The uniqueness of blends

We were at our annual visit with Mario Fontana in Perno in the Barolo region. Mario is a traditionalist in all senses of the word, including having  a strong attachment to the benefits of blending vines from various sites, whether as a classico barolo version or as a “Commune di Castiglione Falletto” bottling when all the component vineyards are from that village.

There are many legitimate reasons for blending crus. But while defending this traditional practice he mentioned the simplest reason - and one I had not to that point spent much time thinking about.  

His contention is that most single vineyard wines are not “unique” because few are monopoles and so a bottle of the single cru Vigna Rionda, for example, although perhaps magnificent, is not in his view truly unique because there are several producers who make a wine from Vigna Rionda.  Such wines presumably share very similar characteristics. So no bottling of Vigna Rionda is unique. Whereas if you drink his “commune” wine, or indeed his Barolo classico, no other wine has precisely the same vineyard composition and so his wines are in this sense unlike any other.  A client can develop an affinity and affection for his wine and his wine alone. There is nothing else exactly like it. Jean Gonon in an interview in May 2020 similarly asserted that his St Joseph - which is a blend of at least five parcels - is itself unique from any other. It is so because it is his wine and he has made it in his own way. But it also surely unique because no one else has the precisely the same component parcels that go into it.

This raises a host of issues about the scope of terroir and how blending several parcels relates to the concept of terroir (addressed in another post) but one can hardly refute that a blended wine is unique. All the elements that go into that singular wine - the particular sites included, the farming practices in the vineyard and methods adopted in the cellar, perhaps even the personality of the vigneron - can produce a wine whose enhanced value in the eyes of the consumer derives from the totality of all these elements. And among these elements the particular sites in which grapes were grown may in fact be the least important.

But sometimes the vineyard composition of a blend rises to a position of playing a large role in defining the wine. Those components - if historically consistent - can create a wine with a strong identity of its own, driven by its component parts. It is well known for example that Maria Teresa Mascarello’s Barolo “blend” has four vineyard components. These have been the same for a long time. Since vintage 2015 however one of these four - San Lorenzo - was replanted and “replaced” in the blend by grapes from a fifth site - Monrobiolo di Bussia - (a site in the Barolo Commune despite its name) - rented for several years for that specific purpose. There was some concern that this change might alter the taste of the blend. Care was taken to ensure that the adjustment did not result in any noticeable loss of identity as the  Bartolo Mascarello wine - the Monrobiolo di Bussia soils are similarly sandy and have the same exposition as the San Lorenzo site now to be omitted. The Bartolo wine is of course strongly defined by its component parts because of it’s long history of including the same sites in the same proportion and has now acquired an identity of its own that is worthy of being sustained. This identity is valued - and so when necessity dictated needing to alter the blend slightly , care was taken so much as possible not to lose that identity.  Perhaps Rinaldi’s “Tre Tine” bottling has a  similar affection among consumers. No doubt there are many other candidates. The longer the vineyard components of a blend have remained the same presumably the more risk there is in making component changes - not because the subsequent wine is any more or less unique than the earlier wine, but because the consumer has come to expect the wine to taste a certain way. The Bartolo and Rinaldi Tre Tine blends’ uniqueness is well defined and recognizable based on a long history of appreciation.

That there are few blends that have the stature and well defined identity of Bartolo Mascarello’s wine does not invalidate Mario’s point that all blends are in practice unique. And at least as unique as a wine from a single vineyard shared by many growers.