The tiny Italian wine appellation of Boca shares some important features with elite neighbors a hundred kilometers or so to the south, Barolo and Barbaresco. Both employ Nebbiolo, a noble and historic varietal that has been important in the Piedmont since Roman times. However, the law requires wines bearing the Boca DOC to include a small percentage of Vespolina and Bonarda – wine grapes with much less cachet. That Boca’s are blended wines is enough to constitute something of a stumbling block for those who hold the view that a true expression of terroir can only occur when a single grape variety is matched with a single parcel of ground, and prompt unfavorable comparisons with wines composed purely of Nebbiolo.
The notion that a single varietal wine is – other factors being more or less equal – always going to prove a more authentic wine than a blend may stem from an idealized model of how progress in winemaking unfolds. Inspiration for the belief is surely provided by Burgundy where a thousand years of trial and error resulted in the marriage of a sole white (chardonnay) and a sole red (pinot noir) with specific vineyards to produce famously spectacular results.
But because such an arrangement has been successful in one place is no guarantee it’s the best way to proceed in another. This is especially true if winegrowers lack the very significant resources required to wed a single varietal to its perfect patch of ground. Historically, such conditions were only enjoyed by the Church, whose deep reserves of capital, vast vineyard holdings, acres of cellars and long, literate, institutional memory made possible remarkable, centuries-long R&D efforts.
Among vintners lacking such resources — and this has to mean the great mass of them, everywhere, over the centuries — a much more cautious approach prevailed. It involved cultivating a selection of grapes whose specific qualities varied in such a way as to make them complimentary to each other, thereby providing a modicum of risk mitigation. For example, you might lose your late ripening grapes to an end-of season hailstorm, but your earlier ripening crop would have already been brought safely into the cellar.
Variety in the vineyard may have first been regarded as a hedge against disaster (shall we call it peasant conservatism?), but it soon must have become apparent that judicious blending was also a way to get a better price for one’s wine. Having a bit of something soft and juicy on hand to offset the hard edge of more acidic or tannic wine was just good business and helped you ride out difficult vintages. Savvy winegrowers must have learned this very early on.
The classic example is surely Bordeaux, whose wine trade had its origins in secular rather than spiritual impulses and was already going great guns in the 12th century. There, merchants counted on blending techniques to provide a consistent version, vintage-to vintage, of the claret the English market so adored. Blending was increasingly seen as the primary value shippers contributed to the sales chain since only they could afford to keep stocks of individual wines for the purpose (shall we call it commercial conservatism?).
In this scenario, where an individual wine came from mattered less than the contribution it was able to make to a finished product. It was the reputation of the commercial enterprise by whose efforts stocks of wine were first collected and then assembled into blends conforming to a house style — rather than a particular producer or vineyard — that prompted you to put your money down.
But does this mean that the Bordelais wine buyers were either ignorant of or had no notion of the importance of terroir? Not at all. On the contrary, the whole success of their project depended upon an expert knowledge of the naturally occurring variation in the vines and wines of their corner of the world. How else could they successfully combine them into a reliably harmonious whole, year after year?
To blend or not to blend? You take sides in this contest, if you wish. For your correspondent, there are really only two kinds of wine: the kind I want to drink and . . . the other kind.
-Stephen Meuse