What You Leave Behind – Blending Lineage

Lineage is our most complicated blend; it can comprise five different grapes (the classic Bordeaux varieties) and Cabernet Sauvignon from more than 10 blocks on six vineyards. Aidan, Beth, and I start each year with nearly 150 barrels of wine, and from these, we carve aspirants away until we are down to the very best.

The process starts in a macro way. We taste through barrels from each lot of wine (a lot is created from individual blocks of a variety from a specific site) first to determine if it has the requisite quality to potentially be part of

the blend. Once we have our lots chosen, we then taste through individual barrels from those lots blind to further refine quality. It is the last few barrels that are always the hardest to say No to.

With the 2018 Lineage, our winemaking team has reached a point where we are close to “finalizing” the percentages of each variety in the blend. Finalizing is a somewhat fraught term in that we reserve the right to change the blend up until the point the wine goes into the bottle. At this point, our confidence levels in the quality of the blend and its quality vis á vis previous vintages of Lineage is extremely high. The photo below shows what my butcher paper workspace looks like after a morning of tasting and making blends. We will use this blend base (number F’) and tweak small percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot until we know the blend is as good as it can be.

I’ve written in the past about the idea that making a blend is much like the Michelangelo idea of sculpture…you start with a hunk of rock and keep peeling away material until the statue reveals itself fully formed. Wines are like that too. We take away mostly, getting closer to that early conception of beauty until finally, the “perfect” wine is there in its glory.  Blending is one of those unreversible decisions, like the picking date and the press date, each winemaker faces each year. Ultimately, you will find yourself out of time, where what goes in will stay in, and what you may have wanted to go in will be chalked up to a learning curve.

With all of thinking about blends and all of the mocks blends we make, the truth is that sometimes, as with the 2018 Lineage, it is the wine you leave out of your finest wine that elevates it from very good to superlative.