REPORT OP COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION 301 



THE INTELLIGENT BLENDING OF WINES. 



By HIRAM S. DEWEY, 

 President of the American Wine Growers' Association. 



The blending of wines is really the art of wine-making, which comes to 

 a few men after many years of practical experience. I once heard a German, 

 80 years old, who had been a wine-maker all his life, say, "A man must live 

 with his wines as a mother lives with her baby, to know them thoroughly. 

 Wine is ever changing as a baby does as it grows." 



I am' not referring to wines which are made in great vats of thousands 

 of gallons, but wines that are made in small quantities, such as Chateau 

 wines of France, or the Schloss wines of Germany or private estate wines 

 of Italy, where grapes are gathered, sorted and stemmed most carefully, 

 then fermented in small standards where they can be turned three times 

 daily to thoroughly dissolve the pulp and skins, in order to extract the 

 proper color, acid and tannin and watch the development of the Oenanthic 

 ethers, which come suddenly, and when they come the juice must be pressed 

 at once (not to lie over night) as these ethers pass off quickly, then your 

 wine will be soft and delicate in bouquet. This is not determined by 

 chemistry. 



Understand me, I am not underrating the advantages or requirements of 

 the chemist, for his science is absolutely necessary in the large wine cellars, 

 but quoting from Prof. Bigelow, the first assistant chemist of Dr. H. W. 

 Wiley, while he was the head of the United States Food Laboratory, Prof. 

 Bigelow remarked to me: 



"What we need greatly in this laboratory is a wine-maker with a culti- 

 vated taste and smell. Chemistry carries us just so far and no farther, when 

 we are dropped off as from a precipice. We require a cultivated sense of 

 smell and taste to determine the excess or lack of different properties in a 

 wine, and what different varieties of grapes or wines will blend or marry, 

 so as to develop into a fine wine." 



We should realize the necessity of blending wines from different sec- 

 tions. California grapes in general are high in saccharine and low in acid; 

 some grapes are very strong in bouquet, others flat. So with Eastern grapes, 

 most of them are high in tartaric acid and disproportionately low in 

 saccharine. 



Our most valuable grapes in the East, for which we pay $80 to $100 a 

 ton, are very small berries with large seeds and very little juice, where it 

 takes from eighteen to twenty pounds to get one gallon of juice. This I 

 know astonishes some of the gentlemen within the sound of my voice. They 

 may say how foolish to pay such prices for grapes. No, gentlemen, we are 

 not foolish. This wine is our doctor, it is not good alone, but how a little 

 of it helps and lifts up the w r eakling, experience of years only can tell. The 

 American wine business will never reach the high standard* and reputation 

 of European wines until we realize that fine wines must be made and aged 

 with constant watchful care and blending in small quantities. 



