2007 Family Farm Vineyard Pinot Noir

Deep red. Ripe cherry and dark berries on the nose, with dried rose and black cardamom notes gaining power with air. Deeply concentrated cherry and dark berry flavors are surprisingly nervy and focused, with a sweet floral pastille quality lending complexity. The finish is spicy, focused and very persistent, leaving sweet cherry preserve notes behind.

Under the flagship Rhys moniker, the Rhys 2007 Pinot Noir Family Farm Vineyard looks to be a brilliant Pinot Noir from clay/loamy soils and sandstone. This Pinot exhibits intense red cherry and black raspberry fruit intermixed with some damp earth and forest floor notes. The wine is medium to full-bodied, elegant, pure, and just hinting at its ultimate potential. Backward, with an attractive acid profile, and sweet, noble tannin, this wine should hit its peak in about 3 years and last for at least a decade. Rhys Vineyards produces very ambitious wines from vines planted in specific sites in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They use their second label, Alesia, for purchased fruit. At the conclusion of my tasting notes, I will list the other wines I tasted but which were all in such microscopic quantities (under 150 cases) that it is almost impossible to latch on to a few bottles unless you are on the mailing list. The vineyards are generally tightly spaced (2 by 3 feet for Pinot Noir and 4 by 3 feet for Syrah), and the clonal selections are multiple in order to hopefully achieve more complexity and nuance. This is an impressive, well thought out operation, believing, certainly with Pinot Noir, in whole clusters, no racking, and a minimal, artisinal approach to winemaking. The yields are naturally very small because of the terroirs, rootstocks, and clones, and the wines are made to age. Tel. (866) 511-1520