red blends

The original idea of blending several grape varieties comes from Bordeaux. Red Blends, or cuvées, were initially a safety strategy of the winegrowers there, who had to struggle year after year with the unpredictability of the Atlantic climate. If the harvest of one grape variety was smaller because of heavy rain or frost, there were still the other grape varieties to produce enough wine. They simply changed the blending ratio. Today, it is synergy that is sought in blending. The goal is to combine the special, positive character traits of the individual grape varieties in one wine.

Blending can enhance the aromas, colour, texture, body and finish, making the wine rounder and more complex. For example, if a wine does not have a strong aroma, a winemaker can add a few percent of a more aromatic grape and experiment with different grape varieties that come from other vineyards. They might have been aged in oak barrels, fermented in different types of vessels or simply harvested at different stages of maturity. The possibilities of the winemaker seem unlimited and so it is not surprising that today around 60 percent of all top wines worldwide are red cuvées or red blends.

So-called Bordeaux blends can be found in almost all overseas wine countries. The cuvées from the Gimblett Gravels of Hawke’s Bay are among the best wines in New Zealand. In Australia, it is wines from the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grape varieties and the legendary GSM blends from the Grenache, Shiraz and Mataro grape varieties that cause a sensation. Among South African wines, too, there are numerous cuvées from the classic Bordeaux grape varieties.