Winemaker for a day

This past weekend, three generations of Global Dynamics of the Wine Industry students (Ellen Liu - 2018, Ilana Walder-Biesanz - 2019, and Hannah Barrett - 2020) visited Napa Valley to do something a little different than your usual wine country trek: to blend wine.

We visited Judd's Hill, a small, family-owned wine producer and microcrusher (their second business that allows people to make their own wines by either supplying their own grapes or asking them to source. They'll even help you bottle and make a label!) for a wine blending experience.

We started by trying four of Judd's Hill's raw wines: a Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot.

Deciding which wines we liked, we had the opportunity to write tasting notes, compare, contrast, and begin to dream up blends we thought would work well.

Our guide also went on a rant about how wine pairings are all about salt content and not food type (e.g., red with beef, white with fish). This ended with us tasting salt before cabernet for dramatic effect.

Ultimately, we were tasked with creating three blends. We made a first blend of predominantly Cabernet - a favorite of the group (70% Cabernet, 10% Cabernet Franc, 15% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot). We liked the first blend a lot, but we decided to up the Cabernet Franc - a second favorite - to 25%. We lowered Cabernet Sauvignon to 60% and Merlot to 10%. The Cab Franc really stood out in this blend - became too distinct for our taste. For our final blend, we decided to do a 180. We made a Merlot-dominated blend 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc, 60% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot.

We liked the first blend the best but still wanted to give it a bit more body with more Cab Franc. We decided to mix blends 1 and 2 for our final choice - 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc, 15% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot. Delicious! Definitely a blend through and through - this wouldn't qualify for any single-varietal labelling!

Once we decided on a blend, we headed to the barrel room. We measured out enough for four 750 ml bottles from each barrel, as follows:

Gravity is incredible, huh? We also bottled, corked, and made labels. We called our blend "Liquid Assets." Finance puns, anyone?

We had a ton of fun. Would highly recommend playing winemaker for the day if you ever get the opportunity!