From the outside, winemaking can look pretty glamorous—days spent tasting wine, wandering vineyards, and pairing cheeses. And while there’s certainly some truth to that, most of the work happens behind the scenes.
As our winemaker Russell likes to say:
“Winemaking is 70% sanitation, 20% perspiration, 9% inspiration, and 1% degustation—but only at the end of the day.”
That said, there’s one part of the process that truly does live up to the romantic image of winemaking: blending season.
Every spring, our team gathers for one of the most important—and exciting—parts of the year: red wine blending trials. This is where individual wines come together to create the final blends that will eventually make their way into the bottle.
A red wine blend combines two or more grape varieties into one finished wine. Blending allows winemakers to balance flavor, structure, acidity, tannins, and aromatics to create a wine that is more complete and expressive than any single variety alone.
Some of the world’s most famous wines are blends, including:
At Suhru & Lieb Vineyards, wines like Ember and Drift are carefully crafted blends designed to showcase both the vintage and our winemaking style.
There are two primary ways winemakers create blended wines:
In a field blend, multiple grape varieties grow together in the vineyard, are harvested at the same time, and fermented together. This old-world approach creates naturally integrated wines but gives the winemaker less control over the final composition.
At Suhru & Lieb Vineyards, we use a traditional blending method.
Each grape variety:
This allows every wine to develop its own personality before blending begins. Once the wines mature, we can evaluate how each contributes to the final blend.
Each spring—typically in April and May—we begin our wine blending trials.
This process focuses primarily on our flagship red blends, including:
Once Russell determines the individual wines are ready, he prepares a series of potential blends for the team to taste blind.
The process starts with barrel samples of each varietal. Russell evaluates them individually first, identifying:
Every vintage behaves differently, which means the blend changes every year.
For example:
The goal is always balance—not forcing the wine into a formula.
Once the wines are evaluated individually, the real blending work begins.
Using pipettes and graduated cylinders, Russell carefully measures different percentages of each varietal into a series of trial blends. Typically, he creates:
This stage requires precision, patience, and a lot of tasting.
Even small changes—just a few percentage points of one varietal—can completely shift the wine’s texture, aromatics, or finish.
After the trial blends are prepared, the team gathers to taste them blind.
Blind tasting is important because it removes bias. Nobody knows which blend is which without checking a reference key, allowing everyone to focus only on what’s in the glass.
As we taste, we discuss:
Russell then takes that feedback back to the cellar and fine-tunes the blends further.
Sometimes the process takes one session. Sometimes it takes several rounds before we land on the final wine.
Blending is where winemaking becomes both technical and creative.
It’s not just about combining wines—it’s about building complexity, balance, and harmony. A great blend should feel complete, with each varietal contributing something important:
When done well, the result is a wine that feels layered, balanced, and expressive of both the vintage and the vineyard.
Blending season is serious work—but it’s also one of the most collaborative and rewarding parts of winemaking.
It’s an opportunity for our team to come together, share ideas, and help shape the wines that will eventually end up on your table.
And while there’s plenty of science involved, there’s also intuition, conversation, and creativity—which is exactly what makes blending season so special.
