Grape Wine Journey

Some people enjoy wines for pleasure, some for investment, some for sharing and then there are some that like to go beyond the label and learn about wine making.

Recently, read a few articles in the paper about a new shop in Hong Kong that goes beyond just selling wines; the owner is also a wine maker now resides in Hong Kong and offers some interesting wine classes, including wine blending.

Well for one thing, you don’t need a Chemistry degree to attend this 2 hour class.  

When we walked into the room, there were flasks and measuring tubes on the table, it did feel like a chemistry lab.  The wine maker Eddie gave a brief introduction on the 3 fundamentals in wine making – style, grapes and balance.

Then the competition began, the 3 teams were given 30 minutes to come up with Left Bank style wine, meaning the final blend needed a minimum of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon.

The 2 flasks on the table were each filled with 500ml of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, straight from the barrels.  The final blend needed to fill a 300ml flask for judging.   So we have 700ml of fermented juice to play with.

The Cabernet Sauvignon tasted horrible, the tannin was very stringent and harsh.  The grapes were from a cool vintage so the acidity was very high. The Merlot was more approachable, still high on acidity but there were more fruit on the palate.  We decided the style should be easy to drink with long length.  To achieve the style we need more Merlot in the blend, after tasting 5 variations we decided on 55/45.

The judging was done by Eddie, he was deciding between two wines, and finally decided on the style that he thought was easy to drink with a good length. The other wine was fruity and spicy but lacked the length.  And so we won!