2016 Rhys Vineyards Alesia Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains 750 ml

From Backyard Beginnings to World Class Winery

“Comparisons to the best estates in California are increasingly less relevant,” says Vinous’s Antonio Galloni. “Rhys is world class. It's as simple as that.” Thanks to low yields and off-the-chart demand, the wines are impossible to come by save if you’re on the mailing list.

Impossible, except for today. The satiny, impeccably balanced Pinot Noirs of Rhys Vineyards are, in the opinion of some critics, the best in the New World. Founder Kevin Harvey discovered a viticultural goldmine in his backyard, and the wines skyrocketed into notoriety; Burghound gave a Rhys bottling the highest score the site ever granted to a Pinot Noir made outside of Burgundy.

This 2016 is an incredible value from a winemaker whose bottles can go up against Gevrey-Chambertin and Vosne-Romanée. Delicately floral, graceful but weighty, it’s just beginning to unwind its high-toned beauty, but could easily age another 5-10 years. Buy as much of this as you can—that’s what every Pinot Noir lover and collector will be racing to do.

The Rhys story embodies the kind of serendipity that leads other winemakers to shake their heads and utter a string of curses. Kevin Harvey, a brilliant, Texas-born software entrepreneur who fell hard for red Burgundy, planted Pinot Noir in his own backyard in California and within years was minting some of the best Pinots in California. Aptly now referred to as Home Vineyard, the site happened to fall in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on steep, rocky slopes with poor, thin soil. The air was dry, the sun warm, and the wines fantastically expressive of a minerality that is Pinot’s signature in Burgundy and rarely found in California. Harvey expanded to other vineyards—he now has seven estate sites, selected with the same critical eye for terroir—and his winery has become a cult favorite and critical smash hit.

Of course, it wasn’t just lucky terroir that made Rhys a huge success. From early on, Harvey was a dedicated proponent of organic practices in the vineyard, sparing no expense or labor on farming. His goal is to surround the vines with thriving, almost self-reliant biodiverse ecosystems that naturally limits potential adverse affects to the vine and allows for perfectly ripe fruit. No pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides have been used in over 15 years, further promoting this biodiversity and leading to healthy, balanced grapes. Irrigation is employed sparingly, as is compost (which he makes on site), which naturally limits yields, giving greater concentration to the flavors in the berries.

He, like the great winemakers of Burgundy, feels that by the time the grapes go into the tank, the die has already been cast. What’s left to human winemakers is simply not to mess it up. Relying on one-ton tanks for tight control of tannin extraction giving the wine a silken texture, with use of whole clusters for a rich core of fruit, and maturation in François Frères barrels, adding complex baking spice and integrated vanilla aromas.

The 2016 Santa Cruz Alesia Pinot Noir includes four vineyard sites—Rhys’ Alpine, Horseshoe, Pajaro, and Family Farm sites—-offering a blend of the virtues of each site and a snapshot of the 2016 vintage, whose warm spring and perfectly scripted growing season led to a low-yield crop of gorgeously silky but well-structured wines. This cuvée, in particular, captures the succulence, tension, and prettiness for which Rhys is famed. Today’s offer is a coup for us and one we could not be more excited to share.