In the Meritage thread, Roberto points out that some of his customers are suspicious of blends because they “muddle up the flavors”.
I guess my comment would be…“it depends”.
You can take all the colors in the spectrum, blend them together in a blender, and the picture on your canvas is…gray.
Or you can draw a red stripe, a blue stripe, a green stripe, a purple stripe…and the canvas looks a whole lot more interesting.
It’s well known (documented in a UC/Davis paper I once read) that, in wine, we are most attracted to what we most recognize.
A wine that speaks of Cabernet, or Syrah, or Zinfandel is much more attractive to us than a wine (like 2$Chuck) that is just
vaguely fruity.
I find the blends that I like the best are the ones that retain some sort of identifiable varietal character. Maybe just the varietal
character of the dominant grape. Sometimes I will get hints/nuances of another variety in the blend. But seldom will I pick out
more than two varietal characteristics.
In Meritage blends,I tend to prefer the ones that speak of CabernetSauvignon. In the Rhone blends, I tend to prefer the ones that
speak of Syrah…or Mourvedre.
One of the problems I have w/ many of the Rhone blends I try is that I find many of them not very distinctive. Just a bit too muddled
and gray in character.
And for some people, I think the idea of a blended wine has bad karma to it because they feel other varieties are dumped into a blend
in order to “stretch” the primo varietal. Or that a blend is just a dumping ground for lots of wine that didn’t make the cut into the
varietal bottling.
Anyway, I think that that’s one of the problems w/ the Meritage label…that people don’t give it the cachet that they associate
w/ a varietal name on the label.
That blends have gotten a bad reputation has nothing to do with blending itself, but with the perception that the best wines, at least from the states are varietal – leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my experience, varietal wines tend only to be the best choice on the best vineyard site or on the cooler end of the growing area, while in warmer regions varieties take on a more singular character (i.e. syrah loses its white pepper and does the fruit and velvetty midpalate near exclusively) and lend themselves more to blending.
On the higher end, isn’t it better for a wine to speak of a place rather than a grape, per se? There are those that believe that the blending of varieties is the only way to really get to see the vineyard through the wine. I’m not that extreme, but if you want wine that is less, ahem, adjusted, planting the right blend of grapes in the vineyard is paramount in warmer regions.
Across California, at least, I think embracing blends would lead to better/more balanced wines on the whole.
Good point. If producers added a high acid low alcohol blender to some high octane Syrah, maybe they wouldn’t need to acidulate and water back. I suppose that might mean co-fermenting, though, since it seems like these adjustments happen early in the process. Still, I think producers could do some interesting stuff mixing cool and warm climate, ripe and less ripe.
Unfortunately, that’s probably only lucrative for a few producers or regions whose names trump all else. Most people probably do not think about the difference between Carneros and Calistoga–it’s the Napa name that people notice.
I usually find blends more interesting than straight varietals. I say “usually” because I’ve had PN/Syrah blends that can be described as muddled. Otherwise, I wish CA would do more blends in the Bordeaux- and Rhone-styles, Sangi/Barb, and Zin/PS/Carignane/etc.
I think blends are a hard sell for many who have grown up with varietal wines on labels. I still here MANY people say France is hard to learn because the varieties are not on the labels to which I usually say “Not really if you take a little time. Try Italy if you want to be befuddled.”
I think some of the best “Zinfandels” for instance are the field blends that contained varieties offering more structure that were maybe less fruited. Bordeaux, Champagne and the Rhone are great examples of areas that have made excellent wines from blends. I would prefer if the concentration was on making the best wine possible instead of trying to nail something else like varietal character. That’s why I find it perplexing when someone whines about the possibility of Syrah in a Pinot. If its a better wine then put it on the label and make it so!
If you have to concentrate on a variety character to enjoy a wine I think you can be missing out on the big picture
This is an interesting idea, but with the possible exception of some pinot/chardonnay Champagne blends, I can’t think of any blended wines reminiscent of the latter - and I don’t think that’s often the aspiration, either. I think seamlessness is a more common goal. Certainly, in most regions where blending is the norm, the practice originated in using the excesses of one grape to compensate for the shortcomings of another, not to highlight the distinct characteristics of each.
It’s a silly idea, probably from someone who hasn’t had much wine in his or her life. Coming from that background, the person has a clear and distinct idea of what each variety is “supposed” to taste like. The taster knows what Grignolino tastes like whether grown in France, Italy, Barossa, Oregon, Serbia, or wherever. And such a person is really perceptive too, because that person’s perception is true regardless of the winemaker, the terroir, the vintage, etc.
Me, I’m clueless. I haven’t had Grignolino from every possible vineyard, so I have no idea whether it’s muddled up when it’s blended in Uruguay or Switzerland. And those crazy bastards just might blend that grape too! Muddling it all up.
I enjoy a vast array of blends. I just think blends got a bad name with many of the early (and present) American meritage wines. The winemakers were/are facing a glut of merlot that the market doesn’t want. Takes years to stirp out vineyard and replant. Best way to get rid of it? Blend the crap out of the merlot with other Bdx varieties. This was often done to the point of blandness. Some winemakers killed some good cabs to get rid of that merlot fruit, imo. American cab franc, that hardly anyone drinks here on its own, finally has a market.
I am more a purist. I like my cab 100% and actually seek it that way and although I can enjoys some percentage of ‘other’, that gets a bit muddy for me around 15-20%. For this reason I have never been a huge fan of Phelps Insignia. Same with Cali-Syrah, but an even lower tolerance of ‘others’ is preferable.
I don’t think there’s one answer. And varietal blends might be different than geographic blends.
I, too, often prefer 100% cabs from Napa. And who wants anything blended into pinot in Burgundy or into reisling in the Mosel?
On the other hand:
Most great Cote Rotie has 3-10% viognier, which plainly lends aromatics and softens the syrah.
Aside from Petrus, there is no significant Bordeaux that isn’t a blend.
Chianti historically benefited from a mix of red and white grapes.
In California, Paul Draper believes in single vineyard bottlings to preserve character but enthusiastically preserves the old field blends of varietals.
So I think it all depends on the wine. And in many cases, I suspect any muddling has little to do with blending and more to do with poor grapes and/or mediocre winemaking.
Another big factor in muddiness is overripe fruit, which can obliterate the varietal character. I find that a lot in California: It’s hard to tell some overripe pinots from overripe syrahs, and a lot of cabs don’t have any real cab character. Blend in some merlot, and it becomes just mud.
There are lots of reasons blends are created by wineries. Perhaps, some wineries put together ‘kitchen blends’ to get rid of stuff that didn’t fit in their other wines - or didn’t make the cut.
Others put blends together with the intention that the whole is greater than its parts - and this is what I and most of my winemaker friends do when constructing these.
Does it always work? Heck no - Tom H was in person to witness this when we did a Rhone Rangers seminar on the topic two years ago in San Francisco.
There are, of course, personal likes and dislikes that come into place when evaluating blends. I’ve sat at tables where some of the tasters really dug the blend, but to others of us, it truly was ‘muddled’.
Never a blackl and white answer . . . . which is why I dig wine boards!
Personally I prefer blends, but I do understand the US consumers fear of them.
Blends to many were associated with: Sauterne, Chablis, Hearty Burgundy and the like. The varietally pure wines, imho, were a way out of the that jug wine mentality.
Unfortunately the “hegemony of varietally pure wines” is still very much alive, even among people that have never seen these jug wines. In a recent trip up the coast I got the clear impression that even young consumers generally go for wine that say “grenache” or “syrah” over something with a weird name that brings no connotations. My feeling is that by now you can trade on making a “grenache”, because many other wineries also make “grenache” and so there is some sort of common ground and recognition involved. That said, I preferred the blends at almost all of these wineries. They seemed more complete and rounded.
I’d say that even a good Napa cab generally needs a splash of PV or Malbec or whatever to give it that little extra edge. Then again I’m probably way to muddled to even offer a coherent opinion.
Let’s see, in CA is one supposed to have 100 percent of the labeled variety when they call it a monovarietal wine? I think not. So all of our pure varietal wines are probably blends anyway.
Oh wait. Let’s just ignore that.
posted by John:
And who wants anything blended into pinot in Burgundy or into reisling in the Mosel?
John - I say blend a little terroir in there! And some naturalness, so we get a natural wine! Cripes, what do you want, something globalized?
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