2018 Rivers-Marie Winter Release next Tuesday, Jan 16

Email this morning:
The 2018 Rivers-Marie Winter Offer will go live on Tuesday, January 16th at 9:00 AM PST. At the time the release opens, you will receive an email with a link to the offer and your log-in credentials. Below you will find the release letter with tasting notes. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at will@riversmarie.com.

–Will Segui


Winter 2018

Somewhere deep down we may have actually been pulling against this vintage. After an incredible run from 2012-2015, it didn’t feel right touting a fifth straight vintage. Now though after tasting the 2016 Pinots four months removed from bottling, we can safely say it belongs in the same league as its four predecessors. There’s a common misconception out there that all California vintages taste the same (especially the good ones). The historic run we are currently on highlights the fallacy of that thought and brings forward something for everyone across the five years. 2012 was all fresh, forward fruit, a vintage that is currently drinking extremely well. One of the most concentrated, structured vintages in California history, 2013 showed vintage character first. 2014 was a return to varietal and site transparency, wines with a lightness that belied their palate weight. The 2015s have the concentration of 2013 with a top layer of fruit similar to 2012, a tiny vintage with its best days lying ahead. 2016s are a bit harder to comprehend. Structure is immediately apparent but there’s more give than with the 2013s. A return to a normal sized crop allowed for more hang time and more top to bottom development than the 2015s. It shares our favorite traits with the 2014s, varietal and site expression. Basically, there is a little bit of everything good in 2016.

The Wines

2016 Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast, 700 cases
This is a bit darker than previous editions. I’d attribute this to a lower natural pH in the wine which allowed us to extract and stabilize more color. The vineyard blend here is changed as well with the addition of some Platt Vineyard fruit. 2016 being the first year we bought grapes from this esteemed site in Freestone, it may take us a couple years to best understand how to make it so we’ve added it here to preserve our one shot at a first impression. To this, we’ve added three clones from the Riddle Ranch off of Stoetz Lane in Occidental and some clone 828 from Silver Eagle, also in the town of Occidental. The broody character of Freestone marries well with the more fruit forward character of these two warmer Occidental sites. The dominant fruit here is pomegranate which provides both a concentrated and fresh fruit character. The freshness cuts some of the weight of the wine without making the wine come across as lean or angular. As usual, this appellation bottling provides a lot of good early drinking opportunity at a price that doesn’t elicit regret once the cork is pulled.

2016 Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Anderson Valley, 210 cases
We are really liking Anderson Valley these days. So much so, we’ve decided to offer our first ever appellation wine from this storied area. It is a nice counterpoint to our Sonoma Coast sites in that it focuses more naturally on the savory elements of Pinot Noir. White and black pepper, rhubarb and black cherry dominate the nose and palate. There is zero percent new oak on this wine which allows all the best attributes of the grape and the vintage to shine through. Fruit usually takes center stage even in the most coastal of California Pinots but here the rusticity of Anderson Valley provides a nice compliment to all the sunshine in the wine. We hope to see this cuvee grow in the coming years, adding another nice value bottling to the lineup that provides both higher than expected quality and a nice snapshot of the character of the vintage.

2016 Rivers-Marie Bearwallow Vineyard Pinot Noir Anderson Valley, 250 cases
We think this complements the 2015 nicely, possibly improving on that edition through the addition of another block and a better understanding of the site. It still reminds us a bit of the Occidental Ridge bottling in its abundance of fruit tannin. We’ve now seen the 2015 unwind over the past year so we see this doing the same but maybe needing an additional year due to the vintage. The complexion is a lighter red, more akin to the Summa bottlings. The red fruit profile is very fresh focusing more on pomegranate and cranberry. Coming from the newer plantings on the property, the wine lack some of the more rustic character associated with older Anderson Valley bottlings. To repeat what we said last year, we are very excited to be working with this site. You’ll see an equally exciting Bearwallow Chardonnay offered in February.

2016 Rivers-Marie Summa Old Vines Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast, 150 cases
This has a more pure red color than in years past. I’d attribute that to improved farming and the vintage in general. Nose is classic Summa though, full of Christmas spice, forest floor, clove, sandalwood and citrus peel. The acidity here is incredibly high, cutting through all the primary fruit this young vintage possesses. Structure comes up in the end as usual giving the impression the best years for this wine are well ahead of it. As good as we thought this bottling was the first 10 or so years we made it, the last three vintages have taken it to a level we didn’t see coming.

2016 Rivers-Marie Summa Vineyard Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast, 250 cases
It’s nice to have a reasonable quantity of this wine again. With increased vine age, the regular Summa has taken on increased seriousness over the past few vintages. As the block creeps up on twenty years of age, it grows closer in character to the Old Vines bottling. It still is a bit deeper than that wine but it has become less linear and more broad at release. It may still not have the ethereal character of its sibling bottling but everything else is there: red/orange fruit, forest floor, clove, cut hay and sandalwood. Given the extreme location of this site, the fruit always has the thickest skins of all the vineyards we work with. The structure here is definitely a direct result of this site condition. This, like the Old Vines, sees more oak than the other single vineyard wines to help round out some of its youthful, angular nature. The crop level in 2016 allowed us to hang the block out a little longer then we could in 2015 producing what might be the most complete wine in the lineup.

2016 Rivers-Marie Occidental Ridge Vineyard Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast, 225 cases
This has joined the Summa bottlings as a flagship wine for us. Like those wines, we’ve kind of run out of things to say about it. This once again has the most fruit tannin of all the 2016 wines. The consistency of this vineyard continues to amaze us. The nose and palate is full once again of baking spice, pennyroyal mint, pine needles and red and black fruits. The abundant natural acidity adds a mouthwatering freshness that keeps the wine light without cutting into its concentration. The 10% whole cluster provides balance and a nice lift to the mid-palate. We’ve been making a concerted effort to try back vintages of all our wines the last few months and we’ve been amazed how well all vintages of Occidental Ridge have held up. The 2016 edition should continue this trajectory with a wine that drinks well now but has at least 15 years of cellaring ahead of it.

2016 Rivers-Marie Silver Eagle Vineyard Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast, 300 cases
This bottling just keeps getting better. Being more selective with the blocks we use and slowly refining our winemaking, the wine has retained its warmer climate weight while getting more focused and losing its early reductive note. The whole cluster percentage has been bumped up closer to 20% to add some savory-ness and balance to the exuberant fruit character of the site. Black cherry, black tea and smoke dominate the palate with a small stem added herbal character creeping in on the finish. This carries a lot of primary fruit still which I think lends itself to cellaring. Sometimes in the wine world this is a little counter intuitive (aging fruit forward wines as opposed to structured wines) but in this case I think it will bring out much more complexity and balance over time. A recent bottle of our first ever Silver Eagle bottling, the 2009, bore this out with the wine showing nice tertiary herbal notes and a refreshing lightness that wasn’t there at bottling.

The Future

We maybe should have started the newsletter with this piece of news but we will attempt to go to three mailers this year to focus on varietally specific offerings. This first mailer offers our seven Pinot bottlings, a second mailer on February 13th will offer our four Chardonnays and then we will finish on our usual date of the third Tuesday in July for Cabernet. The Pinots and Chardonnays will be shipped together as soon as we can close the February offering. The goal with the three mailers is to allow everyone to more efficiently sort through mailers since every active person on the mailing list receives every release. We certainly understand some of you are Pinot/Chardonnay buyers but have no interest in Cabernet (or vice versa). The new offerings will allow everyone to know exactly what is being released just by looking at the mailer’s title. We’ll try it this year and see what the feedback looks like before deciding to continue with it in 2019.

The next two mailers will each feature one new wine. In February, you’ll see our first release of Bearwallow Chardonnay. We’ve been singing the praises of this site for Pinot for a couple years now and we think it makes equally good white wine. The wine has only been bottled for a month now and I think we’ve consumed a case at home already. In July, we will offer our first Herb Lamb Vineyard bottling from this historic St Helena site. It has already garnered a few rave reviews from the critics and it has been fun for us to watch it develop in barrel. Jennifer Lamb is about as passionate a grower as we have had the pleasure to deal with and we look forward to what the next few years bring us.

Thanks again for all the support

Thomas Rivers Brown and Genevieve Marie Welsh

Woah. Herb lamb Rivers Marie cab?!?

Hi oh! I’m stoked for that one too.

Really looking forward to this one.

Anyone tasted the Pinots?

Antonio tasted through the entire line-up on Sunday and mentioned on Vinous that he was going to have them published on Monday.

[flirtysmile.gif]

Thanks for the heads up!

How is th style compared/contrasted with Williams Selyem and Rhys?

of course the day I leave for a week of mission work at 7am.

it didn’t feel like a sacrifice until now! haha

Let someone you trust order for you.

What are people getting?

Whatever I can get my hands on!!

Dialed down my purchases so probably just the Bearwallow and Summa Old Vine. Considering some Anderson Valley, but I’ve purchased quite a bit of bubbles lately so something has to go.

Will buy Summa and Summa Old Vines.

Probably Summa Old Vines, Occidental, maybe Bearwallow.

All the SC I can get and some Old Vines to keep vertical going.

Yep, but add regular Summa. And Bear for sure. If the 2016 Bear is anything like the 2015, [winner.gif] I am also intrigued by the AV PN (Is this declassed Bear?). No new oak? Very interested.

For me, the RM PN portfolio is what anchors the more modern side of my PN section of the cellar. What I find with these wines is an opulence married with acidity, and when the terroir of Summa is in the glass, then it’s pretty much PN magic.

I have not had the Bearwallow. How does it compare the Summa?

Michael, in my last experience with the RM Bear, I found it unlike anything I had previously had from RM. My notes are in CT but if you don’t visit there, here is the most recent:

  • 2015 Rivers-Marie Pinot Noir Bearwallow Vineyard - USA, California, North Coast, Anderson Valley (11/23/2017)
    Man, this drinks with a stern frame, both in the depth of the wine as well as the tannin that sits around the edges of the palate now. Dark cherry, even a bit of cedar, and plenty of structure. I breathed this out a short while, we drank it at ideal temp and it’s just still pretty tight. This for me is encouraging, as this drinks very differently than the RM signature from the SC sites and I like the more coiled expression and potential here…as a follow-up, using the following day and small pour to gauge the wine again, the wine has added some richness, some weight from yesterday but at the core of the wine is still the spicy dark cherry and the cedar. What also comes through today, which I couldn’t get the words for yesterday, is the savory part of the wine. What this quality reminds me of today is a mix between some Indian spices, the more pungent kind that add so much flavor, as well as light menthol note. Mix those two dynamics together, this is the savory element. I already enjoy and buy Rhys Bearwallow and this is just a darker, more intense expression of Bearwallow. Given how this first vintage of Rivers-Marie Bear is showing, I’ll plan to add this to my January order.

Posted from CellarTracker

In contrast to the other RM wines of the portfolio where I make this point of contrast, I cannot tell yet whether it was vintage, winemaking style of that vintage, some of both, or truly if there is a signature difference between Bear and the rest of the portfolio. But, I am intrigued to see if it comes through again in 2016. I’m going to buy a few and trust it will. While I dig Summa (had the 15 last night, it was terrific), I am intrigued with RM Bear.