What better wine to go with a survival strategies podcast than white wine blends? After all, we’re blending the rest of our lives on an hourly basis, right?
In each podcast episode, we bring you a note about wine because wine is a main form of sustenance for vampires when they’re not drinking, you know, blood. It also happens that Deborah Harkness, Renaissance woman that she is, is an award-winning wine blogger and wine enthusiast. If you’ve never read Deborah’s wine blog, “Good Wine Under $20,” you should have a look. While she doesn’t write it now, it is a reminder that apparently there’s nothing this woman can’t do.
We have two more reasons we like to include a wine note in each episode. We really like wine; we like it a lot. We also happen to have our own personal sommelier, Bayard. This man knows his wine and he loves sharing his knowledge and making wine accessible to everyone. Bayard is a founding partner at Crafted Brands and we love learning from him.
To go with our Survival Strategies à la All Souls Trilogy podcast, we are talking about white wine blends. Here’s what you need to know….
Take it away, Bayard….
Good day or good evening to all of my quarantined friends out there enjoying this podcast. Today, we’re talking about blends, specifically white blends. We’re going to talk about blends because we’re all quarantined and we’re trying to have a nice blend of a day, a blend of maybe homeschooling and outings with our children or maybe the countless Zoom meetings that you’ve been having. Not surprisingly the adults need a happy hour at the end of the day. We’re choosing white blends as we make our way into the spring season.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably saying, “Bayard, when I think about blends, I think about reds.” Well, be prepared to be pleasantly surprised because a lot of great wines out there are white blends. You can get them domestically from the central coast region of California, the Willamette Valley of Oregon, as well as the Burgundy, Bordeaux and Rhone regions of France.
The thing to keep in mind next time you walk into your wine shop for a white blend is the kind of base you’re looking. Do you like Sauvignon Blanc? Do you like Chardonnay? Do you like something on the sweeter side, like Viognier from the Rhone Valley? The idea is that we’re all looking to try something new as we come out of this time of quarantine. So when you walk into your wine shop, consider perhaps a Chardonnay-Sauvignon Blanc blend or try something with a little bit of Sémillon and Viognier, and maybe a little bit of Marsanne and Roussanne.
A lot of these are grapes that we haven’t spoken of previously, but they make phenomenal white blends that as we again, come out of this quarantine, you’re really going to enjoy and you can get it at a rockin‘ price. So enjoy some of those new white blends out there, be safe and stay healthy.