The same advantages of blending apply to American white Rhone wines. With careful blending, a winemaker can offer a final product that is more elegant and complex and better balanced than the individual varietals themselves. While the marketing of such wines is a challenge (most restaurants don’t know how to list them and many retailers don’t where to place them), the rewards are worth the challenges. Blends of white Rhone varietals are very food-friendly and complement a wide range of dishes popular in America. Thus, we were very pleased to find about 34 white Rhone blends at the Rhone Rangers tasting this year compared to about only 20 last year.

We couldn’t try all of them, but of those we did taste, we found 8 that we highly recommend.

An unusual white blend

The most unusual of these was the 2007 Edmunds St. John Heart of Gold bottling, a blend of 54% Grenache Blanc and 46% Vermentino from Ron Mansfield’s vineyard in El Dorado County. The resulting blend had an appealing and complex fruit flavor with a very good acid level. It was crisp and delicious. Vermentino (best known from its plantings in Corsica, Sardinia and the Ligurian coast) is known in the Rhone as Rolle. Like Grenache Blanc, Vermentino was brought to America recently by Tablas Creek. Unfortunately, the Edmunds St. John Heart of Gold cuvee was made in a tiny quantity, so it will be next to impossible to find. But this blend teaches a lesson that Grenache Blanc and Vermentino complement each other nicely.

White blends from the Sierra Foothills

We found four more white blends from the Sierra foothills worth noting. From a producer we have come to hold in high regard is the 2006 Holly’s Hill Vineyards Patriarche Blanc ($22) from El Dorado County. This blend of Roussanne and Viognier is rich and well balanced with a long finish. The 2006 Mount Aukum Winery “4 of a Kind” ($24) is a blend of Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne and Viognier with attractive, nuanced flavors. The 2006 David Girard Coeur du Terroir Blanc ($22) from El Dorado County is an appealing blend of Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, Rolle (also called Vermentino, see above), Marsanne and Viognier with a lengthy finish. More forward than the previous examples, the 2006 Domaine de la Terre Rouge Enigma ($24) from a single Sierra Foothills vineyard shows citrus and good acid. It would be a good match for more strongly flavored food. We have known past vintages of this Marsanne, Viognier and Roussanne blend to pair well with lots of garlic.