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Wine Blending Event at Wiens Cellars Winery

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A warm welcome from the Wiens family began our exhilarating wine blending event at Wiens Cellars Winery annual wine blending seminar. After a warm greeting, the group of more than 30 participants was directed into the beautiful barrel room. This handsomely decorated room had 10 tables covered by white linen table cloths. Each table had a setting for four, four mystery wine bottles labeled A to D, a graduated cylinder (like you would find in a chemistry class), and several other tools for blending wine. To begin our time together, each of us were poured a glass of Wiens exquisite wine and provided delicious hor doeuvres.

The seminar was directed by Doug The Palate Wiens, a winemaker, viticulturist, and one of several Wiens family members that attended. His 30-minute seminar was fashioned to ready us for a contest, pitting table against table, as we devised our own blended wine which was to be tasted by the Wiens family later that night. During the seminar we discovered that wine blending is practiced by many wineries. It is used 1) to increase the characteristic of the wine in terms of color, aroma, taste and finish, 2) to expand the quantity of a harvest lot in order to achieve bottling economies of scale, and 3) for marketing considerations. Doug also shared that as he blends wine and tastes the results, his math skills (critical for the blending process) become impaired as his philosophical skills improve. Interestingly, we were able to share this peculiar experience as the night went on.

Once Dougs seminar was done, the teams got to work. You could feel the testosterone as each team fought to perfect their blends. Some teams had more fun than others as their wine emptied faster. It made me think of my younger son and his early experiments putting together various household items to see what would grow; even though my son had a fun time, he did not consume his creations (Thank goodness.). Some of our mixtures were not fit to be tasted either, but in the end, all 10 teams delivered their best mixtures with pride, dreaming about how large the royalties would grow for their award winning creations.

These 10 blends were escorted to the back room to be judged by the Wiens family. Ten minutes later, when the judges returned, we were told the identities of the four wines we had blended: two were high quality Wiens Temecula wine and the other two required more time to mature. Being able to guess the weak from the strong wines really divided the men from the boys in terms of wine tasting palates. The connoisseurs congratulated themselves with their award winning blends, while the remainder of us took our slightly damaged egos home with a better comprehension of what is thought to be good wine. Surprisingly, several of the winning teams were able to involve large percentages of the less mature wines into their blendsâ€“a important goal for professional wine blenders as they do not want to waste a drop of the crop.

After the winning blenders were announced, we each tasted the winning blend. Most of us agreed with Rich Wildâ€™s (one of the participants) observation that increasing a small qualtity of a different wine to a blend can make a tremendous difference to the blend. Because of the fun we had at the class, other attendees, like Su-Chun Huang, are planning on throwing blending challenges of their own at their next dinner parties.

What actually caught my eye was the fact that so many of the Wiens family members attended the event. They warmly greeted each visitor as we entered the winery and included each of us as if we were extensions of the family. This family oriented Temecula winery is reminiscent of an earlier time when the family and community stood behind one another. The visitors enjoyed having the family there and gave a lot of extra love to Grandma Wiens. As Mike and Holly Lester said, Your help allows us to return home as wine Mix Masters. We all look forward to the next class at the Wiens Winery. Thanks Wiens family.

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