Wine List

C.R. Sandidge Awards and Accolades List

Updated: November 10, 2007

Without question, Ray Sandidge is considered one of the top winemakers in the Pacific Northwest wine regions. In 2007 Ray is in his twenty fourth year of internationally acclaimed winemaking experience in Europe and the United States, Ray has returned home to settle in the pristine Lake Chelan Valley.

Starting in the mid 80’s at Pindar Vineyards in Long Island and having two wines served at United States Presidential Inaugurations, Ray was then heavily recruited to move to Germany and become a highly controversial NEW WORLD winemaker to make wines for the OLD WORLD German winery Georg Breuer. In just 3.5 years, Ray took this winery into the TOP 50 German wineries out of 12,000 German Old World Wineries.

Ray then returned to the United State and to Washington Hills Cellars working with Brian Carter, then to Hyatt from 93’ – 97’, next onto becoming the winemaker for Kestrel Vintners from 1997 – 2004 and finally being named the Director of Winemaking for the Lake Chelan Winery where he now continues to handcraft our families own private C. R. Sandidge Wines label. With some 50+ wines rated at 90 points or better within the Wine Spectator or Wine Enthusiast and countless numbers of double gold, gold, silver medals, he most certainly has proven to consistently craft elegant wines.

Our small Sandidge family winery which produces in the neighborhood of 2,500 cases a year was recently awarded the prestigious and coveted BEST NEW WORLD RED WINE title by the Jerry D. Mead International Competition. With this AWARD given to the 02’ Tri*Umph, the Sandidge family winery has been placed at the top of over 2,200 New World Wineries throughout all of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Ray’s wines express extraordinary fruit concentration and structure. Only the finest barrels of wine are ultimately selected for our C.R. Sandidge labeled wines. He begins with the highest quality grapes grown in Washington State. Our contracted growers reduce crop size by 40% - 60% of Washington State norms and water stresses the vines. This, in turn, produces small, highly flavored, intensely aromatic, and color-rich berries. All of the Sandidge Winery’s contracted fruit is hand picked and sorted to insure only the riper primary cluster fruits are made into wine. Adding to Ray's credibility, in 2006 he was elected to represent the Lake Chelan Wine Growers Association as the President.

In 2000 Ray Sandidge of C. R. Sandidge Wines selected asone of "Washington State’s Rising Stars" by noted wine writer Jancis Robinson
Wine Press Northwest - “It is rare for anyone in Washington go to the trouble to make a Pinot Noir dessert wine, but Ray “Keep it Sweet Sandidge – hence its name KISS made good on his harvest of Milbrandt fruit in Quincy on December 14th. We can hear Patty LaBelle singing “Lady Marmalade” because of the orange and peach marmalade notes inside and out. Mouth-coating honey and kiwi join in with the 11% residual sugar, but there’s a skillful amount of acidity to keep from being sticky sweet” - Andy Perdue
2005 Viognier International SILVER MEDALS - 2007 San Francisco Chronicle International Wine Competition, 2007 Finger Lake International Wine Competition, 2007 Jerry D. Mead New World International Wine Competition, Wine Enthusiast - 90 Points, TOP 12 Wine List Seattle Time - Paul Gregutt
2004 KISS* Pinot Noir Dessert Wine (Keep It Sweet Sandidge) - Gold Medal - 2005 Tri-Cities Wine Festival, international Silver Medal - Schott Zwiesel San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, international Bronze Medal - Jerry D. Mead New World International Wine Competition
*2002 TriUmph "BEST NEW WORLD RED BLEND WINE" Judged #1 on North & South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, 2006 Jerry D. Mead New World International Wine Competition, "BEST OF VARIETAL", "BEST OF CLASS", “GOLD MEDAL”International GOLD MEDALS, 2006 Finger Lakes International Wine Competition New York, 2007 Schott Zwiesel San Francisco Chronicle International Wine Competition, Double Gold Rating Wine Press Northwest “Ray got Cab Sauv (64%) and Merlot (10%) from his previous employer - Kestrel“ and Malbec (26%) from Klingele, then built a cellar-worthy wine as sturdy as a erector set. Blackberries, black cherries, slated and charcoal notes lead to a palate of ripe blackberries, seeds and all. Coffee and milk chocolate notes flow in the finish, and that tannin structure should pair nicely with flank, tri tips or a pork chop served with a chutney that incorporates balsamic vinegar. The Chelan winemaker projects a lifetime of 8 to 15 years for this wine.” Andy Perdue**
*2003 TriUmph** International GOLD MEDAL - 2007 Schott Zwiesel San Francisco Chronicle International Wine Competition, International silver MEDAL - 2007 Jerry D. Mead New World International Wine Competition, Wine enthusiast - 90 Points
2003 Klingele Syrah international Bronze MEDAL - 2007 San Francisco Chronicle International Wine Competition

September 30th 2000 - Wine Spectator

JOHN WALKER, AN OCTOGENARIAN BUILDER and developer from Florida with a love for harness horses, came to Washington State in the early 1990s to help revitalize its racing industry. When a deal to build a racetrack collapsed, he was left with land to dispose of and time on his hands. A friend showed him area restaurants and wine shops, and he became intrigued.

“Wine hadn’t been much of a factor in my life until then ,” Walker says. “We visited the people who made Quilceda Creek, and I was told about Leonetti, but of course I couldn’t buy any of either wine. I came to understand that any of the highest-quality wines from the region were impossible to get because they were all spoken for years in advance. That made me interested.

In the months to come, Walker bought grape growing land north of Prosser in the Yakima Valley, hired former Washington Hills assistant enologist Ray Sandidge and made a commitment to produce world-class wine, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The first four vintages were custom-produced off-site, always a precarious process, but last year a new winery and tasting room were completed next door to Hogue Cellars, by Interstate Highway 82, near the site of a proposed tourism center. That gave Sandidge room to work, and a ready clientele. (Even without the tourism center in place, 40 percent of Kestrel’s sales already come from the tasting room.)

Sandidge, whose background entered around white wines, seemed a gamble for a winery concentrating on red varieties. Before working under Brian Carter at Washington Hills, he had helped make four vintages of classy Rieslings at Gerhard Breuer in the Rheingau. One taste of Sandidge’s 1996 Cabernet, made from a blend of estate-grown and purchased fruit, show that Walker’s instincts were right. The wine is textured and nuanced, with more than enough structure to age but plenty of that rich, red Washington fruit showing through.

His artistry is in the blending, but he also takes a firm hand with the fruit. “I dictate how each block is to be managed viticulturally,” says Sandidge, who studied plant physiology at Washington State. He talks of rigorously dropping all secondary clusters from the vines to allow a small number of grapes to ripen, and then handpicking the fruit and using sorting tables to weed out debris.

With the tasting room full of T-shirts, caps and wine bags, Kestrel is more evolved than most of the nascent Washington wineries, a tribute to the financial commitment Walker has made to the project. Sandidge has single-vineyard releases and a small batch of exemplary Syrah up next. Walker, who gets a steady supply of bottles sent to Florida for his own enjoyment, is thrilled by the possibilities. “All the elements are there,” he says. “Ray has nothing standing in his way to get as far as he can go.” - B.S.

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