2021 Rhys Vineyards Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains 750 ml

At this point, there’s consensus: Rhys makes some of the greatest Pinots on Earth.  

“Rhys has more than solidified its place at the apex of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay production in California,” wrote Matthew Luczy of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Legendary critic Jancis Robinson said they produce “some of the most ambitious Pinot Noir being made anywhere in the world.” To bring all the praise up to date, Vinous’s Antonio Galloni crowned Rhys his 2023 Winery of the Year.

The 2021 Rhys Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains shows off Rhys’s Pinot Noir acumen in one of their most accessible bottles. Grown on Rhys’s estate vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains—they have six of them, this one comes from the Horseshoe, Alpine, and Mt. Pajaro sites—it’s a beautiful example from a rugged region quickly gaining fame as one of the world’s best for Pinot Noir. 

The winery started small: In 1995, proprietor Kevin Harvey’s love for great white and red Burgundies inspired him to plant 35 heritage- and “suitcase”-clone vines behind his home in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which stand between Silicon Valley and the Pacific. The vines grew to become a quarter acre, producing enough wine to vinify in the garage. The idea got even bigger. 

Kevin was convinced his Santa Cruz Mountains home near the San Andreas fault—where colliding tectonic plates have surfaced an incredible range of soils—held unlimited potential, so he sought out more sites. Now he has five Santa Cruz Mountains vineyard clustered on the peninsula south of San Francisco. Plus, in 2010, he planted Mt. Pajaro, an abandoned apple orchard on the southern end of the AVA, 70 or so miles south of the winery and just seven miles from the Pacific. 

Rhys’s methods are as remarkable as their sites. In their modern 30,000 foot facility dug into the hillside off of Alpine Road, the harvested fruit is unloaded into a 40-degree room. All grapes are hand-sorted and gravity-fed into small tanks in a painstaking process that ensures that only the very best fruit makes the cut, then is handled as gently as possible. The resulting wines are some of the finest made in California, bar none.