Wine Update: 2001 Signature Grand Meritage (1500mL)

In preparation for our brand new, shiny Creekside Cellar Club, the winemaking team dug up a special treat to offer from our Library stash.  We found two dozen 1500mL bottles of our 2001 Signature Grand Meritage (ie. Reserve goodness) just sitting there begging to be shared.

Knowing that our 750mL Reserve bottlings were still holding well at 8+ years of age, we decided to open one of these beauties to assess how the larger format wine was progressing through its aging process.  What we found was a beautifully aged blend that had ventured into a gorgeous leathery, tobacco-y, dried fruit style, still possessing plenty of fruit and a surprising amount of structure.  We feel that it’s pretty close to peak drinking for these magnums and are excited to be able to offer them to Cellar Club buyers at an astounding price of $60, which not only nets you a big bottle of awesome, but also gets you a hand-written label courtesy of winemaker Craig McDonald, but also a showpiece for your cellar because we’re in the process of waxing the bottle top and neck, and packaging these into wooden crates.

A little bit of back info on this wine, from the original winemaker’s writeup:

Considered the biggest wine in a very impressive portfolio of 2001 Reserve Reds, this Meritage is a blend of 30% Cabernet Franc, 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot. The ‘dripper’ technique was employed on 20% of the wine. The ‘dripper’ is a method employed at harvest where left over caps (Un-pressed skins and grape pulp) from fermentation are left out for 24 hours. Gravity naturally presses this material extracting wine rich and soft tannin which is funneled directly into barrel. This adds to the structure, polish and fullness of the wine. Aging for this wine was almost a three year process: Aged in new oak for 11 months followed by further refining in older oak barrels for another 11 months and then bottle ageing for another 11 months. The result is a highly refined, elegant and complex red.