2008 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast- USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (12/1/2011)
Tasted over four days. Dark garnet. Upon opening, the nose was soaring with smoke, orange peel and assorted spiced red fruit. This was juicy and fleshy for around 30 minutes and then it shut down completely. Sealed and returned a day later. More of a focused, fruit driven nose on day 2, but the spicy elements were still swirling about. The palate showed flashes of greatness with a pure, fresh mix of tart cherry and pomegranate, along with a hint of truffle, but the acid was quite nervous and racy, and it still just seemed to be missing the heights it was capable of.
The nose on day 3 is more of a perfumed, floral version of the red fruit. Just pretty and pleasant to sniff. This is singing on the palate and whispering in your ear, “sip me slowly and take it all in, even though I’m delicious and you want to gulp me down.” This is a medium bodied beauty which starts tart and bright, but precisely layers into more lush, darker fruit on the back of the palate, with just a kiss of integrated oak spice. Silky tannins accentuate the finish. The fourth day is a subdued version of day 3. The nose is still alluring, and while the wine has evolved to more of a textured, earthy Pinot Noir, the fruit still shows some tasty tart flavors.
I had this wine recently and wasn’t drinking that great. Here is note -
11/18/2011: This wine doesn’t appear to be in a good place now. Popped and poured first night and immediately had beautiful aromatics and a nice mouth feel, if not a little big and chunky. After 30 minutes it just fell off a cliff becoming very disjointed. Put a cork in it and tried again tonight, again started off fairly strong and another 30 minutes in just became undrinkable. Still have 1/3 of bottle left and will give er another try tomorrow.
Strange experience.
Didn’t get around to drinking again until night 4 and it had turned into raisin juice.
2008 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast- USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (7/28/2012)
– tasted from a half-full bottle that was uncorked approx. one hour before my taste –
– tasted a single pour non-blind over approx. 5 minutes –
To the extent others characterize this as a very fruity CA Pinot, and nothing more, I couldn’t disagree more. Sure, there is ample fruit flavors and aromas present, but I thought this wine’s presentation was more about the leather, earth, and spices than it was the fruit. Very happy to have some of this in the cellar. Drink now - 2020.
There seem to have been a lot of diverging experiences with this wine since the beginning. I’ve had it three times; one was almost undrinkably stemmy, two were much better than that but still merely okay. I’ve got one bottle left and have been hoping some more time in bottle will do the trick.
I love the Alesia label if for nothing else then to have the chance drink the Rhys team’s expression of more widely available fruit. Although I have a feeling ‘more widely available’ might be a thing of the past as well as a significant over generalization by me. But hopefully you get the point…
As a bit of an update, we did make Alesia again in 2011. Last year our estate production was down by 70% and we had much more manpower than we needed for such a tiny crop. We decided to make the best of it and bought fruit from some very interesting new vineyards. This special edition of Alesia will be different from 2004-2008.
Here is what it currently looks like we will bottle:
2011 Alesia Sonoma Coast (sourced from a better, rockier soil than our older bottlings)
2011 Alesia Coastview Vyd Chardonnay (this is still fermenting but we expect to bottle it) from a high altitude, rocky site in Monterey Cty
2011 Alesia Alder Springs Chardonnay (also from a high altitude rocky site but this one is located halfway between us and Oregon)
2011 Alesia Alder Springs Pinot
List members will not be required to buy these. Our current thinking is to release them in a separate offering on a First-Come First-Served basis.
NOSE: red/purple berries — ripe; smells simultaneously sweet and acidic; hint of cola spice.
BODY: violet-garnet color of medium depth; medium-light bodied.
TASTE: lighter mouthfeel than I was expecting, given its depth of color and ripe fruit aromas; open, playful, ripe, but not lush or overblown; casual; well-balanced; red-fruited; hints of oak and leather; quite nice; gut impression score: 89 – 91. Pork chop with herbs was a very good pairing with this wine, and I do think the wine showed better with the food than it did without.
Hi Brian,
My experience has been similar in that this wine has shown a lot of whole cluster
stem, and earth character on top of the fruit. While the stems were starting to integrate into the wine last year, they imparted a velvety, dry, earthy quality to the Pinot.
Not a sappy, fruit driven wine IMHO. FWIW, the 2007 version showed better last winter, not that there seemed to be any hurry to drink up either version.
Scott, it was not made for a while but was from 2011’s fruit. I found the 2011 Alder Springs syrah to be quite good when I had it in 2013 at the winery and will buy it when released.