Blending wines

[Ceegar]

There is a winery near me that sells a nice wine that is a blend of 30% Rhubarb, 30% Honey and 40% Strawberry wines and it's pretty darn tasty. I know it won't be exactly the same but I want to try to duplicate it as close as I can. I already have my honey and strawberry batches underway and I have my rhubarb cut up in the freezer which I'll probably get going within the next week or so. For experiment sake I'm only doing 1 gal batches of each for now. If I want to keep the ratio 30/30/40 I will need to make an additional quart of the strawberry if I want to fill a 3 gal carboy with the blend. Time to break out my 1/2 gal Byrne Dairy glass milk bottle again I guess.

When it comes time to blend these, when should I do this?

After/before all 3 have cleared?

After/before I have backsweetened?

Should I bulk age them all first then blend?

Not sure how I should go about it. I'm thinking I should blend them together into a 3 gal carboy once they have all been stabilized and cleared, then let the blend bulk age for a few months, rack if necessary then backsweeten and bottle afterwards. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[St Allie]

I have blended after the wines finish added the f pac and cleared.. that's when you've generally asessed whether they are too thin or too acid etc.. you do it to taste.. and you already know what you'd like it to taste like.

Bulk age after blending , taste in a month or so to see if it's going as you planned.. . I'm sure there will plenty of opinions on blending..

....it's an art in itself..

Allie

 

[Wade E]

let the wines clear and then blend them and then sweeten it IMO.

 

[Luc]

You should let the wine finish and clear.

Next you blend the wines to your liking and then sweeten.

Remember when you sweeten the individual wines you can not take the sweetness out of the blended wine. So sweetening is the last step.

After blending the wine should first be able to rest a while (a few weeks). Blending may start chemical reactions from the individual compounds that might cloud up the wine again, so some racking might be needed after a while.

Luc