Michel Bettane, France’s leading wine writer and critic, was in SA in May as one of the international judges at the Trophy Wine Show. Interviewed after he had worked his way through the Bordeaux blend class he made a number of quintessentially Gallic comments about wine fusion. Likening blending to marriage (at least in the kind of way that the French are believed to conduct the institution), he suggested that potential flavour profile conflicts between two different varieties could be ameliorated by a third component, the “mistress”.
It was a thought-provoking observation — less because of the metaphor than because it highlighted the role that sometimes small and almost invisible additions can play in changing the dynamic of the mix. Over the course of my consulting career I have assembled tens of millions of litres of wine — including blends of different tanks of the same variety, often with small additions of other cultivars or different treatments of the same cultivar, in pursuit of the most harmonious result.
Much of what is involved is intuitive: it’s a little like making a sauce, and you can feel what is missing, what needs highlighting, what needs to be airbrushed away. Even with this knowledge and experience, every blend is an exercise of trial and error. You know what needs to be achieved, but the exact percentages involve bench trials, a delay while everything settles down, and then perhaps more tweaks.
Some of what must be done is structural — to hide aggressive tannins, to brighten the aromatics, to refresh slightly dull fruit. But there is also a more nuanced process, not quite cosmetic, not quite illusion — as if by throwing light on a particular feature you draw attention away from another, less attractive element.
Historically well-established blends — Bordeaux or Rhone for example — were designed to suit strategic as well as commercial needs: cabernet is a late ripener and the crop might be compromised by late summer rain: merlot (already safely in the cellar) would then help to fill out the volumes. That it also helps to soften cabernet’s more austere tannins is an aesthetic rather than commercial benefit.
Climate change is beginning to affect some of these traditional blends: in Bordeaux there’s less risk of late rain, but more chance that the warmer conditions will push the merlot towards portiness and higher alcohols. In Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Philippe Guigal — winemaker extraordinaire — is now rejigging the traditional blend to give greater focus to the less well-known regional cultivars that ripen at lower alcohols while still retaining acidity. The days of grenache dominating Chateauneuf-du-Pape were over, he told me recently.
Sometimes blends make sense because of intrinsic reciprocity: Thelema Sutherland’s was the standout wine at one of my recent blind tastings: the viognier wasn’t too peachy, while the roussanne seemed to embrace the linearity it delivered to the marriage. Bacco’s latest Bordeaux blend (the 2021), which has pretty much every variety authorised in Bordeaux — cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, malbec and petit verdot — has come together like a jigsaw puzzle: no awkward overlapping edges and the different aromatics complementing rather than competing with each other.
There are also some uniquely SA blends that emerged from the happy coincidence of talented craft winemakers discovering different (usually old) vineyards delivering complementary flavour profiles. Several come to mind: tasting John Seccombe’s latest Thorne & Daughter releases it was clear that the hallmark freshness from his semillon sites (evident in the younger Tin Soldier vineyard and central to his fabulous Paper Kite — from a block that was planted in 1963) adds lift and brightness to the roussanne, chenin, chardonnay and clairette blanche of the Rocking Horse blend.
Likewise, the splash of semillon from the legendary La Colline vineyard (planted in 1936) plays a key role in Chris Alheit’s Cartology. It’s only about 8% of the wine but it transforms and adds structure and skeletal density to the array of chenins sourced from sites as far afield as Bottelary, Skurfberg, Piekenierskloof, Malmesbury, Paardeberg and Tygerberg.
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