Better when Blended
By Shelby Stephens | Photos Courtesy of the Blending Lab
Founded in 2014, The Blending Lab is a small, privately owned business that believes that wine is a very personal experience, and that drinking wine should be fun for everyone regardless of their knowledge or preferences. The Blending Lab offers a traditional tasting room experience, as well as a unique opportunity for customers to blend and create their own wine. Follow The Blending Lab on Instagram at @theblendinglab and learn more online at thewineblendinglab.com.
The Blending Lab is a one-stop shop to taste wine, learn about wine, and make and buy a bottle of wine. Guests enjoy the inviting atmosphere inside as well as the patio outside. Open from Friday-Sunday, with the exception of private gatherings, The Blending Lab hosts a variety of events with guests from the surrounding community and the corporate sector. Wine blending classes are offered in house, at remote locations, and online.
The space gracefully utilizes each corner, and the owners can often be found in the tasting rooms sharing stories about their favorite wines. Their mission is to educate new and seasoned wine enthusiasts about all the essential stages of the beverage from grape to bottle. As a personalized customer experience is their specialty, they also curate custom events.
Business partners Christopher Payne, Michael Keller, and Magdalena Wojcik believe wine is fun and can always bring people of different backgrounds and cultures together for a good time. Wine connoisseur Christopher Payne shared, “our favorite saying is ‘don’t blame the wine.’ It’s not the wine’s fault that you don’t like it. Blame the one who made it, because it may have been the grape or the region you did or did not like or a process that wasn’t enjoyable to the taste.” A decade ago, the group took a trip to Argentina. Payne and his partners found themselves gravitating towards wine along with the food and culture of other regions. The trip solidified their future in the wine industry and the team worked to develop a business plan focused on the Los Angeles market.
According to Payne, “before L.A. was about Hollywood, it was all about The Beverly Hillbillies. Before oil, there were orchards and groves, and there were grapes here that were original to the city with a lot of orchard fields before they all got cleared.” He added, ”We wanted to bring that history and the winemaking tradition back to L.A. We opened our first tasting room in 2016, and we are now in our new spot here in West Adams and last summer in Paso Robles, where all our fruit is sourced.”
Blending classes are held twice a week and Payne mentioned, “if a wine isn’t exactly what you like to drink, we will help you figure out why, and teach you how to blend wine, to align to your own personal tastes and preferences.” Each class provides three single varietal wines, that are tasted blind to eliminate customers’ preconceived notions of their preferences. How fun!
“Discover your inner winemaker with educational tastings and wine blending classes at The Blending Lab wineries in Paso Robles and Los Angeles.”
The Blending Lab exists to educate and functions similar to an urban winery. As the only city-based operating tasting room in L.A., flights are available, and customers can purchase wine by the glass from a range of whites, rosés, oranges, and reds from their in-house blends. Guests who participate in the blending process through a class, also have the option of bottling their blends and taking them home.
Each year The Blending Lab produces 13 wines and focuses on a new grape. They create a wide variety of blends, based on the varietal. They are experimenting with two new grapes that will produce one white and one red prior to year end. “We introduced petit verdot for the 2020’s as the latest club release and allowed us to get a bordeaux style wine. We also just bottled some pinot noirs for the second time as single varietals because we wanted to educate on how to do pinot two ways from two different vineyards,” says Payne. The Blending Lab team is constantly experimenting with the seasonality of things and the summer flights were new wines we bottled in May.
Payne, Keller, and Wojcik all had backgrounds in advertising, marketing, and digital media before launching The Blending Lab.. Payne describes it as the side passion that will hopefully turn into the day’s work, “when we came back from multiple trips traveling together and taking our wine knowledge overseas really solidified it for us.”
After Argentina, the group started thinking about doing it on their own and trying to build something together. “We were tasting after a long day of a five vineyard visit and we had the opportunity to do a mini blending experience ourselves with Cabernets, Merlots, Shiraz, etc. to get our pallets to perk up. We each made our own perfect glass and we decided to take that concept and expand it,” elaborates Payne.
Payne encourages new wine experts to ensure they are ready to go into business financially and spend as much time as possible doing research. He adds, “This is a huge endeavor; it takes years to make something to try to sell. Make sure you have your financial backing in order and your plans for longevity. We survived the pandemic because we were able to adapt, maintain financially, and had the support of the community to allow us to stay relevant in a different way. You are stuck with what you make, you have to know what you’re doing and pick a good winemaking team that matches your style and can deliver on your expectations. Do your homework, turn every leaf upside down, ask questions, and plan for the worst so you’re prepared.”
Over the next decade, The Blending Lab plans to focus on wine and grow the business. Maintaining ownership and a positive relationship with their customers drives their commitment to wine education. Payne believes building community is an important component in providing something fresh and exciting to people looking to enjoy wine in multiple ways.
