Welcome to the Honest Grapes Taste Lab Kit ‘Blend Your Own Bordeaux’, produced in collaboration with our friends David and Laurent Siozard.
The goal of this Taste Lab Kit is to have some fun discovering three of the principal grape varieties of Bordeaux and then design your own blends to see which styles you most enjoy. There’s plenty of wine so let’s get stuck in!
Your Taste Lab Kit contains the following
- Three bottles of red wine (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc)
- A 100ml measuring flask from my chemistry lab
- A booklet in French and this guide
- Tasting sheets for you to write your own notes
Blend your own Bordeaux
Use the measuring flask to be your own winemaker, designing and blending your own Bordeaux. It’s amazing how the resultant aromas and tastes seem to differ from the constituent varietals, especially with time. The measuring flask is 100ml, so we can make blends treating 1ml as 1% and filling the flask up to 100ml each time.
In the accompanying video, we illustrate three blends, which are typical of different parts of the Bordeaux region:
The Northern Medoc (e.g Pauillac, St Estephe): 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc.
The Southern Left Bank (e.g. Graves, Péssac-Léognan): 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc.
The Right Bank (e.g. St.-Émilion, Pomerol): 70% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc
Blend these, see how they taste to you and your friends and family, then experiment with some other blends! If you have any questions about this Taste Lab Kit or our wine club, please contact us on the chat, or email us.