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  • Country ranking ?

    394
  • Producer ranking ?

    7
  • Decanting time

    2h
  • When to drink

    now-2025

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The Story

Rhys Vineyards is, together with Ridge Vineyards and Mount Eden Vineyards, the stars of the Santa Cruz Mountain appellation. The company was founded by Kevin Harvey, who in 1995 planted a tine vineyard with Pinot Noir on his property and a few years later started to make some wines in his garage. The first commercial vintage was 2003, and since then production has increased over the years. In 2006 Jeff Brinkman was hired as winemaker. In 2009 ...

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Vintage 2009

Napa 2009 Vintage Report   “We consider the vintage 2009 was the start of a three year cooling cycle (2009, 2010, 2011) that ended with the 2012 vintage.  If We look at the big picture of the decade We see warming each year from 2006, 2007 and then 2008.  2009 then started a cooling cycle where the vintages were progressively cooler and wetter. Out of these vintages the 2011 was the coolest and wettest. We are pleased to see the vintage 2012 i...

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Latest Pro-tasting notes

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Written Notes

The Apline Vineyard, planted in 2001 to 2003 at 380 to 450 meters elevation in the Santa Cruz Mountains, is a cool site with a thin, stony and well drained sandstone and slate soil with traces of limestone. It’s no wonder why the wine have such a structure and fine mineral notes – it’s almost like a part of the juice was fermented in stainless steel tanks. It isn’t. After a slow whole cluster pressing and settling of the juice, it’s completely fermented in French oak casks from François Frères (the oak at Rhys Vineyard is always air dried for four years), 25 percent new, in which the wine have spent 14 months, and even though the wine is fully malolactic, the acidity is fresh. It’s a remarkable chardonnay, medium full bodied but still extremely elegant, with just a texture rather than flavor from the oak. The aftertaste is long, very elegant and absolutely dry. In many ways it reminded me of the wines of David Ramey, Mark Aubert and Steve Kistler. I kept the opened bottle and tasted it the day after, just to see how it developed with air, and as I expected, it tasted just fine, almost even dryer and more burgundian!
  • 94p
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Information

Origin

Santa Cruz Mountains, California
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