2015 San Mateo Pinot Noir

The 2015 Pinot Noir San Mateo County offers up an outgoing bouquet of ripe blackberries, plums, cola and potpourri that will be familiar to long-time followers of this cuvée. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, ample and generous, with a lavish core of fruit and fine, structuring tannins. This is the most open, fruit-driven wine in the Rhys range and it's well adapted to consumption in its youth.

Moving to the reds and the most charming and forward of the lineup, the 2015 Pinot Noir San Mateo County release is a character-filled effort loaded with notions of strawberries, pit fruits, singed herbs, leather and wild flowers. It has a slightly exotic quality, medium-bodied richness, light tannin and a beautiful finish. It’s well worth your time and money, and will drink nicely over the coming 4-5 years. This was a terrific lineup of 2015s from the team at Rhys. Across the board, these are tight and structured, with terrific concentration. Give them a few years of bottle age. Unfortunately, due to the devastating yields, there’s no Skyline Vineyard or Hillside releases in 2015s. In addition, they have a new estate vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains (bringing their total to seven estate vineyards) that will be coming on line over the next couple of years. Named Mount Pajaro Vineyard, the site was planted in 2010 and covers 18 acres in the southern part of the Santa Cruz Mountains, planted all with high density, 3.5 feet row spacing. Harvey commented that they’ve learned a lot over the past decade planting their other estate properties and they’re excited about the quality of this site.

The 2015 Pinot Noir (San Mateo County) is one of the hidden gems in this lineup, as it often is. The radiance of the vintage comes through, but the addition of 33% whole clusters adds savoriness and striking aromatic lift. Sweet red cherry, mint, rose petal and sage are some of the many notes that develop in the glass. This is another very pretty and expressive wine from Rhys. (AG)