How to blend your own wine in 5 easy steps

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How to blend your own wine in 5 easy steps

How to blend your own wine in 5 easy steps

Phin Wong

How to blend your own wine in 5 easy steps

An activity Singaporean wine-lovers can actually get behind in McLaren Vale, South Australia Words: Phin Wong Singaporean night-dwelling wine-lovers are a tricky bunch of people to travel with. They’re great fun to have around during dinner, and even more fun when the real entertainment starts after dinner. But they can be a little sullen in the morning. Usually hidden behind their sunglasses, grunting one-word replies like “no”, “yes” and “whatever”. Sometimes one might get a longer, more fully-formed reply, like, “Well, is this cheerful enough for you, Mr Let’s-All-Get-Up-At-7am-Even-Though-We’re-On-Vacation? Is it?!” You see, in general, wine-lovers aren’t really “activity” people. Do you want to take a pottery class? “No.” Are you sure you don’t want to take a pottery class? “Yes.” Do you mind if we just stop the car and

I’ll vouch first-hand for the good eats in McLaren Vale. The lunch I had at d’Arenberg’s onsite restaurant, d’Arry’s Verandah Restaurant, was the best meal I had on my entire trip through South Australia. It also apparently gets completely booked out, sometimes a month in advance. So start planning now. Anyway, this wine-loving Singaporean took his sunglasses off and ventured out into the daylight to try his hand at blending wine. And I’m happy to report, it’s all done in just five easy steps. 1. Pick the wine that’s right for you

Three glasses of 2014 Shiraz, all aged in oak with a medium toast, are placed in front of you. Your main job is to prevent yourself from gulping down all three with a hearty “Here’s to South Australia! Tar!!!” There’s plenty of time to do that later. Right now, you’re supposed to taste (that means sip) all three to decide which one you like the most. This will be the core of your blend. It’s a bit like one of those TV dating shows, instead you’re picking the right wine instead of a loser with really white teeth who couldn’t find a date off-camera. Cue over-enthusiastic announcer. “Bachelor No 1 comes from vines planted in 1960! His family comes from a geology with sandstone, so he’s quite spicy… and he’s rich!” *Cue applause from the audience* “Bachelor No 2 grew up on a south-facing slope that doesn’t see a lot of sun. But who needs a tan when

Once you’ve scored all three wines and filled in your comments (don’t worry if you’re not a wine expert —my notes included such oenology classics such as “quite nice”, “ack!” and “ooh, better!”), you just pick up your measuring cylinder and pipet, and set off making the perfect wine. Say, 50% Bachelor No 2, 30% Bachelor No 3, and 20% Bachelor No 1 just for his money … erm, for his rich-ness, I mean. Yes, it’s fun playing with chemistry apparatus you haven’t seen since you fled school, but even better: there’s no right or wrong answer in this class. “What we’re doing is blending these three wines in proportions that you personally like. Everyone tastes wine differently,” said Osborn. “We’ve all got different amounts and types of taste buds. And everyone’s at a different stage of how they like red wines — young, old, whatever.” An aside

Darn it, I should have paid more attention to my secondary school teachers. The task at hand is to get the perfect blend you’ve come up with in your tiny glass up to the volume needed for the bottle. And that requires an understanding of ratio. Lucky for me, the good people at d’Arenberg have provided us with a pre-printed ratio chart, thereby minimising any risk of straining my brain, or having to take back my previous aside to teachers of O-Level past. 4. Chinese-wedding-banquet the heck out of it

Once your perfect blend has been transferred into the bottle, they pour a whole lot of dry ice into it. The CO2 stops the wine from oxidising. It was a wondrous sight, all these bottle overflowing with “smoke”. It was like all the delightfully tasteless Chinese wedding banquets in Singapore I’d ever made fun of had showed up for a brief moment in South Australia to remind why I’m no longer invited to Chinese wedding banquets. I had to do my very best to contain myself from belting out: “IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN! De-de-de-deh, de-de-de-de-deh!!!” Sigh. Almost brings a tear to your eye. 5. Name and label your baby

This proved to be the most difficult part of the process. What to name the first bottle of wine I’ve ever made. I mean, sure I didn’t pick the grapes, I didn’t stomp on them like in that episode of I Love Lucy that Julia Roberts was watching in Pretty Woman, and I didn’t sit on the oak cast like a protective parent penguin till the wine had matured. But I did mix three components together and pour it into a bottle, so I think that counts as “making” wine. Naming wines is a great tradition at d’Arenberg, a winery known for its off-kilter names. Their bestselling Shiraz, for example, is called The Dead Arm, and they have a gorgeous Shiraz Sangiovese named Stephanie The Gnome With Rose Tinted Glasses. “Sometimes people try to make them sound really awful,” said Osborn. “Like The Cat’s Poo. They’re crazy. Sometimes they’ll name it after a dog they’ve got.”

I decide I must give my first-bottled child a name that truly reflects my culture. A name that bestows all the values imparted to me by my heritage. A name any father could be proud of. I named it: The Wong Choice (Is Always The Better Choice). And then I opened little Wong Choice and drank it. Burp. The Blending Bench at d’Arenberg is available at AUS$65 a person for a 90-min hands-on experience. d’Arenberg Cellar Door and d’Arry’s Verandah Restaurant are located on Osborn Road, McLaren Vale, 45km from Adelaide CBD. Go to darenberg.com.au for more and visit South Australia for more about some of the best wine from South Australia.

Source: TODAY

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