2015 Rhys Blancs de Blancs Bearwallow Vineyard- USA, California, North Coast, Anderson Valley (12/31/2019)
Served with lobster as part of a New Year’s Eve dinner, this was average at best. Had it been a $25 sparkler I would have been reasonably happy, but for the actual sticker price it was a pretty big let down. Blind I would have pegged it as the $20 Roederer Estate (my wife said the same thing before she saw the label), as the sweetness level was reminiscent of that wine, and the fruitiness on the same scale. OK for how we used it, but I feel somewhat ripped off that Rhys released such a simple wine for a high price.
Seems to be the going take on this wine. Too bad, but their first shot, so perhaps things will trend upward from here. But that’s of little consolation for those that bought this round. I didn’t buy any, but slated to try a fellow Berserker’s bottle some time in the coming weeks.
Was served this blind, thought it was a lower tier entry level champagne (on par with the weaker big houses like Piper or Lanson). It’s a poor value proposition.
Agree with the note that this wine is bizarrely sweet.
Isn’t this pretty typical of domestic sparkling wines, most are more expensive than NV Champagne counterparts, and deliver a different experience.
There are some nice examples, but they generally have a historical pedigree and also have built a sustainable cost structure around bottle age vs. release and the holding costs that incurs…Roederer, Domaine Carneros, Schramsberg, Iron Horse all on the “higher end” competing with NV Champagne and having later disgorged offerings to boot.
Sure, I’d expect an upward trend on all Rhys wines as they learn process, site, vines mature, etc. I also expect a reasonable baseline for new initiatives that bare the Rhys label, or it should be declassified.
The '15 Bearwallow Chardonnay is well reviewed on Cellartracker. While I haven’t had that wine, in my naiveté I was expecting a reasonably complex Rhys chard with bubbles and more influence from lees. This was nothing like that.
There is, relatively speaking, an ocean of sparkling wine currently in production in Oregon. My assumption is that this is going to go poorly. I think it’s a bad idea that is based upon tasting room/event business models combined with having more fruit than still wine sales capacities. I’ve seen and expect to see more mediocre and expensive sparklers from up here soon.