Blended wines - a new approach.

Blending wine varietals in an attempt to make a better wine - or a more profitable one - is a traditional tool of the winemaker. Blending cabernet sauvignon with merlot, for instance, adds the tannic structure of the cab to the smooth fruit present in merlot, yielding a wine with the strength of each covering the other's weakness. Here's a variation in New Zealand that's new to me: blending wines from different countries. For cost and supply reasons - the 2003 harvest was fairly low - some of the lower-priced New Zealand wines were made, in part, with juice from Chile, Australia, or France. I don't know whether any of these multi-national blends have been exported to the US market, but I'll keep an eye out for them.