Did you ever fancy making your own wine? Owning a vineyard or inveigling your way into a winery could be complicated but what if you take a few different wines and mix them together? Could it even be drinkable?
It will offend the purists, and most winemakers would certainly be affronted. Both like to see a wine as a perfectly formed finished object. But left with a few half-finished bottles of wine after a party, have you ever been tempted to create your own master blend?
Almost every wine you buy is a blend of some sort, sometimes of hundreds of different wines. In the vineyard, a winemaker can pick part of their crop a few days or weeks earlier to preserve acidity in part of the wine, while harvesting the remainder later when the fruit is riper. Most producers will vinify wines from different vineyards and grape varieties separately, and often age them in a variety of vessels, including stainless steel, cement and oak barrels. It all adds to the complexity of the wine. Most European wine appellations specify the grapes you can use in your wine (Châteauneuf -du-Pape famously has 13 varieties for red wine) but don’t usually specify the percentage of each variety.
Larger producers and many Champagne houses blend to produce a consistent product that tastes the same every time you buy it. This takes a great deal of time and expertise, often carried out by a panel of very experienced tasters. It’s a complicated business. I have heard wine producers argue that the skill of blending is the most important part of being a winemaker.
However, as the recipient of a lot of samples, I do sometimes try to create my own unique wines. It can be a bit of fun and sometimes makes cheap wine taste better. Start by working out what is lacking in your wine and then try to add it. Do it a spoonful at a time; a few drops one way or the other can change the wine completely, and not always in the way you might expect. But I found a small glass of Australian shiraz did wonders for a half-full bottle of slightly astringent inexpensive Bordeaux. A cheap and very acidic French sauvignon was transformed by a judicious addition of rich South African Chenin Blanc. On the downside, a glass of a lightly tannic dry Tuscan red made a Chilean pinot noir undrinkably raw and tannic. And my idea of adding a touch of white viognier to soften a tannic syrah, as sometimes practised in posh Côte Rôtie, was truly horrible.
It is not easy to create the perfect wine that combines all the elements you want. Things that you think will work taste awful. There is a reason winemakers go to college and learn how to blend. But if you have a few opened bottles of cheap plonk left over after a party, you might improve that wine that nobody wanted to drink.
