I grabbed this bottle - $14.99, screw cap top - because it's very unusual. Winemakers very rarely blend a red and white wine together to make a finished product. This Gemtree wine from Australia is just that. It is 95% Shiraz - a red grape - plus 5% Viognier - a white grape.



We were talking in another thread about how unusual a red-white blend is so I thought I should taste this one!



Spicy flavors of plum and pepper. Both Bob and I enjoyed this one. We had it with meatloaf and then I had it with chocolate. The plummy flavors went well with with the chocolate.

From the McLaren Vale, 2007

OK, I've got a 2004 Gemtree Bloodstone in my cellar, but its 100% Shiraz.

Your vintage, the 2007, was the first with some Viognier.

Technically its not a blend, but a co-fermentation and that is common in the Rhone, then more recently in Australia, California and now rest of the world.

The reason was discovered by UC Davis -- co-fermentation with a small proportion of Viognier gives a chemical reaction that extracts more colour and flavour from the Shiraz.

There's a couple of examples in my book Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape

Hmmmm, interesting point! I use the term blend to refer to any wine which came from multiple grape types.

Would you not call this a blend, then? To me a co-fermentation is a type / subcategory of blend.

Would you say a blend is *only* a wine made from two or more finished wines of different grape types?

I'm finishing off this bottle as we discuss it!

I don't think blend describes what is being done here.

The word blend on its own is pretty meaningless. All wines are blends even when they’re a 100% varietal wine. The final bottled wine is made by blending wines made from different vineyards, fermented in different tanks and matured in different barrels.

Generally three terms are used, co-fermentation, field-blend and blend

Co-fermentation is used when different varieties are fermented together especially to get an effect that couldn’t be gained by blending them together after fermentation. This means in most cases co-fermenting Viognier with Shiraz.

Field Blend is used to mean making a wine from different varieties. They all go in the fermenting tank together. The name comes from picking a field planted with a mix of varieties which are harvested and processed together.

Blend is used for a wine made by mixing together wines made from different varieties in order to get a desired final taste, or because its always been done that way, as in Bordeaux. While a Bordeaux estate will have perhaps three different varieties growing, it will harvest and make them separately then blend the finished wines rather than fermenting them together. Get more control over the final taste, and anyway they ripen at different times. When we say blend its really shorthand for inter-variety,or multi-variety, blend. A small percentage blended in can make a huge difference – you’ll recall the blending we did at Hillebrand winery in Ontario.


Chianti traditionally had white varieties in the blend, indeed the 1967 DoC rules insisted on a minimum of 10% and up to 30% of white wines the blend. This was reduced to a minimum of 2% in 1984.


Co-fermenting Viognier & Shiraz/Syrah is common place in the Rhône and now also California and Australia. Indeed anywhere Shiraz is grown they’re planting Viognier for co-fermentation.

That's a very good point, I suppose you could technically call a wine that involved Merlot from vineyard A with Merlot from vineyard B a "blend" from multiple vineyards.

I've opened another bottle of the Gemtree Vineyards Bloodstone Shiraz Viognier, again a 2007 vintage. $14.99 at my wine shop. Screw cap, 14.5% alcohol.

A lovely flavor, plum, gentle pepper, a lovely long finish. Great for relaxing and sipping on a quiet Saturday afternoon.

I'm finishing off the Gemtree Bloodstone Shiraz-Viognier with some delicious plus healthy chicken satay. Nice combination of flavors!