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My favourite wine is a blend of Gewürztraminer and Riesling which (from what I can find) seems to be exclusively made in Australia by Rosemount and Hardys. This wine is becoming harder and harder to find in the UK and is therefore much more expensive when I do find it.

On the other hand, both Gewürztraminer and Riesling wines are fairly readily available.

I'm wondering if I could buy the two "component" wines and just mix them myself to achieve 2 bottles of the blend. Is this equivalent to how the manufacturer achieves the blend, or do they blend the juice before fermentation? Either way, will I make a reasonable version of the blend, or will I ruin two completely good bottles of wine?

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  • You might want to do a google search. There are several Riesling Gewurztraminer blends available.
    – Eric S
    Commented Nov 15, 2017 at 17:43
  • @EricShain I have tried Googling it many times and the general theme is "Not currently available". On the rare occasion when someone appears to have it, they want around £10 per bottle. Let's put that in context; about a year ago a UK budget supermarket chain suddenly stocked it and I bought 15 bottles for £3.36 each. If you've seen somewhere that I can get it for, say, less than £7.50/bottle, can you please post a link?
    – Lefty
    Commented Nov 15, 2017 at 22:07
  • Sorry, I'm in the US. Perhaps we have greater access. Specifically, there are several options made in the Finger Lakes region of New York which is a surprising good source of rieslings. This site might be helpful: wine-searcher.com/grape-1801-gewurztraminer-riesling
    – Eric S
    Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 20:36
  • @EricShain It's very interesting reading that site, many of those brands; McGuigan, Wolf Blass, Hardys, these are very big sellers in the UK, all of the major supermarkets will stock their wines, but I can only assume that "GTR" is not really favoured by the British for some reason so they don't bother to import this particular variety. Actually Gewurztraminer itself is relatively rare in supermarkets but it is at least available if I look around. Riesling is pretty common.
    – Lefty
    Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 22:26
  • You might try requesting a specific wine at your favorite wine store. If they already carry a brand it should be feasible. Better specialty wine shops in the US sometimes try to help out their good customers. Otherwise you could contact the wine brands themselves. They may be able to point you to a UK reseller.
    – Eric S
    Commented Nov 16, 2017 at 23:18

1 Answer 1

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I have pretty extensive experience blending wine in my winery over 15 years. There are two types of blends. Pre-fermentation and post-fermentation. The pre-fermentation is usually called a "field blend". This was the old style way of blending wines before we started doing it in the lab. Growers would plant a variety of vines, for example Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Bordeaux, to hedge their bets on what kind of year it was going to be since they all ripen at different times. They do bring different flavor components to the blend. In Ye Olde days, they would just throw everything in the fermenter together relying on mother nature to give them a good blend.

Today, most blending is done post-fermentation. Very few people do field blends because they want the control over the blend. This is usually done in a laboratory setting. You would ideally want a few beakers with accurate measurements on it. Taste the two individual wines. Then I would start with a 50/50 blend and go from there. If you like more Riesling, then start blending a 60/40 blend of Riesling and Gewurz. Keep doing this until you end up with a blend you like. I usually will create a series of blends and keep them in separate glasses so I can go back and forth smelling and tasting them and keeping notes as I go.

You might dump some wine down the drain to get the blend you want, but once you figure it out, you can go straight to make that blend in the future. I would get an empty wine bottle and put your blend in there. You will have 2-3 days to drink it before it starts to go bad unless you make special effort to preserve it. In theory, you could by X number bottles of Riesling and Y bottles of Gewurz and make a blend of several bottles and rebottle it.

Here is a good article on how you can do it at home

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  • Excellent answer @farmersteve, thank you for sharing your expertise. This is the answer I was hoping to get. The main problem is the short shelf-life of the blended wine - but that won't be a problem over Christmas for example. I think I will buy a bottle of each at Christmas and do a bit of experimentation!
    – Lefty
    Commented Nov 14, 2017 at 18:10
  • You could in theory make many liters of your blend and re-bottle it in bottles (screw cap tops would work best here) and a small amount potassium bisulfite (preservative) and some argon in the headspace and you could keep the wine for years. Commented Nov 14, 2017 at 19:38
  • That's good information too @farmersteve, thank you - but for my needs I think it makes more sense for me to just keep a supply of both the wines and mix up 2 or 3 bottles for immediate use.
    – Lefty
    Commented Nov 15, 2017 at 8:25

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