Professional winemakers know the advantages of blending wines.

It is fair to say that not all wine produced from commercial wineries turns out to be a great product every time. In fact the majority of commercial wines are the result of careful blending of complimentary wine types either after fermentaton, or blending grape varieties before fermentation to enhance the final outcome.

Very few wines are the product of single grape varieties, but a blend of grapes that will contribute to the overall finish of the wine.

You too can make better wine by utilising this technique.

The blending of complimentary wines that will enhance the finished product need not be the bastion of professional winemakers. Every home winemaker knows the frustration of making a wine that is either too sweet, or too dry, or having a demijohn full of fruit wine that just didn't quite live up to expectations. You too can improve these wines and make them more palatable by carefully selecting a complimentary wine to blend with them.

Obvious blends would be mixing a too dry wine with a sweeter wine, and visa versa. Acidity problems are also easily rectified by blending. You can give life to a thin wine by blending with a more robust wine. Start by blending in smaller quantities, until the desired smoothness is achieved.

Allow the blended wine time to Mature.

Always allow the wines time to marry for several weeks for the flavours to mingle fully and to ascertain if any secondary fermentation is going to take place before bottling. Secondary fermentation is common in blended wines especially where a sweet wine has been blended with a dry wine, as the unfermented sugar and alcohol is thinned down allowing the y east to reactivate. Allow the wine to ferment out to dryness, or alternatively stop fermentation when the desired sweetness is achieved by racking and stablilising.

While blending is a very successful way of achieving a better finish always remember that a poor quality wine, or one that has been infected by bacteria, can never be saved and turned into a good wine. However some remarkable make overs of fruit wines have been achieved by our customers. When an apricot wine was blended with Riesling and a Mulberry wine was blended with port, the results were remarkable. So don't hesitate making some of those exotic fruit wine recipes knowing that a little blending in the end can achieve even better results.

You can Improve Fruit wine recipes easily

Many wines fermented from single fruit varieties often result in wines that lack body and flavour. There are very few country style fruit wine recipes that cannot be improved by adding a quantity of pure grape concentrate before fermentation to add body and flavour. The addition of a small quantity of Austro Vino Grape concentrate in the initial fermentation, will contribute to a healthy strong fermentation by adding essential nutrients and enzymes only found in grapes and will give added body and flavour to the finished wine. The addition of grape concentate will also contribute to a better maturing of the wine as well.

Usually 300 to 500 ml of Austro Vino grape concentrate added to a fruit based wine to make 5 litres is sufficent to make beneficial improvements to the wine.

Austro Vino grape concentrate can be purchased in 3 litre varietal quantities (which is sufficient to make 15 litres of quality wine on its own). If only a small amount of concentate is required, once opened, you can store any unused concentrate in the fridge until required.