The 2016 Pinot Noir Alpine Vineyard is another head-turner and offers complex red fruits, white flowers, pepper, and floral notes as well as incredible balance and purity on the palate. About as seamless as they come, it’s medium to full-bodied, has a layered texture, and a great finish. As with most of these 2016s, it has some accessibility today, yet it’s going to age gracefully on its balance and overall harmony.

The 2016 Pinot Noir Alpine Vineyard is aromatically extravagant, even at this early stage, bursting from the glass with notes of cinnamon, orange rind, nutmeg, cherries and raspberries. On the palate, it's full-bodied, ample and multidimensional, with rich structuring tannins, succulent acids and lovely purity and precision, concluding with a fragrant, transparent finish. The 2016 was vinified with 33% whole cluster and matured in 45% new oak. A few days before my tasting with Brinkman and Harvey, I drank a bottle of the 2012 Alpine Pinot Noir from my own cellar, and the common thread of aromas and textures that connected the older vintage with the younger was striking testimony to the distinctiveness of this terroir.- WK

The 2016 Pinot Noir Alpine Vineyard is seamless in the way it floats on the palate. Bright and intensely perfumed, the Alpine is marked by its deeply-pitched aromatics and overall finesse, all of which give it a feeling of total sophistication. Today, I find the Alpine even more compelling than it was from barrel. Time in the glass brings out the wine's silkiness and overall allure. Alpine was the lowest yielding site for Rhys in 2016. -- Antonio Galloni