Proprietary / Other Blend

Red blends are kind of like when you take whatever is hanging around your house and turn it into dinner. Except replace “you" with “Martha Stewart." Because unless you're a master blender, you're not creating a red blend anyone wants to drink. You might think of red blend wine as cobbled together from leftovers. To an extent they are. But they're top-notch leftovers that create top-notch wine. And they can fetch top-notch prices.

The Dirty Secret:
Pretty much all red wines are blends to some extent. Only a handful of ultra (and we mean ultraultraultraultra) premium red wines are truly made from one grape. For instance, California only requires that a wine consist of 75% for the grape varietal to be on the label. Basically, you're always drinking blends.

Food Pairings:
Sorry, pal. Red blends are a crapshoot. Don't get us wrong, they're great with food. But since they can be made from any number of grapes in any number of proportions, it's hard to say what dish an individual bottle will work well with. Then again, when has any glass of wine made a meal worse?