2014 & 2018 Rhys "Home Vineyard" & "Home Vineyard" Pinot Noir Tasting Lot

“The 2014 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard is one of the most polished, refined wines of the year at Rhys. Sweet floral notes and the 100% whole clusters give the 2014 its aromatic presence, salinity and overall nuance. Sweet red cherry, blood orange and white pepper add life through the mid palate and into the finish. Although the 2014 will be even better with bottle age, its grace and pure refinement are very much evident today. Although young, the 2014 has room to grow. (AG) 95+” (07/2016)

“The 2014 Home Vineyard cuvée of pinot noir from Rhys is a tad lower in octane than the Anderson Valley bottlings, coming in at 13.2 percent alcohol in this vintage. The wine is absolutely beautiful aromatically, offering up an utterly classic bouquet of black cherries, sweet dark berries, woodsmoke, dark soil tones, incipient notes of cola, fresh thyme and cedary wood. On the palate the wine is deep, pure, full-bodied and nascently complex, with a lovely core, fine-grained tannins, good acids and fine length and grip on the focused and very promising finish. This is more overtly black fruity in personality than the single vineyard bottlings from Anderson Valley, and though the acids here are very good, it is not quite as vibrant as those two wines. A lovely bottle in the making, but quite different in personality than the pinots from Mendocino and the Santa Cruz Mountains (as it should be!), as the lovely soil tones here play more of a supporting role than in the wines from those other two regions in 2014. Give this some extended time in the cellar to allow the tannins to fall away a bit and the textural polish to catch up with the aromatic fireworks. Drink between 2022-2050. 92+” (08/2016)

“From a hillside site, the backwards, structured 2014 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard offers lots of minerality as well as notes of scrub brush, resinous herbs, spring flowers and assorted red and black fruits. It has serious tannin, yet also beautiful mid-palate depth, purity of fruit and length. (JD) 91+” (10/2016)

“The 2018 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard is bright, punchy and so expressive. Black cherry, plum, leather, cedar, menthol and licorice infuse the 2018 with striking darkness and an element of sepia-toned mystic beauty that is compelling. Ample in feel and broad, with striking energy, the Home Vineyard Pinot is such a complete wine. (AG)” (09/2020)

“The 2018 Pinot Noir Home Vineyard comes from the northern sector of the Santa Cruz Mountains and has a complex, earthy bouquet of black cherry and raspberry fruits as well as notes of forest floor, new leather, and spice. More floral and sassafras notes develop with air, and this medium to full-bodied beauty has an incredibly seamless texture and a great finish. It has plenty of structure, but it’s buried under the fruit at this point.” (09/2020)

“The 2018 Home Vineyard cuvée of pinot noir from Rhys is beautifully expressive on both the nose and palate this year. The bouquet jumps from the glass in a refined mix of black raspberries, black cherries, bitter chocolate, incipient notes of cola, dark soil tones, notes of sweet stems from the whole clusters, exotic spice tones and a touch of new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex and perfectly balanced, with a lovely core of fruit, great soil undertow, fine-grained tannins and a long, vibrant and very classy finish. This is stellar. (JG) 93+” (06/2020)

“A more obviously floral-suffused nose of spicy red and dark pinot fruit is trimmed in evident wood and menthol nuances. The lavishly rich and overtly powerful flavors possess excellent mid-palate density and plenty of power that really builds on the long, raspy and borderline rustic finish. This is a very serious wine that is clearly built for the longer haul, which in this case means a decade plus of cellaring. *Outstanding*” (10/2020)

“This wine is grown on a 1.57-acre (0.63-ha) vineyard of mass-selected vines at 450 ft (135 m) elevation. The vineyard has an 18% slope and is an amphitheatre that wraps around to offer sun exposure from the north-east to the south-west. The soils are decomposed Whiskey Hill claystone. Arresting scents of fresh flowers and raspberries. Beautifully seamless in the mouth with raspberry, dusty earth, thyme and dried lavender notes shot through with brilliant, filigreed acidity. Faint tannins are quite fine-grained and powdery. There's an effortlessness to this wine that is instantly disarming … Phenomenal. 18.5/20 points (AY)” (10/2020)