Posted from CellarTracker
Interesting! You mentioned brett - YES! My experience with this wine was mostly flawed, undrinkable bottles - I believe they were recalled by the winery.
I still have 4 bottles of other Rhys 09’s (as well as earlier vintages) I am holding for long term consumption.
I find myself pretty brett averse, but this one was still drinkable. I had read some of the reviews and remember when they first came out there was an issue.
I still have two bottles of this.
Back when the brett issues in the 2009 FF were clearly identified, Rhys said they’d swap them out for you, but would also let you just keep them and see how they turned out, and replace or credit bottles that turned out to be bad. Which was a fantastic policy, very much in line with how Rhys always treats its customers.
Having said that, now this many years later, I know some people on the board would call me a bad person if I were to email Rhys and say my 2009 wine isn’t good and I’d like a credit for it. I mean, people were pretty aggressively backing a retailer’s 30 or 60 day return policy on corked wines.
Hopefully my bottles are good and I don’t have to make that decision.
My experience with this wine is that it was hit or miss on the brett. The bad ones were quite bad, the good ones, quite proper Family Farms. I never did request that refund.
Drinking an '09 Swan Terrace as I type. May be nearing its peak, but delicious!
I checked in on one of these last Friday. Brett was there. It wasn’t terrible. The bottle was consumed. I think I’ve had 2 bottles that I didn’t notice the Brett on. The rest have shown it, but all have been drinkable.
Cheers,
fred
To y’all in this thread, when you’re referring to the Brett in this wine, was it barnyard, band-aid, or something else?
I have two bottles as well, and haven’t decided what to do with them. My guess is that Rhys still has the same position and will swap for something else if they are flawed. It’s not like they are going to sell them (or would ever have done so) if you returned them.
I would say barnyard. Though I drank mine pretty early (2013-16), and I guess brett, like wine, can vary from bottle to bottle and change over time. To my taste, on the bottles where I detected the brett at all (and there was one where I did not), it added to rather than detracting from the experience – a little barny note on a wine that also showed great fruit and earth.
– Matt
I had two of these left, and opened one on Friday. The first bottle has a medium level of brett showing, not probably to the extent I would have found that to be a big negative (though others might have), but then the wine just wasn’t showing well. Dark, herbal, slightly spritzy when opened, then heavy on the finish. Had kind of a Jagermeister type flavor to it. I gave it several hours in a decanter to see if it would improve, but it did not. I wonder if it had a touch of secondary fermentation in the bottle?
So I pulled the last one out, figuring it’s either better, or it’s the time just to clear it out of storage. The second bottle had a low-medium level of brett on the nose, but the wine was markedly different. Redder, crisper, spicier. I don’t think it was a stronger wine as far as Rhys SVDs go, but it was pretty good, and I enjoyed it well enough. I think the brett-averse would have probably disliked it, but I was okay with it at that level. Maybe the contrast with the bad first bottle helped it look better by comparison.
I also had two of these bottles and just opened the first one. I wasn’t sure what to expect. My experience matches Chris’ description of “dark, herbal, slightly spritzy” with some brett, plus an (unwelcome) stewed fruit finish. I’m hoping that my second bottle shows more like Chris’ second bottle.
