WineXpert Blending Kits

[David219]

So, my current idea/project is to craft a Meritage-style blend. I have a Eclipse Lodi Ranch 11 Cab kit resting in a carboy, a Petite Verdot skins kit nearly ready for degassing, and an Eclipse Merlot kit in the wings. Of the eventual 18 gallons combined, I want to blend two combinations of the three and bottle the remaining 6 gallons as the individual varietals. I'm thinking one blend more Cab based and the second Merlot based. Given the equal volumes of the three I will have at my disposal, my plan is for a 58/33/9 Cab/Merlot/Petite Verdot ratio for the first and a 25/50/25 ratio for the second.

The impetus for trying this is that there isn't a routinely available WE Meritage (there was an LE recently that I did not get), and though my wife and I rarely drink commercially made wine anymore, one that we previously had enjoyed a great deal was a Guenoc Victorian Claret. While I am not necessarily trying to replicate that wine, we enjoyed it so much that I thought a blend would fun to try. Any thoughts? Interesting idea? Bad idea? Suggestions for blending?

 

[DoctorCAD]

Blending is a time-honored winemakers tradition. No worries with doing it with finished kits.
I was shown the "test-blending" phase at a winery in the Livermore Valley once. The owner and the head wine maker were trying various percentages of varities in a test glass. They were using a pipette to measure each amount in CC's. They figured out their mix in the glass and said they would mix barrels later.

 

[MonkeyK]

I think that your plan is excellent.
I will be doing something similar with two chardonnays (WE Ausie and French chardonnays) that I have done recently. These were successive barrel ferments, one followed by one month of battonage, the second just two weeks of battonage.
I tasted the first one (WE Ausie chardonnay) at one month of battonage. It had incredible body, nice sweetness, and a creamy mouthfeel, but very little fruit. Thinking that I had gone way too far, I let it sit for two weeks and racked it off the lees. Since racking some of the fruit has been more pronounced, but not as much as I would like.
The second had undergone battonage for two weeks. Not wanting to make the same mistake of the first, I let that sit for two weeks and then racked it off the lees as well. On tasting it showed bright fruit, a hint of the creamyness and less body. I added some french oak to that one and will rack it off the oak soon.
Dont get me wrong, both taste great, but each is a little too far in it's it's direction for my taste. My plan is to let them both bulk age for another two months and then bottle about 12 bottles of each of each straight up and work out a blend or two for the rest. After about 3 months in the bottles, I will
start comparing what I bottled at the rate of about a bottle of each per month.

 

[David219]

DoctorCAD: I like that idea to do some test batches. My palate may not be sophisticated enough to distinguish subtle differences, but I just may try a few different percentages and see!

MonkeyK: Sounds great. Good luck with your blending!

 

[Dugger]

Okay, I gotta ask - why 58/33/9?? Why not 60/30/10 or 55/35/10?
My son was visiting once and making coffee one morning and I told him to grind the beans for 18 seconds - he asked why 18 and not 20 seconds, something that would be easier to remember? I told him 20 was too common and too easily forgotten, but 18, well 18 seconds is a unusual number that invokes thought and discussion and is never forgotten!
Is this your rationale?

 

[DoctorCAD]

DoctorCAD: I like that idea to do some test batches. My palate may not be sophisticated enough to distinguish subtle differences, but I just may try a few different percentages and see!

MonkeyK: Sounds great. Good luck with your blending!

Actually, it was pretty easy to tell a 85/15 from a 90/10. I didn't think I would be able to tell either.

 

[David219]

Dugger: My rationale has to do with proportions I've seen in other Meritage blends and ease in knowing how much I've transferred. On one of my six gallon carboys, I measured off one gallon graduations. 3 1/2 gallons is roughly 58%. 2 gallons is 33%. The remaining is 9 percent. It's mostly for ease of measurement to know, as close as possible, what the exact percentage is if I ever wanted to duplicate it. It seems many Meritage blends have a dominant, core varietal as a base, and the base varietal percentages ranged from like 45% to 75%, or so, of the ones I looked up. I chose 58% for the Cab in the first blend because it approximates the Cab percentage of a blend I have tried and liked and for ease of measurement.

The second blend percentages are simply what I have left over. I want to have at least 5-6 bottles of each varietal individually, so factoring that in, I will have 3 gallons of the Merlot and 1.5 gallons of the Cab left over after the first blend is finished. That leaves 1.5 gallons of Petite Verdot to top off the second six gallon carboy, and I bottle the rest as the varietal.

My original thought was to make a Cab based and a Merlot based blend. Maybe I would be better served to use DoctoCAD's suggestion and make only one blend to my taste (because making a second would not be possible with a finite amount of each varietal at hand...unless I find I like a 33/33/33 blend!) and just bottle the rest individually.

So it's some on previous experience with taste, but much on ease of measurement and math. Have you tried blending before? This is the best way I thought of to portion out the percentages with what I have at my disposal. What other ways are there? The Petite Verdot is a wild card for me, because I have never tasted it as a varietal...only in blends.

Thanks for suggestions.

 

[Dugger]

Ah, math doesn't lie. Thanks for the explanation - makes perfect sense.
No, I haven't tried blending. I generally make kits that are already blended as opposed to varietals and since my production is now well down, I probably won't. I may try blending some individual bottles I have just out of curiosity.

 

[David219]

Dugger: Your original post made me laugh at myself... I can be a but OCD with some things, especially things dealing with measurement. I don't know why. If someone asks me the time, I can't just say "8 o'clock". I have to say "8:03". I'm kinda quirky that way, I guess. Yeah, I can see someone reading 58/33/9 and thinking...where the h*** did that come from?

 

[Dugger]

I think many of us are like that these days. I blame it on the digital age. Years ago in the good old analog days, my wife would ask me what the temperature was outside and I would say it was about 15* or 20* ( Celsius) but now I look at the thermometer (these things are so cheap, you can have one in every room) and tell her it's 17.3*!!

 

[joeswine]

Kit blending

great idea,BUT NOT A NEW ONE ,WE HAD A WINEMAKER IN OUR GROUP WHO BECAME A EXPERT IN BLENDING WINE KITS,A ENGINEER BUY TRADE, HE WOULD TAKE KITS AND BLEND THEM TO A DEGREE THAT HE WOULD WIN NATIONAL CONTEST WITH THEM THAT'S HOW GOOD HE GOT ,IT'S ALL MATTER OF TASTE WENT IT'S APPLIED AT OUR LEVEL NOT MATH.