California’s Star Lane Lets Us Blend

 

The Star Lane winery is owned and managed by the Dierberg family, the same family that own the Dierberg winery and is located in the Santa Ynez valley in Southern California. In fact, it is actually located in a canyon called Happy Canyon, which goes some way to explaining why the wines made here are so approachable and fun to drink.

The dominant grape variety in the vineyards is Cabernet Sauvingon, a grape best suited to the warm climate of the valley, but is also joined by a fair amount of Cabernet Franc with small amounts of Petit Verdot and Sauvignon Blanc.

Sales and Marketing manager for Dierberg Winery, Jia Min Dierberg and Star Lane Vineyard General Manager Kurt Ammann visited Hong Kong last week to host a blending session to see who could come up with the best blend of wines from three of the Star Lane plots. The three components given to the attendees were Hill Side Cabernet Sauvignon, Valley Floor Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, all from the 2011 vintage and having finished their time in barrel, were ready to go into the Star Lane final blend.

Cabernet Franc, although generally a small time component of many blends around the world is actually a major part of Star Lane’s blends and while tasting the three different wines on their own, it was clear to see the distinction between the valley floor and the hill side Cabernets, the former more fruity and tannic and the latter more concentrated. The Cabernet Franc had the spiciness needed to give the blend its complete structure.

Having only ever done one blending session before and that being with a Bordeaux winery, the general idea of what to do was not unknown but blending truly is an art form and not something that is particularly easy. Commonly, winemakers will go through hundreds of blends before they find the one that they like the best and the one that best fits what the winery is trying to express.

We only had an hour and our team, comprised of wine and food writers (three of us) got to work quickly, randomly picking the wines we had preferred on their own and doing some calculations of what we thought would make a wine that we personally liked ourselves. That’s essentially the trick in blending, you have to like the wine yourself as if you don’t like it, how do you expect others to like it either?

Star Lane General Manager Kurt Ammann

The only stipulation from Kurt and Jia Min was that the wine had to be comprised of at least 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, but of that 75% it could be made up from the two different Cabernets that we had at hand.

We started off with a blend of 65% Valley Slope, 30% Hill Side and 5% Cabernet Franc but it just wasn’t to our liking so we tweeked the percentages a little but still weren’t coming up with anything we would be happy to present to the other blenders – in fact, we weren’t even happy to drink the blends we had made so we went for a different direction.

Trying for something completely different we went 92% Valley Slope and 8% Cabernet Franc but upon trying it we knew we were going in completely the wrong direction as the wine was out of balance and just did not sit well on the palate. Running out of time, we made a rash decision and randomly picked three numbers, with the highest number having to be the wine we liked least on its own. We came up with a 78% Valley Floor, 9% Hill Side and 13% Cabernet Franc and, after blending and tasting we looked at each other with astonishment. It was nice! Palatable, with the right balance between fruit and tannin with a subtle spicy finish that was fairly persistent. Thinking this was the kind of wine that would drink well now and had some aging potential we went with this and headed into the blind tasting session of all the others blends and ours together.

Our Second Place "APR" Blend

Amongst all the tasters, two blends stood out from all the others – number 1 and number 3. We were convinced that number 3 was our wine and so we voted that first and number 1 second and were feeling confident of the win! After the results were tallied up number 3 was definitely the most popular of the blends but sadly, it was not our wine! Our wine was number 1 however and this was overwhelmingly voted as the second best wine of the lot! We were pretty happy, got to bottle our blend and take it away to be enjoyed at a later date.

The winning blend? Oh yeah, it was 50% Valley Floor, 35% Hill Side and 15% Cabernet Franc and it was a really pleasing wine. It’s a lesson learned in how hard it is to get a blend exactly to your liking and how taking components of a wine you may not necessarily like on its own and blending them makes for a wine you can really enjoy. Overall, it was a great experience and a lot of fun and we are looking forward to doing it again with Kurt and Jia Min next time they are in Hong Kong. If you get the chance to attend a blending workshop, go and do it, you will learn a lot about what goes into the wine you like and may even find something that you enjoy and can do in your spare time!

Star Lane and Dierberg Wines are imported and distributed in Hong Kong by Natural Econometrics Limited. For more information on these and other California wines on their portfolio, contact Janie Woo at jwoo@2nei.com