The quest for the Holy Grail

I am new to this site, but, being recently retired, have been completely captured by the internet, which was Not invented by Al Gore, but by Satan. I have loved wine since college in the early 60's, taught a wine course for more than a quarter of a century, have a library of about 600 wine books, lots of aging wine in the basement, too many red stained tablecloths and the cholesterol of a teenager. The question that is currently intriging me is whether there will ever be a really great red wine made entirely from cold hardy grapes.
Years ago, a winemaker up in the Finger Lakes told me that a great red wine from grapes that grow where it's very cold in the winter was "The Holy Grail" of the poor deluded folk who try and grow wine grapes when the snow finally melts. I've kept my eyes open and my palate flexed ever since, but have yet to taste from the elusive cup.
However, with the importantion of grapes from Eastern Europe (Michurinetz, Zweigelt, etc.,) the continuing development of knowledge about how to make good wine from the clkassic hybrids (Baco Noir, Foch, etc.,), and the development of new grapes by ElmerSwenson and the other folks at Minnesota (Fronetac, St. Croix, Marquette) and Bruce Reich at Cornell (GR-7, Noiret), there is a lot of interesting juice out there.
I'm convinced that the quest may finally be over when somebody finds the right BLEND. Then maybe one of my neighbors here in New Hampshire will start making really nice wine. Has anybody sipped from the Holy Grail?

Hi Bill and welcome to the WLDG. There is a thread below which hints at you "Holy Grail" :Oregon Baco Noir.
In addition, there are some outstanding reds being made in the Niagara area, on both sides of the border. Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc and Gamay, along with limited plantings of Merlot and Syrah. I understand where you're coming from. I've been making wines from hybrids for over 30 years from DeChaunac, Foch, Leon Millot and Chelois. It's more than just coming up with a good blend. I think it's more about proper grape growing to get the most expression from hybrids. Recently, more vineferas have become available, so I've switched to them in recent years for reds.

Hello Bill, welcome to the WLDG. Good to see you here.

As I mentioned in our earlier discussion, I think that some of the most exciting new red wines across the North American continental regions will come from new-generation hybrids that have more mid-palate tannins than the old-line French hybrids that we know today. Marquette, a grape so new that most of us have only heard the name, apparently yields a much more tannic red than Frontenac. I tried Noiret last year at NiagaraCool and it also had a pleasant streak of tannin, unlike any Baco or Foch for example, whose tannins are diminutive. This isn't to say that Baco, Foch, Chambourcin etc. are deficient; it's just that they're more acid-defined, somewhat in the style of Barbera for example.

Other hybrids that have good mid-palate tannins are the Blattner varieties - I wrote about them in my blog last summer. Here are my notes:

Moving from the Georgian Bay area to Prince Edward County (eastern Lake Ontario area), we now move southwest - this time to Viewpointe Estate Winery, located on the north shore of Lake Erie in Essex County. I feel myself very fortunate to have stopped at this exhibit, since the experimental wines available for tasting were true eye-openers and, more than this, a source of immense and unforeseen inspiration for the future of hybrid reds in general. The grape varieties used to make the wines are completely new hybrids with Cabernet Sauvignon parentage created by Valentin Blattner, and are colloquially referred to as the "Blattner hybrids" - for now, the hybrids bear numbers rather than names. Notes follow on each of the samples.

2005 Viewpointe Estate Winery Blattner HG01
Inky purple, funky and tannic! What immense hybrid colour and feral aromas - yet at the same time, a fully vinifera-like mid-palate with a strong but balanced tannic structure and great balance of acidity, tannin and extract. Quite reminiscent of Norton/Cynthiana aromatically.

2005 Viewpointe Estate Winery Blattner HG03
Inky! Smoky, complex, meaty nose. Excellent balance, much like HG01; smoky and wild flavours that remind me of the very fine 1999 Blumenhof Cynthiana (Vitis aestivalis native American red wine) from Dutzow, Missouri, that I tasted some years ago. Fine, balanced (acidity and tannin) structure. Exemplary and promising - I really enjoyed it.

2005 Viewpointe Estate Winery Blattner HG04
This wine was more lifted and fruity on the nose than either the HG01 or the HG03, but it still had the same delightful wildness about it. It seemed more acidic and less tannic than the other two, however.

There was also a blend of all these Blattner varieties, and while I enjoyed it as well, I found myself preferring the individual wines made from hybrids HG01 and HG03. These fascinating grapes truly need to get better known; I can only imagine what they could do for our wine scene in Ontario, especially since they offer what so many winemakers have long searched for: grapes that produce red wine with structure and depth in our short seasons and that are climatically suitable given our winters. Based on what I tasted, I think that the Blattner varieties could hold a significant key in these areas.

In short, blends are a good idea, but I think that more work needs to be done on the individual varieties to actually find ones that give the desired textural qualities to the resulting wines.

Howie & Paul,
Thanks for your input. After forty years of teaching, tasting, advising, reading, writing, running wine clubs, visiting vineyards and drinking, I'm still amazed by how much there is to learn about wine! My ideas about blending hybrid red wines have been developed over several years, as the best examples seem to all be blends. I bought a bottle of St. Croix from Northern Vineyards, a co-op in Stillwater, Minnesota, that had gotten good reviews out there. I sent my thoughts back to the winemaker: “Very grapey nose, followed by a nice clean, but rather thin taste. Beautiful but short finish, lacking any real "wine" body.
I was impressed by the lack of any hybrid off-tones, but very disappointed by the lack of any complexity, any real structure.
My Lutheran relatives will love it! Simple, clean, fruity. But I really feel it should be part of a blend. So I grabbed some stuff off the shelf.
I first blended it 3 to 1 with Killer Juice Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cab overpowered the St. Croix, and the blend didn't work.
I next tried adding a bit of Black Box Merlot. Bingo!
The resulting blend was much better than either of the component parts. I now understand why Sharpe Hill, in Connecticut, blended their St. Croix with Merlot, but I don't begin to grasp why they finished it with so much residual sugar!
Finally, I opened a bottle of 2006 Garnacha de Feugo, an old vine 100% Spanish grenache, grown at 3,00 feet above sea level. I blended it about 2 parts to three of the St. Croix. The result was unbelievable! Even better with a few drops of Black Box Merlot. Complex, well structured, balanced, with a beautiful finish.”
I’ve tried this with a couple other adequate, but hardly stellar, hybrid reds. When I get the time, I may order a batch on-line, and satisfy my curiosity about whether these grapes, without vinifera, can somehow make really good wine.

I've done more blending with white hybrids. Vignoles is my favorite white hybrid as a varietal, but it also seems to improve any other white hybrid you blend it with. I've blended 1 part with 3 parts Cayuga, resulting in an almost Riesling like wine. Blending with Seyval gives an almost Chablis like character and one of the best bubblies I've made was a blend of 40% Seyval, 40% Vidal and 20% Vignoles. Another blend I used to make a lot was hard pressed Vidal with Foch.