Life is a cabernet!

Swapping his wine glass for a test tube, Raul Dias recently got down to being winemaker for a day at the Penfolds Winery in South Australia’s famed Barossa valley

“I’d much rather be downing a glass of robust cabernet than learning how to make it!” I re-issued my feeble protest for the nth time. But my incessant whining had no impact whatsoever on the deaf ears of my enthusiastic posse of friends who were driving a reluctant me from the urban comforts a city like Adelaide offers to the pastoral setting of Nuriootpa, a quaint little town in the Barossa Valley, South Australia’s premiere wine producing region.
Their goal they said was to educate me in the finer nuances of wine appreciation. And their means of doing so was unconventional to say the least. I was to be winemaker for the day at the Penfolds Winery, marrying three different types of reds with each other till I came up with a blend as unique as my own DNA.
Waiting by the handsome stone façade of the winery, Linda Benny, Penfolds startlingly young chief winemaker took me under her tutelage the moment my feet hit the gravel of the driveway. “Get scrubbed up, wear this and meet me here in the next 10 minutes,” she said in a tone that would make a weathered drill sergeant quiver in his regulation boots, while handing me a white lab coat—my uniform du jour.
Since it was way past harvesting season, I was spared the rigours of picking the grapes, extracting the juice, letting it ferment etc etc and my duty as winemaker was fast-forwarded to the point where blending three distinct varietals of red wine was my only job. A job they take very seriously at Penfolds, as it is at the blending stage that the true character of the wine starts to emerge, with each of the varietals infusing the newly amalgamated wine with a distinct flavour and depth.
Our first stop was to be the temperature controlled cavernous cellar of the winery to extract samples of their three major red wine varietals—Grenache, Shiraz and the super dry Mourvedre. Dipping our pipettes in the oak casks that were sealed with plastic bungs, we then emptied the wines in huge industrial sized test tubes and whizzed off upstairs to the laboratory where I had a serious case of high school chemistry class deja-vu thanks to the assorted paraphernalia that Linda assured me was as vital to making wine as the very grapes that go into it.
The art of blending wine, Linda explained was in the percentage of each of the three wines that go into the final blend—a very personal and subjective preference that often shows the experience (or lack thereof, in my case for example) of the winemaker. For that I first had to taste each of them separately and make notes after each session. Not forgetting the five ‘S’ theory of true wine appreciation—sight, swirl, sniff, sip and spit, I did the first four diligently, cheating every now and then on the last one.
After pouring 45% of Grenache, 25% of Shiraz and 30% of Mourvedre into a beaker and giving it a good swirl I tasted my blend which was surprisingly good for a novice. Even Linda agreed. It had just that right amount of jaminess, a hint of a tart bite and a smooth after taste. A bottle with a personalised label naming me winemaker of my own blend materialised and I decanted my concoction into it, toting it back to enjoy with my thirsty bunch of friends who declared it a vintage the moment the libation lubricated their parched throats. Well, at least I have an alternate career lined up for me in case all else fails!

(First published in Times Life)