As always, the 2016 Chardonnay Horseshoe Vineyard is the most masculine and mineral-driven, with an exotic bouquet of white flowers, iodine, crushed rocks, and stone fruits. Reductive, concentrated, and powerful on the palate, with medium to full-bodied richness, it’s a brilliant vintage from this vineyard and is a world-class Chardonnay in every way. It will keep for 10-15 years.

The 2016 Chardonnay Horseshoe Vineyard offers up aromas of pear, grapefruit pith, iodine and fresh nutmeg. On the palate, it's full-bodied, layered and powerful, with an elegantly textural attack and wonderful mid-palate amplitude underpinned by tangy acids, concluding with a long and stony finish. The overall impression is beautifully complete. Cellar this compelling Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay for a few years, and then follow it for the better part of a decade. - WK

The 2016 Horseshoe Vineyard Chardonnay from Rhys is again a cool and classy customer, tipping the scales at 12.6 percent octane. The nose is pure and beautifully expressive out of the blocks, wafting from the glass in a fine blend of pear, delicious apple, acacia blossoms, complex minerality, fruit blossoms and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is fullish, focused and shows excellent intensity of flavor at the core, with excellent balance and grip, lovely complexity and a long, elegant and vibrant finish. This is excellent wine.