Jud and Lisa were the gracious hosts for our last Tasting Group get-together. In a twist on our normal protocol where everyone brings bottles in support of a theme, Jud insisted that he had a whole set of wines already lined up that he wanted us to try with him. So, we were happy to oblige! Other than the starter Champagnes and the sweet wines that Andy brought along, these were all served double-blind, with no clues whatsoever as to what we would be served. At the end, as Jud starting revealing bottle after bottle of Rhys/Alesia, we sort of figured out what the theme was!
Starter wines (not blind):
NV Launois Pere et Fils Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Cuvee de Reserve. Our first wine of the night has an airy, fresh and herbal nose to it—featuring notes of struck match, smoke, lemon-lime zest and chalky soil. It is light and foamy in the mouth, with a creamy core of chalk and limestone minerality overlain by fleshier expressions of white peach, melon and citrus. It is a friendly and welcoming wine.
1996 Jacquesson & Fils Champagne Extra Brut Millesime. Disgorged January 2006, the bouquet here is lovely and expressive in its aromatic profile of honey, ginger, toast, lemon, beeswax, botanical herbs and pencil shavings. It takes a while for me to warm up to it on the palate, though. At first, it seems kind of taut and unyielding, maybe even a bit flat to me. But it slowly starts to reveal increasingly interesting layers of honey, copper minerality, sherry and lemon zest. The finish is rather vinous and caramelly, but still with austere overtones to it. I just think the low dosage (3.5 g/l) is not my thing, as I can’t recall anybody other than me being anything other than very happy to drink this.
Flight One:
2007 Rhys Chardonnay Alpine Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains. The aromas of hazelnuts, toasty meringue, coconut shavings, spiced pears, brown baking spices and star anise immediately had me thinking upscale Sonoma Chardonnay, though in retrospect there was no reason I should have been excluding Santa Cruz Mountains from consideration. It is a bit lighter on the palate than say a Peter Michael, Aubert or Ramey, but it has very solid structure to it and sneaky depth and density to the fine flavors of baked apples and pears, toasty oak and brown spices. It finishes silky and elegant, with a real interesting streak of salty minerality. It does seem like it could benefit from another 1-3 years in the cellar, but it nonetheless manages right now to deliver plenty of flavor and character.
2006 Rhys Chardonnay Alpine Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains. Right off the bat, this seems like it is probably the same wine but with a year or two of additional age on it. First off, it is absolutely lovely on the nose--displaying greater elegance than its flight-mate and a delightful complexity that is extremely appealing. Refined and classy aromas of sweet chalk, caramel cream, butterscotch candy, baked spiced pears, nutmeg, citrus and vanilla-tinged oak combine in a way that is greater than the sum of the parts and just works really well. It is very smooth on the palate, with a silken feel that has a certain regal but sexy quality to it. It features great length, perfect balance, a nice hint of minerality, and a lot of class to go with its distinctive power and presence. It is Grade A chardonnay all the way around and is drinking very well right now. In fact, it was my runner-up for WOTN.
Flight Two:
2006 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Chileno Valley Sonoma Coast. Our first red wine of the evening appears to be quite cloudy and murky in appearance. But it shows off a rather interesting and appealing bouquet that features aromas of raspberries, cherries and cranberries accented by rustic bits of menthol, earth and toasted orange peel that I like a lot. It it fleshy-textured and fairly creamy in the mouth, with a musky dried flower inner-mouth perfume that adds gentle complexity to the cranberry, dried cherry and rhubarb flavors. To me, it comes across as a distinctively fuzzy and funky Pinot Noir with a good deal of fun factor to it.
2005 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Chileno Valley Sonoma Coast. I have to disagree with our host (and a few others), who I know considered this to be the best and most complex wine of the flight. I was just the opposite, much preferring the two bookends over this one. For me, this is showing younger, less nuanced and considerably darker and more structured all around, starting with the nose’s profile of toasted stems, chicory, ash, menthol, jalapeno and dark red fruit. In the mouth, it comes across as more densely-weighted than the others--with blueberry and blackberry fruit combining with dark chocolate and toasty stem and green earth notes in a chewy-textured package. It is pretty good, but not my favorite profile by any means.
2004 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Chileno Valley Sonoma Coast. This one features an enticing Burgundian-styled nose, full of perfumed aromas of sappy raspberries, cherries, red flowers, tobacco leaf, leather and dried sweat. On the palate it is creamy, but showing excellent grip and concentration--making for a really appealing overall mouthfeel. The flavors of black cherry, leather and tobacco show nice complexity to go with solid fruit stuffing. Nice wine.
Flight Three:
2007 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Falstaff Road Vineyard Sonoma Coast. This is a zesty style of Pinot, with all kinds of brambly mixed berries showing some sweetness overlaid by a touch of smoke. In the mouth, it seems like one of the most obviously California-styled wines on display here—with rich and chewy blue fruit flavors supported by sweet chocolate notes. It has a great deal of concentration, some sneaky tannin, and an overt and fruit-driven personality. There’s a lot of fruit here and I suspect it will find greater nuance with a bit of additional cellar time.
2006 Rhys Alesia Pinot Noir Falstaff Road Vineyard Sonoma Coast. This wine is lighter in color, with airy aromas of brown spices, tea leaves, birch, pencil shavings and mixed blue and purple berries combining quite nicely. It shows some soft oak on the palate, along with a good deal of flavor concentration and gentle but noticeable tannins. It seems a bit musky at times, with stemmy, earthy (mushroom) tobacco flavors allied to blueberry and cherry fruit. It finishes lively and nuanced. I think it is more interesting all around than its younger sibling, which again I think puts me at odds with our host’s takeaways about this flight.
Flight Four:
2006 Rhys Pinot Noir Alpine Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains. Of all the wines on the table, this one comes across as having the most candied or confectionery notes on the nose. It feels pure, somewhat verging on decadent in its deep aromas of cherry liqueur, rhubarb and black raspberry fruit, menthol and charcoal. It is fleshy and sappy in texture on the palate, with pure but heavy and somewhat thick fruit, and just enough acidity to counter all of that. It is juicy and fully stuffed with fruit, but could use more time to settle down.
2006 Rhys Pinot Noir Alpine Hillside Santa Cruz Mountains. The bouquet here is more boisterous and less overtly sweet than in the previous wine. Here one finds notes of creosote, blackberries, black licorice and shaved wood in a sort of meatier style. On the palate, it is rather big-boned—with a blast of blue and purple fruit bursting forth until the waves of tannin come in and make for a much drier, chunkier-styled finish. Overall, it is rather primary and rough-hewn right now and the tannins need time to integrate. I’d stash this one away for some time.
2006 Rhys Pinot Noir Swan Terrace Alpine Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains. This wine shows a lot of cherry syrup, raspberry licorice, dates and quince paste aromas--but with more of an earthy underpinning in its notes of ash, dirt and white pepper. It feels pure and blueberry-fruited in the mouth, with a full body and a robust texture that lasts through the mid-palate but is again curtailed on the finish by an intrusion of big aggressive tannins. Sounding like a broken record, I would hold off on this one, as well. Indeed, this whole flight was a bit of a challenge to drink right now—let’s see what happens in another two years or so.
Flight Five:
2007 Rhys Pinot Noir Family Farm Vineyard San Mateo County. The first bottle of this was CORKED, so Jud quietly slid down to the cellar and replaced it for us. The second bottle, still fairly cold from the cellar, doesn’t seem to want to blossom for us aromatically just yet—only hinting at fine floral notes, earth, dark cherries and blueberries. In the mouth, it is showing rigid and taut, with tight-grained wood notes and a rather vibrant streak of acidity guiding the mixed fruit flavors. This seems like it has some very nice class and distinction, with more polished tannins than any of the three wines from the previous flight. However, it is just difficult to get much more of a read on it than that at this time.
2004 Rhys Pinot Noir Family Farm Vineyard San Mateo County. Everybody at the table is really digging this seductive wine a lot! It features beautifully complex aromas of leather, clean horsebarn, menthol/wintergreen, tobacco leaf, toffee, chalk dust and dry soil atop dark red fruit. Then, in the mouth, it is cool, layered and fairly Old World-styled, with a leather and jalapeno edge to the finely-balanced fruit and acidity. It is complex, resolved, thought-inducing and just generally drinking at peak, I would have to say. This was the easy Wine of the Night.
Flight Six:
2005 Rhys Alesia Syrah Falstaff Road Vineyard Sonoma Coast. Everything up to this point has clearly been Pinot Noir, but this is obviously Syrah. It smells meaty, chewy and primary—with notes of black cherry, spiced meat, dark earth and toasted grape stems. It is inky dark in the mouth, with a raw density of fruit concentration giving it a forceful nature but hardly any nuance. It is just primary black fruit and black earth, with maybe some dark unsweetened chocolate in the background. I really don’t care for it right now, and I really can’t predict what the future may hold, either.
I guess my few big takeaways would be 1) Rhys Chardonnays are very good indeed; 2) My favorite wines in just about every instance were the older wines (especially the 2004s)—leading me to recommend that people with similar palates let these wines age a while for maximum reward; 3) The 2006 Rhys Alpine series of wines in particular are in need a lot of additional cellar time; and 4) I just don’t think I like Alesia Syrahs very much (based on this and cumulative past experiences). But overall, this is an impressive California Pinot producer with a wide range of expressive styles and is worthy of this kind of in-depth exploration. My thanks to Jud for conceptualizing the tasting and inviting us all along on the journey!
Sweet wines (not blind):
1987 Domaine des Baumard Quarts de Chaume. The nose is showing some elements of mineral and herbs at first, eventually folding in sweeter bits of lemon peel, wax candy, toasted orange peel and dried mango. In the mouth, it feels a tad light—not especially viscous or even all that sweet. Flavors of citrus, clover honey and minerality are perfectly pleasant but neither racy and lifted nor unctuous and rich—kind of leaving it feeling a bit flat at times to my tastes. Again, I do like the flavors, but it just seems to lack distinction and I’m sure it isn’t likely to be getting any better.
1981 Hopler Trockenbeerenauslese Noble Reserve. This wine is much darker in color, taking on a sort of caramel tint. It is decidedly thick on the nose--with its exotic aromas of quince paste, caramel, lime rind, dried apricots, marmalade, yellow raisin, honey and sweet chutney. In the mouth, I like it even better—where it gives up all kinds of yellow raisin, molasses, dark honey, brown sugar, caramel, iced tea and toasted almond flavors that are unctuous and sweet but supported by a little twang of acidity that stays pretty far in the background. This was a very nice cap-off to a great evening.
-Michael