Jan. 2013 White Blends

January 2013 – White Wine Blends

Taste to Learn January 13, 2013 White wine blends

The January taste to learn was at the Vedvick house. 22 club members attended. We tasted 12 different white wine blends. Tom discussed the value of blending various varietals of grapes and the reasons a wine maker may wish to do so.  These reasons included: 1.   Producing a wine that is more interesting or complex, 2. This is one way to use up small quantities of  a varietal wine by blending one lot  with several other small lots of different grape varietals in doing all this blending of several small lots of wine, there would be enough wine to do a commercial bottling, and 3. Finally a wine maker may have one varietal that has a slight flaw and by blending or diluting this wine with one or more others varieties of wine the flaw can be minimized.  There was no benchmark wine as this category allows for a wide variety of different grape varietals and unlimited different number of blends.

We had white wine blends that contained as few as 2 different grape varietals and one that had 7 different grape varieties.  Lively discussion followed each wine as there seemed to be a wide spectrum of characteristics discovered in each new blend presented.  We had wines from Washington, Oregon, California, New Zealand, Italy and Argentina.

So much for keeping you in suspense, the winning wine with an average score of 17 out of 20 possible points was Goose Ridge G3, the price for this wine is approximately $16.00.  Second place was captured by 14 hands winery with their “Hot to Trot” white blend with a score of 16.4 out of 20 points.  This wine is about $9.00 on sale at the local grocery and seemed to be the “best” value wine.

The Argentina wine tasted was slightly effervescent and is called New Age; this wine is a blend of 10% Sauvignon Blanc and 90 % Torrentes.  Several of the tasters mentioned that this was a terrific summer out on the deck kind of a wine, poured over ice with a wedge of lime.  Hey, I have never had this elixir but as I always say don’t knock it until you try it. – Tom

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