The 30 participants each designed their own sparkling-wine blend from among 250 base wines, and attended three seminars on pairing sparkling wines with caviar, raw oysters, calamari and beef.
Most houses give the wine color by adding a portion of still, red Pinot Noir wine to the blend before the Champagne-to-be undergoes its second fermentation in the bottle, the one that produces the trapped bubbles.
This means that a great deal of the bad wine that tourists report being served is not really grape wine and may be a blend of a little Chinese grape wine and a lot of imported bulk wine of undetermined origin.
The vast majority of Champagne is sold as non-vintage: a blend of wine from around three vintages.
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Many non-vintage champagnes--many delicious ones--are essentially "vintage" wines in disguise, made almost entirely from lesser lots of current harvests, with a modest lick of older, reserve wine to steer the blend toward the house style.
Klaus Schaller, director of a world-famous wine research institute at Geisenheim in the Rheingau, insists that the blend of mustard, wurst and wine tastes good.
The estate produces only one wine, a stately Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot.
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They do a lot of buying and selling on a large, fast-moving bulk market to mix, match and blend to make sure they have a consistent style of wine to offer every year.
There was no pomp or circumstance to evaluating it: The winemaker would uncork the bottle, tilt the contents into his mouth, spit the wine onto the ground and give the verdict: Good enough to go into his blend, or not good enough.
Wine carrying the Petite Sirah label is thus, unknown to growers and drinkers alike, often a blend rather than a pure varietal.
Their Moser XV, a blend of 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot, is made in partnership with Austrian wine producer Lenz Moser.
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