Blending in

A new old way to make wine

Uncorked by David Marglin

Wine sales, like sales of other consumer products, are driven primarily by marketing. For Americans, this means we usually buy wines according to grape variety.

This tradition dates back to the late '60s, when California was trying to establish itself as a serious wine region. Unlike Europe, America didn't have regional winemaking reputations for consumers to latch onto, so Robert Mondavi and others figured they could make wine approachable by bottling it according to grape. Consumers, they figured, could certainly get their tongues -- and wallets -- around the notion of buying a bottle of cabernet or chardonnay.

To say "this is merlot -- period" was a peculiarly American way of selling wine, but it worked: today we say "I like merlot, syrah, pinot noir, and sauvignon blanc," without regard for where the wine is from. This method of buying and selling wine worked so well, in fact, that the rest of the world has come around, so you can purchase a pinot noir from Burgundy (Daniel Rion makes a nice one) or a syrah from the Languedoc.

It also worked well enough to inspire more than one backlash. In California, where trends in winemaking and marketing shift as quickly as New England weather, two new approaches are taking hold. One of them is to focus not just on the grapes, but on the land on which the grapes are grown (see Thor Iverson's columns -- here, here, here, & here -- on terroir over the past couple of months). This has resulted in a rash of single-vineyard bottlings. Jed Steele, for instance, used to make wine by blending juice from a variety of vineyards; now he makes a Lake Vineyard chardonnay, a Du Pratt Vineyard pinot noir, and so forth. This is how it's done in Burgundy, for historical and financial reasons. Believers in terroir will tell you that wines from a single vineyard are purer and have more character. Well, maybe.

There is another school of thought in winemaking, which goes like this: if you know what you are doing, you can blend juice from different vineyards, you can blend different varietals -- hell, you can blend wines made in different years -- and get a better product than you would if you released only single-vineyard wines.

Just like single-vineyard winemaking, this approach has a rich history. More European wines than you might expect are blends, even though they don't say as much on the label: Bordeaux, for example, is usually made by blending the juice of different grapes, and nonvintage Champagnes are usually blends of different wines from different years. California can now boast of a host of high-end Bordeaux-style blended "meritage" wines made from cab, merlot, petite verdot, cab franc, and malbec.

Terroirists say blending is often just a matter of expediency -- the vineyard isn't mature enough to produce the proper concentration of fruit, or there is not enough fruit to make enough cases of wine. Proponents of blending will tell you a different story -- that most of the world's great wines are blends, that just as paintings aren't made with only one color, wines aren't made with just one type of fruit. Modernity means blending.

I admit that, unlike my colleague Thor, I lean toward the latter camp. Sean Thackrey, a reclusive winemaking genius who creates wines in a shed in Bolinas, on the California coast, says bluntly that the whole notion of terroir is "bull." Terroir is all about dirt, he says -- and you don't drink dirt, you drink juice. All of Sean's wines are blends: Orion is an old-vines syrah; Pleaides is his blend of petite sirah and syrah; Aries is his petite sirah blend; and so on. His 1996 Orion syrah (****) may be the best young syrah I have ever tasted, and if you ever see it, either in a store or on a wine list, buy it. His 1996 Pleiades (****), also awesome, will soon be the house pour at Biba, and that's the only place you can buy it in the state. Sean says he isn't always sure himself what kind of grapes are in his wines. "I find the vineyard, I buy the fruit, I know it's mainly syrah, but sometimes there's other varieties in there, too," he says.

Recently, I had the opportunity to taste wines at a young vineyard and winery called Flowers. Joan and Walter Flowers are wine genies, with their operation now firmly established on the cliffs above the Sonoma coast. The first Flowers pinot noir will be released this fall; their winemaker, Greg LaFollette, currently blends in fruit from a few different vineyards, making wines that are massive, fruit-laden powerhouses -- almost an entirely different beverage from the soft, delicate, perfumey wines produced from the same grape in Burgundy. (I was lucky enough to taste a few bottles at the winery, as well as some 1997 barrel samples.) The Flowerses will release, for the first time this fall, a wine called Perennial, which each year will be a different blend based on the fruit they have available; the 1997 (****) consists primarily of pinot noir, with some pinot meunier, syrah, and zinfandel in the mix. Find it, buy it, and love it, because it will sell out fast.

So California is coming back around, after 30-odd years, to the well-established European idea that blending is a fine way to make wine. I am not suggesting that single-vineyard wines aren't as good as -- or occasionally even better than -- blends. But there's a lot of marketing hype that might lead you to believe that blends are somehow inferior or less desirable. My message: don't be afraid to go with a blend. What counts, in the end, is what you taste.

The following are exemplary:

** ¹/2 Marietta Old Vines Number Twenty-One ($9.99, Wine and Cheese Cask and everywhere). Sort of the gold standard of $10 wines, this is a traditional field blend, meaning that whatever was growing in the field goes into the wine. This is made up of different vintages of zin, petite sirah, carignane, and gamay (!); it's a tight, berry-packed little number with tons of fruit and decent structure.

*** 1993 Marietta Cuvée Angeli ($22, Wine and Cheese Cask). From Angeli Ranch, which has been growing grapes for more than 100 years, comes this packed zin, petite sirah, and carignan blend. Just loaded with flavor, it shows no real signs of mellowing. Lots of currant and Bing cherries and some cocoa. A wine you want to serve with some spicy meats.

*** 1995 Niebaum-Coppola Commemorative Claret ($18.99, everywhere). This is a second-label Medoc blend, sort of, from the vineyard now owned by renowned film director Francis Ford Coppola. Medoc blends -- like most meritage wines -- are mainly cabernet, merlot, and cab franc, with some petite verdot and malbec. This powerhouse is currant laden, with a lot of chocolate-covered cherries and a tightly wound structure.

David Marglin can be reached at wine[a]phx.com.

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