5th Not Quite Annual Rhys Tasting

WINE TALK
1

Thanks to the organizational skills of Keith Levenberg, 8 of us gathered at Peking Duck House to taste the 2008 (and a couple of 2009s) lineup.

The 2009s are powerful and super concentrated, but very hard to appreciate at this time. The 2008s are also big, but with poise and elegance. My regret is not buying more of the the Skyline.

We started with the beautiful 2008 Alpine Chardonnay. It was the essence of freshness and purity. Soft, with the taste of pineapple and toasted almonds - just lovely.

Jay Miller brought a 2009 Swan Terrace and a 2009 Family Farm. The Swan Terrace was totally closed, and I kept it in my glass for the whole evening in hopes that I would get a glimpse of it. Sure enough, it started showing signs of life after a couple of hours, but it never showed much. The Family Farm was dark and brooding, with hints of dark and spicy fruit ending on a bitter note. I look forward to next year, when we get another chance to sample them.

2008 Family Farm - bright, lively wine. It showed a crispness with crunchy cranberries.

2008 Horseshoe - aromas of dark berries, mushrooms, and forest floor. Big, mouthfilling wine that kept opening up in the glass. Concentrated with big tannins and a long finish.

2008 Skyline - beautiful aromatics that jumped from the glass. The palate is more understated with dark fruit. It is polished and elegant.

2008 Home - muted, oaky nose with vanilla and spice. A powerful wine, but not overdone. It had good texture and balance.

2008 Swan Terrace - big meaty nose. Intense with bright cherries and spice.

2008 Bearwallow - this wine is a big departure from the previous bottles. The quality is there, but after experiencing the complexity of all the other wines, the simplicity of this wine was more apparent. It showed an oaky nose with strong alcohol notes and syrupy fruit.

There were a couple of Syrahs at the table, but I didn’t spend any time with them. I’m sure others can offer their assessment of them.

Tonight, I decided to open a 2007 Dujac Morey St. Denis 1er Cru tonight. Although it is a different vintage and a different part of the world, I noticed some similarity, especially to the Skyline. It was mostly in the aromatics - the Dujac also jumped from the glass, but only at first. The Skyline’s aromatics remained strong and pretty. The Dujac was so much lighter in color and body than any of the Rhys wines. It hinted at a gaminess and had a toasty quality to it. Concentrated and much more open, but not neccessarily better.

I always enjoy tasting through the latest release, and, once again, the Chardonnay shines.

2

Yikes- bummer on the Bearwallow. Great notes in general. I haven’t touched any of mine from 2007 on. I’m living vicariously through the board.

3

Were the 2009’s decanted prior?

I had them at the winery along with a few other berserkers a month ago. They were very generous and showed really well on a pop and pour; maybe they closed up with air?

4

As I recall, 2008 is the year Rhys purchased Bearwallow. I think 2009, when they controlled the vineyard, is a big step up. When I tasted the 2009 Family Farm at the pickup day, I thought it was still a bit awkward, showing the typical earthy, loamy character but also a lot of the stem inclusion. I don’t think I’ve tried the 2009 Swan Terrace, but not surprised it’s pretty tight.

-Al

5

I love the output of these tastings and think it’s a great way for a bunch of list-member-locals to pool resources and get a good look at the wines without a really high price of admission from any single cellar. Does the group here have ambitions or plans to do any retrospectives at some point in the future? A look at the inaugural wines from 15 years in or some such would be a great excuse to see how these develop (and another service to the community of solo collectors in the frontier lands [basic-smile.gif] ).

Cheers,
fred

6

Bear in mind that these comments are based on how the wines showed this evening when we’ve been warned that many of the '08s were shutting down.

I really think the Family Farm has come into its own with the '08 and '09 vintages. They had never been one of my favorites but these were showing nice complexity and earthiness. Really liked both of them.

My favorites were once again the Horseshoe and the Home. Everyone else had the Skyline up there as well but while I agreed that it had the best nose I preferred the slightly greater complexity on the palate of the Horseshoe, Home and Family Farms to the greater purity of fruit in the Skyline.

From those wines I thought it was a big step downward to the Swans which didn’t give up that much and what it did give wasn’t all that interesting. Obviously not the time to be drinking these.

The Bearwallow was perfectly drinkable (and alas, in this company, dumpable) but much more interesting as a starting point for what I expect to be a steady climb in quality now that Rhys has control of the vineyards.

The chardonnay was delightful as always. I’m liking so many of the pinots so much these days that I’ll no longer say that it’s the best wine they’re making but it’s certainly up there. I’m not quite sure what to make of the syrahs. They showed admirable complexity but were very purple and rather heavy and dense at this stage. There’s a good chance they’ll develop into something special with time but I can’t get a real read on them and they’re certainly not much fun to drink now. I guess I’ll put a few bottles away and see what happens. My favorite syrah is still the 2003 Alesia from the first release.

7

I’d neglected to set up one of these for the 2007s and as a result found that was the first year where I didn’t have a good handle on the differences among the various wines. Didn’t want to repeat that mistake, and this tasting was certainly a success on that front. My notes:

Rhys 2008 Alpine Chardonnay
I opened my other bottle a few weeks ago and it was just compulsively drinkable. My notes say “crystalline purity with the refreshment factor of a Gatorade dunk.” This bottle is at least as pure as transparent, and even more revealing of this layer of black rocky mineral underneath, but came across tighter and more tensile, which required taking smaller sips. It smells and tastes like chardonnay but it’s structured almost more like a dry riesling.

Rhys 2009 Family Farm Pinot Noir
Both of these 2009s were very austerely structured with tough, drying tannin that made it difficult to get a read on them and the stem influence still very much front and center. They also haven’t quite fully integrated the wood yet. Here it manifests as a chocolatey flavor on the entry with the fruit sweetening up and coming to the foreground only on the finish. In proportions this is more slender and elegant than the Swan but it closes down in the glass and the structure takes over.

Rhys 2009 Swan Terrace Pinot Noir
This is clearly a bulkier wine than the Family Farm, which made me prefer the former today, although they’re built pretty similarly with prominent structure and the stems here again are obvious. Here the wood manifests in more of a cedary flavor compared to the sweeter cocoa of the Family Farm, which combined with its scale gave it a kind of claretlike presence. Obviously both of these wines need some time in the bottle to sort themselves out.

Rhys 2008 Family Farm Pinot Noir
Right away it’s apparent that this is more of a finished wine than either of the 2009s. This has serious spine giving it just the right amount of tartness, but here it’s not obscuring any of the fruit, which is saturating and intense on the entry. It feels acute at first but really fans out and opens up in the mouth. At first it didn’t seem nearly as sophisticated as the Horseshoe from a structural perspective but as it sat in the glass it went a long way towards developing the Horseshoe’s caressing texture. Clearly the best Family Farm yet in my book.

Rhys 2008 Horseshoe Vineyard Pinot Noir
This apparently got Allen Meadows’ top rating in the lineup and it doesn’t take long to see why (though it’s really difficult to choose among this, the Skyline, and the Home). Right away on the entry this shows bona fide breed in its texture with a physical sensation of the wine actually caressing the palate, but don’t call this wine soft because the spine really snaps back on the finish. This is a real yin-yang kind of wine of contradictory elements really balancing each other out, breathtakingly elegant on the front end and abrupt and powerful on the back. Undoubtedly grand cru material in its physical presence even if the flavors are still basic and primary.

Rhys 2008 Skyline Vineyard Pinot Noir
Clearly the most impressive wine on the table in purely aromatic terms, and perhaps overall. This was by far the most supple wine on the table and probably the lightest in body as well, with a gentler touch than the rest. If it seems less grippy it makes up for it in elegance and transparency.

Rhys 2008 Home Vineyard Pinot Noir
Right from sip one the elegance of this wine just takes you aback despite its actually being very structured. It’s tannic but the refinement of the tannins keep impressing on every sip. It has an airiness and dimension to it as well. This has by far the fullest panoply of flavors in this lineup. In contrast with the Skyline the taste of this seems almost strangely meaty and then picks up some of the iron-like reddish rocky flavors that I remembered in the 2004. If this isn’t the best Home since then it’s certainly the most complete.

Rhys 2008 Alpine Vineyard Pinot Noir
Stemmiest and tightest wine of the bunch and the most difficult to drink, so for the most part I didn’t.

Rhys 2008 Swan Terrace Pinot Noir
Kicks it up a notch aromatically from the basic Alpine, showing more stuff and somehow seeming more finessed just from the aroma although I’m not sure how that’s possible. It’s actually the bigger wine of the two but it has a pliancy to it, not quite as tough to drink as the Alpine but not showing nearly as well as the rest of the lineup, best to let both of these sit for awhile.

Rhys 2008 Bearwallow Vineyard Pinot Noir
“Woah, California fruit, dude!” is the first thing I wrote down. Big and sweet and chocolatey. I wasn’t a fan of this one.

I don’t have notes on the syrahs except that the 2007 Horseshoe was much more open and generous than the 2008 Skyline.

8

Thanks for these notes, all.

Keith - wow, this is a first. You actually liked a few wines that I have in my cellar! [cheers.gif]

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You can count on it…

10

It’s great to see the NYC crew doing a Rhys tasting again!

As some context, the '09s are slightly more forward and middleweight compared to the '08s at the same stage. The difference in how they show today illustrates how much our wines evolve in bottle over the first year or two. For this reason, I would like to release wine later. Over the next few years, we plan to gradually move to releasing with more bottle time.

On the vineyards, we have been doing a lot of work in both Bearwallow (nursing) and Family Farm (regrafting 50% of the vineyard) and those wines will steadily improve through 2008-2010. It’s great to see that the Home showed well (if youthful) that wine was the hardest to evaluate last year but I have always considered it similar in quality to the mountain trio (Skyline, HS and Alpine). Looking forward, there is no Home in 2009 but in 2010 we will have reasonable production for the first time as the new plantings started producing. Also in 2009, we will offer our first Horseshoe Chardonnay which offers a really interesting terroir comparison with Alpine. The two vineyards are a few hundred yards apart and share the same climate but the soils/geology are completely different.
Thanks again for taking such a comprehensive look at the wines!

11

Thanks for all the great notes, guys and gals.

Kevin, why no Home Vineyard in 2009?

12

Lew,
We weren’t happy enough with the result to bottle it. With just one barrel’s worth of grapes, there is no margin of error and the '09 would not have measured up to other vintages of this vineyard.

13

Maybe there will be a $28 Rhys San Mateo? I think there’s precedent. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

14

I hear one can do amazing things with marbles these days…

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One of my favorite Monty Python’s.