Rarely does one get to check something off their bucket list without actively planning for it, but I got lucky that day. During an eventful and exciting Fine Vintage Luxury wine trip to Bordeaux in November 2025, my fellow wine lovers and I had the exquisite privilege of making our very own Bordeaux blend using wines from Château Pape Clément’s cellars, a Grand Cru Classé de Graves, in the Pessac Léognan region.
As seen at Château Pape Clément
It was a brisk cold day with some rain, but no amount of precipitation could dampen our spirits as we walked into a fancy, wood paneled room overlooking the winery’s barrel room. There, we were greeted with a table laid out with all the apparatuses we would require to make our own blends. We were supplied with three glasses, one each to taste the château’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and one to taste our blend. We had pipettes, beakers and measuring flasks, which would be required to get to that one magic recipe, our very own Bordeaux blend.
The first step in the blending process was to taste the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wines individually, to give us an idea of the taste, aromas and flavor profile. These wines were just out of the barrels so they hadn’t gone through the full ageing process that the winery would typically put their wines through, and we were told not to expect the typicity of such grape varieties at the outset.
As I tried the wines individually, I knew that I would be leaning more towards a Merlot dominant blend. The first blend I made was a 50% Merlot-50% Cabernet Sauvignon. Not my favorite, as the Cab overshadowed its milder friend. I guess I have always been more of a Right Bank girl! Realizing that this wasn’t for me, I decided to add more Merlot and reduce the percentage of Cabernet in my blend. It took a few tries, but then I struck gold…a perfect blend (in my humble opinion) of 77% Merlot, 23% Cabernet Sauvignon.
Once the blend was decided, the wine had to be bottled. I can never just be one of the crowd so my unusual percentages led to absurd volume measurements, namely 57.75cl of Merlot and 42.25cl of Cabernet! Getting this blend right was crucial but also nerve wracking and truly exhilarating in equal measure.
After bottling the blend, corking was required. Since this was a one-off exercise, we used a very rudimentary tool where we literally had to push the cork into the bottle using a lever system (I almost broke my shoulder doing this!). Following the corking, the neck of the bottle had to be covered in foil. This entailed inserting the neck into a very scary machine which force turned the bottle. One had to be careful not to get your fingers anywhere near the mouth otherwise you would probably come out of the experience, missing a few.
The last step was labeling the bottle to indicate the blend percentage and of course, putting your signature on the bottle as the final stamp. There were no preservatives added so we were told to consume the wines within the next 3-5 years, so as to avoid any spoilage.
The whole exercise was as exciting as it was unnerving, but there is not a thing I would change about it! As I looked around at my fellow wine lovers who were busy bottling away their blends, I realized I was in a special place with a special lot of people who spoke the same language. This wine tour had brought a very unlikely bunch of folks together, who somehow enjoyed similar pleasures in life and this experience only helped to bring us all closer together. A perfect blend.
Cheers! ~ Ipshita
Please welcome Grape Experiences’ new Contributing Writer, Ipshita Ray.
