Branding Your Own Wine

Somebody contacted me yesterday talking about branding their own wine. That is, they were going to work with a winery to make one or more wines, but with their own private label. What's involved in that?

It's not the same as whisky, for example, where one one of the really big determinants is selection of barrel and level of toast and char in that barrel. There are far more factors especially when you get into blending grapes.

What exactly are you going to use the wine for? Do you want it to go essentially straight from bottling to consumer to drinking? Or, do you have more grandiose aspirations for it? How about malolactic fermentation? Full? Partial? None? Is the oak new, used, or neutral? What sort of oak is it?

So many questions, so few answers.

To me, one of the most critical questions might be whether this is a single varietal wine or a blend. Blends sound cool. I mean, what sounds sexier: Merlot, or a blend of 9 different grapes one of which happens to be Merlot?

But, which is better? That's a matter of taste.

How do you determine proportions? That's a matter of taste.

If a novice is blending their own wine, my experience is that fruit forwardness is the most common characteristic while balance and acidity take a back seat. It's tough for a novice to understand how tannins will play in to the wine after fermentation.

There are so many factors and most people understand so few of them. It's not so easy.