2015 | Rhys Vineyards | Porcupine Hill Pinot Noir

The 2015 Pinot Noir Porcupine Hill Bearwallow Vineyard is a particular success in this vintage, opening in the glass with a lovely bouquet of black cherries and raspberries, rich spices, coniferous forest floor and subtle notions of cola. On the palate, it's full-bodied, lavish and beautifully complete, with a generous core of fruit that's framed by velvety tannins and underpinned by bright acids.

Reviews:

• Jeb Dunnuck: From the same vineyard as the Bearwallow cuvee, the 2015 Pinot Noir Porcupine Hill comes from newer, high density plantings checking in at a seriously packed 17,000 vines per hectare. It’s one of most seamless, sexy, yet still balanced and classic wines I’ve tasted from Kevin and his team. Black raspberries, framboise, rose garden, violets and loads of spice all flow to an incredibly textured, seamless, perfectly ripe Pinot Noir that has silky tannin and a great finish. The tannin quality is what really separates this cuvee from the straight vineyard release, and it’s a more polished, elegant wine that’s going to age beautifully.

• John Gilman: The portion of very densely-planted vines in Bearwallow that make up the Porcupine Hill bottling seem to have weathered the vintage very well, as there is an excellent sense of detail and future complexity presented here on both the nose and palate. Like the regular Bearwallow Pinot, this is 13.6% octane and delivers a fine, youthful nose of sappy blackberries, black cherries, espresso, a refined signature of dark soil tones, cola, singed earth and a touch of new wood. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and utterly seamless, with a superb core of fruit, fine-grained tannins and excellent length and grip on the very well-balanced finish. This is more polished structurally than any of the other single vineyard Pinots up to this point in the lineup.

Producer Information

Rhys Vineyards is a well-regarded wine producer based in the Santa Cruz Mountains and sourcing fruit from mountain vineyards both in the Santa Cruz Mountain AVA and the Anderson Valley AVA, some 150 miles (240km) north. The Californian estate, which established its first vineyards in the mid-1990s, focuses on three grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah. Six of the estate's vineyards are based in the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south of San Francisco. These vineyards all differ slightly in terms of terroir, particularly when it comes to soil and aspect. The soil types range from clay loam to shallow, rocky soils – all giving distinct characters in the final wines. The individual vineyards' mesoclimates are largely dependent on their aspects and degrees of slope, as each has a different exposure to sunlight and breezes from the nearby Pacific. One of the vineyards, Skyline, is one of California's highest vineyards, at an altitude of 2360ft (720m) above sea level. Rhys Vineyards make a range of single-vineyard Pinot Noirs, as well as several Chardonnay and Syrah wines. The company also has a 14-hectare (35-acre) site in Anderson Valley planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. In the winery, grapes are vinified by block in small, one-ton fermentation tanks. The grapes are treaded by foot, instead of using mechanical punchdowns or pumpovers. Rhys Vineyards uses natural yeasts for fermentation, and the wines are aged in French oak.

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