After all that work (by Russell) comes the fun part! We get together and taste the blends blind. It is important to taste them blind (so noone knows which blend is which without referencing a key) so we can be impartial. As we taste we discuss each blend, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses, what we like and dislike. This feedback Russell will take back to the winery to fine tune the blends. This is our opportunity to give any and all feedback and leave our thumbprint on the wines. We repeat this blending and tasting process as many times as necessary until we find the one that we all love and best represents the vintage, our style, and the individual varieties in the wine!
While of course important work, this is one of our favorite decisions to make and is a great way for us as a winemaking family to come together to share ideas, opinions, and shape the next vintage!
