Team #7 Renata Saunders
On our second trip to The Red Hook Winery, we were finally able to blend our wines, which was an amazing experience. For my dish of roasted loin of pork charcutière with lentils, gaufrette potatoes and braised collard greens. I chose to blend white wine with the base wines that were provided to us. We had tasted the base wines on our previous visit and from then I had an idea of what I wanted to blend. In my mind, I wanted a light to medium-bodied wine, with medium acidity, lots of aromatics and not too much going on on the palate so it can pair with multiple dishes. The first blend I did was 2 parts of a blend of Sauvignon Blanc (60%) and Chardonnay (40%) and 1 part of a Chardonnay aged in new oak, I found this blend to have too much acidity and more fruit characters than I was hoping for. So I switched the part of the wine and did 2 parts (80%) of the Chardonnay aged in new oak and 1 part (20%) of the Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay blend, this turned out to be the blend I was looking for. The process of blending was quite fascinating and I felt like a scientist conducting experiments, I think what helped me was knowing what I was looking for in a wine beforehand this made the process a little easier.
