Ripeness of the fruit and the level of dosage, it’s the combination.
I’ve had champagne that was 10g/l and thought it was a couple of grams.
Had low dosage and thought it was Brut.
Plus - toss in the “fruity” flavor and the brain can interpret that as “sweet”. I think if NZ SB like that, it can be bone dry but taste very “sweet”.
We had a housewarming party over the weekend and popped the '15 Bearwallow sparkler with a bunch of industry friends mostly in production, and the overwhelming response was surprise to how sweet and out of balance the wine came across. As a group with many Rhys lovers there was definitely a little collective disappointment.
+1 Also disappointed by my first bottle, not a lot of cut and big and ripe out of the gate. Flabby. Maybe more time?
Yeah, perception. I’d bet everything else being the same, if they’d used a “neutral” yeast it would seem dry, but also be more austere and much less “Anderson Valley”.
It might suffer from expectation bias, but I thought it an excellent wine that speaks well of place. Like I said: It’s a wine that grew on me as I tasted it. Compelling to the degree I was drinking it, rather than spitting or dumping to free up the glass at a table with an insane number of (mostly) Rhys wines. It’s a wine for drinking, not “tasting”, so give it a chance to be what it is.
I feel like I am suffering from FOMO here. I tasted a test bottle in July at the winery, have had none since. I wish the wines would get shipped to So Cal so I can get one open and form my own impression.
I was another person who was underwhelmed. Nothing wrong with it, but a little more simple and sweet than I would have expected. I think it is particularly hard for a new world sparkling wine, as the full sensory experience of champagne is so hard wired in my head that it is hard for me to appreciate a different expression without comparing it to champagne. I don’t expect California still wines to taste like their French equivalents, but can’t help it with champagne.