Winemakers Notes
Winemaker's Notes
2002 Triumph
The Vintage
The 2002 growing season was nothing less than superb. Eastern Washington State experienced ideal warm dry weather conditions from late March through early July. From mid-July to late-September, the vineyards were blessed with hot temperatures and no measurable precipitation. Our harvest months of late-September through the end of October were warm and dry. By the time our vineyards did experience a Halloween frost all but the late-harvest oice wines were safely tucked away in our cellars.
As a result of the overall growing conditions during the 2002 vintage, C. R. Sandidge was able to harvest grapes at peak quality regardless of variety. Our growers came through in great fashion once again.
The Vineyards
Our sources of fruit for our 2002 rendition of Tri*Umph were; Kestrel View Estate Vineyard for our Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot while our Malbec fruit hailed from the Klingele Vineyard. The Kestrel View Cabernet Sauvignon site is known for wines possessing great fine grained tannin structure, good color and traditionally a blackberry – black cherry flavor and aroma profile. The Kestrel View Merlot vineyard offers wines with exceptionally dark color and more tannins than most other Merlot vineyards in Washington State. The Klingele Vineyard Malbec is very dark colored, possesses medium to medium plus body, moderate tannins and flavors and aromas of cherries, perfum(rose petals) and a huge ripe raspberry note.
The Winemaking
As with all of our fruit, the grapes were hand picked and sorted to ensure only the fully ripened primary clusters of grapes were harvested. The grapes were lightly crushed once destemmed. A moderately paced fourteen day yeast fermentation was conducted utilizing the Pasteur Red yeast strain. After draining the fermentation tank and pressing the pomace, the young wine was settled for four days and racked to barrels where the malo-lactic fermentation was permitted to occur. French, Hungarian and American oak barrels were used to age the Cabernet Sauvignon while only French and Hungarian barrels were utilized to age the Merlot and Malbec wines. Thirty months of aging were deemed perfect. The wine was lightly fined with egg white and filtered just prior to bottling.
The Wine
A gorgeous dark red-purple color pours into one's glass. The flavors and aromas present in the finished wine are luscious ripe blackberries, black sweet cherries and a big raspberry note. Smooth-tasty vanilla-toasty oak notes compliments of the oak barrels the wine was aged in also make their presence felt as this wine graces your palate. The structure is smooth, full yet firm. Our 2002 Tri*Umph is a great match with richly seasoned beef, duck or lamb entrees. Depending on how you like your reds a solid eight to fifteen years of cellar potential exist with this wine.