2012 Rhys "Horseshoe Vineyard" Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir

Ruby-red. Explosively perfumed cherry-cola, dark berry liqueur, incense and mineral aromas show superb clarity and depth, with a sexy floral quality building with air. Offers palate-staining black raspberry and spicecake flavors that become sweeter and deeper with air. This rich but strikingly lithe and tensile pinot deftly plays power and depth off of vivacity and finishes sweet, youthfully tannic and extremely long. One of the most impressive Pinots I've tasted from the New World, or Burgundy for that matter, in quite a while. (ST)

The 2012 Horseshoe Vineyard bottling of pinot noir was one of the riper wines from Rhys in this vintage, coming in at 13.5 percent octane. The wine is really showing nicely on the nose at age thirteen, but is clearly still five or six years away from blossoming properly on the palate and is still a bit buttoned up behind its svelte structural chassis. The gorgeous nose wafts from the glass in a mix of black plums, dark berries, espresso, sweet stem tones, a lovely foundation of dark, stony soil tones, woodsmoke and a deft framing of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, focused and deep at the core, with excellent soil signature, ripe, buried tannins and a long, complex and beautifully balanced, young finish. This is an outstanding wine in the making, but it still needs more cellaring time to soften up properly on the backend.