ORIGIN… Walking the Line, whilst Blending Wine…

The process of creating openness, clearness, justice in the origin of grapes (so wines) seems absolutely normal and should give a feeling righteousness for every even middle of the road wine drinker/enthusiast. The wine trade, the winemakers, blenders find a limitation, some any limitation, to blending politically biased and mostly favored by nationalistic protectionists.

So is blending between wines from the EU and those from outside the EU forbidden by law. As a result Italo-American or German-Australian wines are not to be blend any longer and is illegal. Only when severe grape shortages are cropping up some mostly large producers are protesting as they cannot fulfill contractual earlier delivery obligations made (promised…) during the euphoria of a quality bumper crop. The new EU regulations are clear, the country of origin should be stated at all times. If different origins have been blended from EU countries it should mentioned and state “European Community wine” or “Blend of Wines from different countries of the European Community”. Interesting blends from Burgundy wines with wines from Alicante, Spain are not done any longer and should be a thing of the past. However it remains amazing that Spain’s largest export partners are France and Italy. In the Carrefour and other major Grands Surfaces we rarely finds Spanish wines and in Italy on the supermarkets shelves, even less presence of Spanish wine bottles. So what’s happening here? Are these wines ski fully blended away…?

As I mentioned in a previous blog the Chinese have their own way of handling things. Apparently any liquid which touches Chinese wines becomes by a stroke of magic Chinese wine. The cases known where shady and second class EU or Argentinian wines were blended with some drops of Chinese wine to become Chinese Origin. There are however signs that the Chinese authorities will no longer close their eyes for these practices, the international trends are for more restrictions. Not less!!

The most important limitation to blending come from the “Geographical Indication” (GI). The time of inventing appellations is over, wine is a commodity, the highest prices are achieved by wines with particular provenance and through the pricing in and through free market mechanisms. GI is the best protection of all market participants. The key element for the credibility of GI is purity. Because of the GI blending is severely restricted but not illegal.

Two strategies apply to permit blending in regions with a “Geographical Indication”.

1.       Create a very large “Denomination of Origin” (DO), a good example of this is the DO Catalunya. Which such large DO the big wine traders can choose their suppliers. There are also ways to have an existing appellation enlarged, Gallo did so by intelligent lobbying when they got a huge extension of the Russian River Valley AVA.

Another example were extensions of the Champagne appellation.

2.       The second strategy is to establish two levels of appellations of origin:

a.       PDO: Protected Denomination of Origin

b.      PDI: Protected Geographical Indication.

In order to claim a PDO, wines must be made exclusively from grapes originating from the PDO. If a winemaker wants to claim a PGI he can blend up to 15% of the wine from grapes from elsewhere. Musigny is a PDO this means that 100% of the wine is produced from grapes originating from Musigny vineyards. Toscana is a PGI, one can be sure that at least 85% of the wine bas been pressed out of Tuscan grapes. US AVA’s and Australians Geographical Indications apply the 85/15 rule.

Pedro Ballesteros a prominent Spanish oenologist published a lot of very good studies/essays on blending. I liked on his conclusions: Blending is a result of human ingenuity. It can both result in sublime wines and/or in fraud. The vine and the environment in the vineyard make up the genetics of the wine, the factors that will determine the maximum capacities and the natural boundries to overcome. This is nature.

Winemaking on the other hand, is the education of the wine, the fine tuning resulting in a certain and definite personalization of the wine. This about human individualization.

By blending, we put the wine in intimate contact with other wines, which will enhance or hide intrinsic values, discover, open up new ones and result in a new reality. This is socialization, bringing wines together. Blending is definitely something social; it deserves close scrutiny and lots of admiration.

M.J. San Martin