Now that the cabernet sauvignon is ready for racking and blending I've started playing with sample blends. To get the party started I divided our cabernet sauvignon, which represents the lion's share of our available wine, into four categories:
(1) Tight, and tart raspeberry notes.
(2) Dark fruits.
(3) Mellow and round.
(4) Press wine (round, full).
Petit verdot showed very nicely in 2009. A 5% addition added a welcome chalkiness and increasing liveliness to the finish that everyone in the tasting group agreed improved the whole. Increasing the petit verdot addition to 10% resulted in a significantly less interesting wine than the 5% addition. A 7-8% addition added nothing more, either. The amazing thing with the 5% petit verdot addition was that it brought out the inherent vegetal characteristics (not green pepper, but very succulent fresh young celery leaf) that really turned the wine into something more than the component parts.
Likewise, an addition of cabernet franc did nothing for the wine. I enjoyed the merlot sample with 20% cabernet sauvignon blended in, but not the other way round. This is likely to become a second wine with some leftover petit verdot for substance.
This leaves us with a likely blend of our 2009 Napa Valley red wine: 95% cabernet sauvignon, 5% petit verdot, 75% new oak with one American barrel for good measure; alcohol by volume approximately 14.5% with a 3.9 pH.
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