My wife and I got to play wine blender today at Kuhlmann. We were given nine lots of reds to make up the blend in certain quantities and it had to be for a 540 gallon blend, which mattered because we had limited quantities to work with. For example, we had 100 gallons of Cabernet, so it couldn't be more than roughly 18% of the blend if you decided to use it.
We speed tasted through the wines, making some quick notes on aromatics, acid, tannin, body, and fruit. After that, the table decided what kind of wine we wanted. The consensus was a steak wine that leaned new world in fruit flavors but it needed some acid and a strong tannin backbone. I came up with the first blend of 30% petit Verdot, 30% petite sirah, 5% aglianico, 15% cinsault, 10% Tempranillo, and 10% Cabernet. The reasoning behind this blend is that both the petite sirah and Petit Verdot tasted great, had awesome color, and we had a lot of both to work with. The cinsault had great aromatics and a lot of acid, so it needed to be in there in a good quantity, and the aglianico added some more acid and kept the color right. The Tempranillo and Cabernet were added for the mid-palate and tannins. Everyone loved it, but thought it drank heavy. We all loved the cinsault (it was good enough to drink on its own, and we did), so we upped it 5% and took out 5% of the petite sirah, and tried it again. Everyone loved it and we quit; no one wanted to change it at all. So the final blend was 30% petit Verdot, 25% petit sirah, 20% cinsault, 5% aglianico, 10% Tempranillo, and 10% Cabernet. We dosed everything for a 750 ml bottle, corked it, and gave it a name; HPKS, for High Plains Kitchen Sink. I wanted to name it CCSI, for Covid Can Suck It, but I was outvoted. It can be labeled a High Plains wine, because it's 95% High Plains fruit and 5% Texas Hill Country fruit (it has to be 85% to give it an AVA name). Now we wait for the staff to try it.
We then tried the four staff blends and picked a winner. The staff will then try our wine and the three other blends and pick a winner. Those two winners will go head to head to be tried by the wine making team, and that winner will be blended and bottled for a club release. If the staff vote resembles the club member vote on the best staff blend, then our blend has a chance of winning, because they were both heavy on the petite sirah/petit Verdot.
This was loads of fun, very educational, and something I've always wanted to do. If we'd had more time, I would have come up with some more blends to fine tune things, but we only had 45 minutes to make it.
