Q: Commercial Red Blends
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Ohio Bob
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They do it every way it can be done. I think many old, old, old vineyards (ie France, Italy) field blend. They arrived at these blend ratios and native yeasts by decades, if not centuries, of wine making.
With more modern wine making techniques, and not being in a territory with a century of experience, it’s more reliable to blend sometime before bottling. That way you can correct/improve what has been made. Native yeasts do better if given the chance to dominate the vineyard. So every year the pomace is returned to the vineyard and the dominant yeasts survive. Without these starting conditions it’s riskier to do field blending and/or native yeasts. In my opinion.
Could be at crush, post-ferment, or post-aging. There are no rules as to "when", although I suspect most will blend post-aging.
As a home winemaker, I do some field blends due to space and storage, e.g., I want to make a blend to fill a 54 liter barrel, it will be a field blend.
As a home winemaker, I do some field blends due to space and storage, e.g., I want to make a blend to fill a 54 liter barrel, it will be a field blend.
Nebbiolo020
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Typically in my experience as a commercial winemaker, It is preferential to do the blending at crush, because if you do it later the different varietals will not mesh together and blend as well if you do it after the fact and this has been the case every time I have done trials with at crush blending and waiting till each wine is finished then doing blends untill I get something I prefer.
Of course I am not a commercial wine producer but I have successfully done all three, i.e. field blend, juice buckets and post fermentation. I cannot say that there is a predictable difference in the three methods assuming one make judicious choices in varieties. Years ago we always did a "field blend" of Zinfandel and Muscat, which usually worked out well. I have blended juice buckets of Zinfandel and Muscat with good results. Probably the best wine I feel I have ever made was a blend of a very thick and heavy Brunello and a very thin Barolo blended at 75:25, both of which were at least a year into bulk aging.
