Deerfield Ranch Winery 2003 Trio Meritage, Napa Valley   This featured wine is no longer available for purchase on Indie Winemakers. Join our Mailing List (see at left) to be notified when a new featured wine is offered.

This week, Indie Winemakers is offering a library wine at current release prices! Deerfield winemaker and owner Robert Rex only releases his wine when they are tasting their best. In the case of our featured Meritage, this wine was barrel aged for 30 months, about double the time most wines spend in the barrel. Rex's winemaking style has its roots in classic Bordeaux winemaking using extended fermentation and barrel aging times along with the blending of several varietals to create the best wine.

Clean Wine

Our featured wine was produced as a "clean" wine. Clean wine is any wine that has dramatically reduced levels of sulfites and histamines - which cause allergic reactions and roaring headaches for some people. To create clean wine, the winery has developed a three-tier approach to winemaking:

• remove all impurities from the grapes to ensure the cleanest possible juice - it takes 8 more people to hand-sort the grapes than conventional sorting,
• mimimize histamines in the finished product - Deerfield maintains a clean fermentation environment so very little histamine shows up in the finished product, and
• minimize sulfites - Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), is used to keep wines from prematurely oxidizing during barrel ageing and to protect them from excess oxygen during the bottling process. Deerfield adds very little SO2 and does not release a wine until the Sulfur Dioxide reaches non-reactive levels, rendering the sulfites harmless.

  The SO2 of our featured wine was 21ppm at bottling and 8ppm at release! To test the effetiveness of clean wine, we got ourselves a taster who suffers from alergic reactions to red wine. At the tasting, she could tell immediately that she was not going to have any reaction to this wine. Spread the word. Clean wine works!

About Meritage (rhymes with heritage)

Most American wines are labeled after the grape variety that comprises at least 75% of that wine. Many winemakers, however, believed the varietal requirement did not necessarily result in the highest quality wine from their vineyards. "Meritage" was coined to identify wines that represent the highest form of the winemaker's art, hand-crafted wines blended from the traditional "noble" Bordeaux varietals including: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec, where no one varietal is 75% or more.

About The Featured Wine

Deerfield Trio Meritage is a blend of 42% Cabernet, 28% Cab. Franc, 12% Petit Verdot, 10% Malbec and Merlot 8% all from the same vineyard. Grapes from complementary soil types and microclimates are blended to maximize varietal characteristics and complexity similar to how a fined Bordeaux is produced. The grapes were sourced from Nord Family's Trio Vinyards. Trio’s rich dark soils and warmer mid-valley climate are perfect for the Bordeaux-style blends planted in this Cabernet region near Yountville.

Summary of Tasting Event

This wine was tasted on May 3, 2008 by a panel of 8 tasters in a blind tasting format and paired with Grilled Buffalo Steak.

Dark ruby; medium body but complex with blackberry, cherry and pepper aromas; sweet currant, cherry and fig flavors are concentrated and reach all areas of the palate. The wine is nicely balanced with a long finish. Delicious wine in a lighter style that lets fruit dominate the aromas and flavors and keeps the oak in a supporting role.

The winery suggests to pair this wine with Rack of Lamb or Lamb Chops. We paired it with BBQ Buffalo Steak. The Trio Meritage took on a supporting role to balance the Buffalo. All tasters commented how the wine really "mellowed" with the Bufallo flavor. This is a wine made for food. We held this food pairing in an informal BBQ setting.

Deerfield Ranch Winery 2003 Trio Meritage, Napa Valley   This featured wine is no longer available for purchase on Indie Winemakers. Join our Mailing List (see at left) to be notified when a new featured wine is offered.

Deerfield Ranch Winery 2003 Trio Meritage, Napa Valley   This featured wine is no longer available for purchase on Indie Winemakers. Join our Mailing List (see at left) to be notified when a new featured wine is offered.

 

Wine Technical Data
Blend	42% Cabernet, 28% Cab. Franc, 12% Petit Verdot, 10% Malbec and Merlot 8%
Appelation	100% Trio Vineyard, Yountville AVA, Napa Valley.
Harvest Dates	All five varietals were harvested on October 20, 2003 and fermented together, a rare opportunity.
Sugar at Harvest	24.8 to 25.9 degrees Brix
Fermentation	Started on native yeast then inoculated with Pasteur Red (traditional Bordeaux yeast). Fermentation took 15 days with 7 days additional maceration.
Aging / Cooperage	30 Months in artisan coopered 3 year air dried barrels, 80% French 20% American.
Alcohol	14.7% by volume
Acidity	PH = 3.75, TA = 0.60

 

Vintage Description

Trio Vineyards’ rich dark soils and warmer mid-valley climate are perfect for the Bordeaux-style blends planted in this Cabernet region near Yountville. Part of the Nord family portfolio for decades, the immaculate vineyards clearly show the vineyard workers’ great pride in having nurtured these vines for so many years. This vineyard has a moderate climate with marine influence but warm, sunny afternoons. It has dark clay loam topsoils atop alluvial gravels, keeping the soil well-drained.

Winemaker's Tasting Notes

We add our 3 decades of winemaking talent, education, experimentation and learning from our peers to produce this wine. Our friends say it's a Napa Cab wine made by a Sonoma winemaker. This means the wine is more elegant, more reserved, compared to the more tannin, more aggressive Napa made counterparts. It’s very much a mouthful, with big forward flavors that hit every corner, every place you experience wine. It’s the Meritage experience at its penultimate.