What is a wine blend?

Blending is a specificity of many Portuguese wines. Believe it or not, the majority of Portuguese wines are the result of blending. It is a technique that wine producers perform before bottling and it is for some an art by itself. This method consists of mixing different grape varieties to obtain a cuvée and therefore the best possible wine.

At Quinta da Raza, not only different varieties are mixed, but also different parcels of the same variety. Normally, we ferment each grape separately. When all the fermentations end,  we taste all the vats and decide which destination each of the vats will have. Blending involves a lot of tastings, a lot of tests and more tastings in order to find the best wine possible which is totally amazing!! 

Once the blending has been defined, all that remains is to assemble everything in the right proportions and proceed with bottling the wine!

Our more traditional blends are made with the grapes Alvarinho and Trajadura, Avesso and Alvarinho, that we bottle under the brand name- Quinta da Raza; Arinto, Azal and Trajadura that we blend together and bottle under the brand name- RAZA. We also blend grapes from the same grape variety but from different plots to produce our DOM DIOGO 100% AZAL and the DOM DIOGO 100% ARINTO.

Why do we blend the wines?

It is true that nature gives very beautiful results with a primary element. But the mixture of two elements, the mixture of two wines, or the mixture of two plots, can give a result as much or even more interesting as wines without mixture. Mixing different wines in different ways will result in a different taste in the end.

Therefore, blending makes it possible to offer wines with diverse profiles for audiences that do not have the same preferences and that have a lot of fun discovering new grapes, new flavours and new sensations

Taste our wines, discover their differences and have fun…