Blending is as valid a part of the grape growing and winemaking practice as pruning and fermenting, yet it’s perhaps the least understood. At one end of the spectrum, it’s used in less expensive, large-scale production runs for brands like YellowTail and Jacob’s Creek to help maintain a consistency of style and flavour. Whether from a single variety or a combination of grapes, their makers marry together the fruit of different regions to retain an identifiable and repeatable house stamp or style from one season to the next. Furthermore, at this price point there’s clearly less interest in understanding vintage variation, so the less of it the better. Without the ability to blend different grape varieties together, from one vineyard to another, as well as from one region to another, Australia would be without its major international wine brands which have pleased wine drinkers all over the world.
On the other, the making of many of our premier smaller-scale wines mirrors the long-established combinations of varieties associated with different European wine regions. In Bordeaux, cabernet sauvignon is frequently blended with its related varieties of merlot, cabernet franc, malbec and petit verdot. Semillon and sauvignon blanc are usually paired together, often with small volumes of muscadelle. The southern Rhône combinations of grenache with shiraz and mourvèdre are also commonplace in Australia, while plenty of shiraz makers in cooler regions adopt the northern Rhône marriage between shiraz and viognier, a spicy, fragrant white variety which can contribute perfume, drive and texture. I could go on…
Instead of boosting quantity, blending is deployed in these cases to enhance quality. Needing sunshine, cabernet sauvignon ripens late, delivering a thin, greenish palate when unable to ripen fully. Generally earlier to ripen, merlot handles cooler seasons better, fleshing out cabernet’s palate. Cabernet franc contributes spicy red berry qualities to cabernet sauvignon’s darker fruit profile, while malbec offers chewy grip and earthy grunt. Even as a small proportion of a blend, petit verdot, a relative newcomer to these shores, adds pepper, spice and searing, briary fruit flavours.
Only from the most exceptional years and the most exceptional vineyards is the best wine from these grape varieties made from 100% cabernet sauvignon. However many cabernet-dominant blends are represented as ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ on their labels, which they’re legally entitled to provided this grape accounts for 85% of the wine. They might constitute up to 15% of the other varieties, especially merlot and cabernet franc. Cabernet sauvignon, for example, is blended into most vintages of Penfolds Grange, but never enough to require its identification on its label.
It’s usually between three to six months after vintage that winemakers taste their way through the individual barrels or parcels held in other containers in their cellars to ‘assemble’ the various blends they might be attempting to create. The biggest example of this in the world takes place at the Penfolds’ facility in the Barossa Valley, where all the Penfolds wines are graded, then blended into the ever-expanding hierarchy of wines under this label, from Grange and the Special Bin Numbers down to the more affordable strata.
Not so well known is that most single-vineyard wines are actually blends, even if they’re made from a single variety. Growers might harvest different portions of a vineyard at different times to create a spectrum of flavour from slightly under to slightly over-ripe. Batches from different soil types might be kept apart after harvest, while some might be fermented at different temperatures or otherwise handled differently before being matured in different oak casks of different ages from different sources and coopers. The result is the creation of a palette of diverse flavours and textures, not to mention quality levels, that can then be reassembled at blending time to construct a single wine – or indeed a series of wines sold at different prices – whose flavour, texture and style is characteristic to that particular vineyard and its maker’s philosophy.
