Rhys Vineyards

Rhys Vineyards

Kevin Harvey’s Rhys Vineyards has built up a near cult like following in just a decade of releases. His bottlings of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah from both the Santa Cruz Mountains and now also the Anderson Valley in Mendocino are rightly seen as amongst the very top echelon of wines produced anywhere in the United States.

Everything about these wines speaks of attention to detail and a deep commitment to making great wine. From purchasing uncoopered staves of the finest French oak a full four years prior to cooperage, to the vast underground purpose built winemaking cellar, no detail is left to chance. In the often steep vineyards, vine density is extremely high and as a result farming is entirely manual and very labour intensive. In the winery, vinification is carried out at a micro-level in tiny 4ft square vats: fermentations are native and everything is gravity-fed without pumping, fining or filtration. In essence, the wines are given kid gloves treatment, and then aged in almost neutral French barrels, so better to promote the site specific characters of the vineyards in the portfolio.

Fortunately, as a man who made his fortune backing successful projects as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, Kevin Harvey can afford this level of detail. His passion was ignited by a bottle of Russian River Pinot which led him to experiment in his backyard up in the Santa Cruz mountains (now the Home Vineyard). Astounded by the raw potential, this soon blossomed into the hunt for a very particular type of vineyard site. Inspired by the Grand Crus of Burgundy, Kevin went in search of some of the coolest hillside sites in the region, with shallow top soils and plenty of rocks. His aim was to push Pinot Noir to its Californian limits, forcing grapes to ripen fully while retaining a natural tension and minerality, all the while at remarkably low levels of alcohol (generally the wines fall between 12% and 13.5% abv).

And what of the finished wines? Well it goes without saying, we adore them. Precise, pure flavours abound; the wines have silken mineral textures, tension, freshness, great acidity, subtle yet commanding profiles, plenty of stony earthy complexity and the transparency of truly great Pinot Noir. Needless to say, they also have plenty of propensity for ageing. They possess none of the heaviness or syrup-like textures of so many big Cali Pinots, nor do they wear you out with excessive alcohol, or reliance on oak. They taste like Premier and Grand Cru Burgundies made with a little Californian Sunshine.

A guide to the vineyards

Bearwallow & Porcupine, Anderson Valley The only vineyard the Rhys team have in the remote Anderson Valley, 100 miles north of San Francisco in Mendocino County. Purchased by Rhys in 2008, with, unusually for them, 6 acres already under vine, they promptly added a further 25 acres – vineyards that are now in full production. This end of the Anderson Valley, and the Bearwallow vineyard in particular, is the source of full yet elegant Pinot Noir that tends to have a slightly deeper fruit set and more succulence than the Santa Cruz mountains wines, and often culminates in the Bearwallow ‘sting’ – a peacocks tail of crisp minerality that brings the finish to life. Porcupine Hill, comes from a specific block of vineyard, planted at very high density, akin to the ‘Hillside’ bottlings from Alpine and Horseshoe. With the exception of their direct mailing list, this bottling is available exclusively from Justerini & Brooks. Soils – Fractured Shale and Sandstone | Distance to Ocean – 10 miles | Elevation – 385 ft.

Family Farm An east facing site that’s unlike the other Santa Cruz mountain vineyards in that its soils are alluvial, and it sits at lower altitude. Sheltered from the warmer afternoon sun, its grapes always retain freshness, while the soils provide a richness and immediate charm meaning this is often the vineyard that comes to the party first. In recent vintages, the offerings from FF have become ever more refined, with some of the power in earlier vintages translated into joyous fruit and finesse. With age, notes of herbs, forest and spice emerge, making this a wine that offers pleasure at every stage of its life.

Mt. Pajaro Mt. Pajaro is the new kid on the block and a certain future challenger to the current established top vineyards in the Rhys portfolio. Situated 30 miles south of Alpine and Horseshoe, 7 miles from Monteray Bay, in a hilly area that sees the San Andreas fault split into a smaller faults. Being the most recent planting, Mt. Along with Alpine, this is one of the iconic Rhys vineyards. The two are just half a mile from each other yet tend to produce remarkably different wines; Horseshoe tending to more minerality, impact and structure while Alpine favours seamless elegance and intensity. The Horseshoe vineyard reaches up to 1600 ft above sea level and is cooled by marine influences, including the fog, though less directly than Alpine. The soils are very shallow, the vines hitting the Monterray Shale bedrock almost immediately; an ancient sedimentary formation that is brittle and well-draining, providing low vigour for the vines and corresponding intensity in the final wines. It is planted to the same very high-density planting as Skyline and Porcupine hill, with a massale selection from the finest experimental blocks from Alpine. The wines we’ve tasted from this site are intense, complex and tightly wound at first. They show enormous promise already. Soils – Shallow clay over brown and black Mt. Pajaro Shale | Distance to Ocean – 7 miles | Elevation – 717 - 980 ft.

Horseshoe Along with Alpine, this is one of the iconic Rhys vineyards. The two are just half a mile from each other yet tend to produce remarkably different wines; Horseshoe tending to more minerality, impact and structure while Alpine favours seamless elegance and intensity. The Horseshoe vineyard reaches up to 1600 ft above sea level and is cooled by marine influences, including the fog, though less directly than Alpine. The soils are very shallow, the vines hitting the Monterray Shale bedrock almost immediately; an ancient sedimentary formation that is brittle and well-draining, providing low vigour for the vines and corresponding intensity in the final wines. Soils – Monterray Shale, Volcanic ash and limestone | Distance to Ocean – 10.5 miles | Elevation – 1310 – 1600 ft.

Alpine Vineyard A steep, precarious vineyard that is directly influenced by the Ocean’s cooling influence, often shrouded in fog, with steep slopes and a white chalky shale soils. It is only half a mile from Horseshoe and yet much cooler as a result of those direct marine influences – though unusually for a cool Califorian site, pretty much sheltered from the wind – a decisive factor in the ethereal beauty of the resulting wines. Alpine’s Pinot’s have a coiled elegant intensity about them, more floral and dark fruited than the Horseshoe bottlings, with ultra fine tannins and a laser like intensity and finish to them. The Chardonnays are salty, seamless and high definition – marine influenced yet intense yet beautifully balanced. Planted to a wide variety of clones, both heritage and ‘suitcase’, this is a a great Santa Cruz vineyard capabable of producing some of the regions most complex and sophisticated wines with plenty of hidden layers to reveal to those with patience.

Skyline The most extreme site, the highest in altitude and the vineyard planted to the highest density on the poorest and shallowest top soils, is Skyline. At times, the bedrock protrudes from the vineyard and ultra-high density planting means that it takes approximately 6 vines to make a single bottle of wine. Often painfully backward at first, it has the potential to blossom into a wine of exceptional precision with an almost exotic minerality and great intensity held within a delicate frame.


specifications

country:
USA

region:
California

Appellation

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