Merging threads
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As a long time list member of the RM mailing list, but primarily focused on the reds (I’ve always ordered all offered). I guess it’s time to explore their whites.
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I’ll chime in to second and third that they are really nice and a good value. Sweet spot on the full/lean scale for me.
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Thieriot and Purrington Rued
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Here’s some of my takes…
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2019 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Platt Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (9/5/2021)
Such crystalline pureness…rich, yet JACKED with cut…the tropical, white peach fruits are in perfect ripeness…candied pineapple, waxy texture, with a tremendous nervy citrus vein in it. Pretty white flower, lime blossom florals…crushed limestone salinity…nice use of subtle barrel spice, flint strike…really expressive as it warms from fridge temps…incy wincy bite of alc on the long long seductive finish. More intense in everything than the Purrington Rued, which is not necessarily a better thing, as I found the PR just about perfection in balance. Just another amazing Chard from RM! (96 pts.) -
2019 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Purrington Rued - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (3/31/2021)
This wine is TREMENDOUS!!! I wasn’t going to post a note because I’m too busy with some stuff…but with only 2 bottles, now one, I just had to! Will, or is it TRB, in their release letter is SO spot on for this wine! First off…it’s SO pure and crystalline in its fruit…white peaches, green apple, lemon/limes…it seems tropical, but it is a “mild” tropical, in that there is so much crushed rock minerality that it becomes a nuance…there is candied fruits, I like the salted pineapple call…yet there is a HUGE cut of lemon/lime citrus that puckers the Tbuds…so much purity and creaminess…exotic, yet plush with weightlessness and class. Just love the tangerine I get in this ala post 10 Coche, and the cold wet slate and crushed rock salinity…punchy cleansing citrus…slight match strike…exotic florals…wood spice…WOW WOWOWOWOWO! Love this wine! (98 pts.) -
2017 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay B. Thieriot Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (1/9/2020)
Sometimes you need a little richness and spice in your life! A nice change of pace after drinking tons of white burgs…rich and bright, full bodied, golden orchard fruits…spiced up very generously with oak barrel, white pepper, and candied ginger honey. Full bodied and creamy, wherther’s candy, in the mouth…YET…VERY CUT with super intense lemon and pineapple citrus…crushed geology giving it a solid structure and salinity…pretty white blossom florals and a nuanced smoke reduction that reminds me of pycm. Such a big wine, like a “with everything” baked potato…yet SO chiseled and cut…not flabby in the least! Should gain even more through the next decade. +pts (94 pts.) -
2016 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Sonoma Coast - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (4/23/2018)
What a difference a bottle makes! First off, kudos to Will and RM customer service as the last bottle we had was corked, noted it in CT, and received a note from Will that they want to replace the bottle. It’s actions like this that makes me enjoy their product even more so than just the delicious juice! Tonights bottle, actually the third one we’ve opened, is the rock star that I’ve come accustomed to since the 2012 vintage! Even better integrated than that first bottle we had right off the truck…killer subtle smoke reduction, vanilla barrel spice, dried honey…creamy and ripe yellow pitted fruits with a good vein of citrus…bright and vibrant, shimmering gold…little tropical dried pineapple…pretty white flower florals, and saline mineral crunch. Really well rounded…reminds me of a young Coche village! Love it! (94 pts.)
Posted from CellarTracker
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Will, if you’re following this thread, any chance for a sneak peak at the release notes?
(Since Carlisle hit a day early, I guess I’m getting greedy.)
Winter 2022
God bless white wines (and one Pinot) for the 2020 vintage. This will be it for the vintage year. We harvested most everything in 2020 but quickly realized as we began tasting that red wines really suffered from the smoke impact of the mid-August fires. We did notice varying levels that in the end are linked to proximity to the actual fires, picking date and vineyard elevation. Those factors saved Bearwallow for instance, making it our one red wine from the vintage. The northern most Sonoma Coast plus Anderson Valley appear to be spared in 2020 from real smoke damage. Everything we brought in from Occidental/Freestone showed poorly at pressing so we quickly bulked out anonymous lots of Sonoma Coast as soon as the wines finished malo. Cabernets followed quickly, and instead of being tempted to prolong our agony in watching and evaluating these lots, everything went out the door by the end of February. In lesser vintages, it is easy to declassify lots into appellation wines at lower prices but actually bottling a flawed wine and asking for less money feels like a bad long term brand strategy. The Chardonnays however saved the day in 2020. Given how white wines are made, we’ve seen no smoke impact in these lots since they were pressed. At harvest, we shortened our press cycles to minimize any hard press going into these wines. The result are wines that are very refined for a warm vintage. They are crisp, clean, lean more toward the middle point between citrus and tropical and have a ton of palate impact, no doubt provided by the very small crop.
The Six White Wines and One Red
2020 Rivers-Marie Chardonnay Sonoma Coast—270 cases
In 2020, we returned the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay to a combination of all vineyard sites we harvested. This included a new vineyard in the Occidental Ridge Vineyard neighborhood just east of Occidental called Chouette that we hope to make a consistent piece of this bottling for years to come. Chouette is planted 100% to the Montrachet clone of Chardonnay which has proven to be a good match with Riddle’s Wente clone vines. Where Riddle is citrus and mineral tinged, Chouette shows a little more weight and leans closer to brioche and stone fruits. The two combine to create a very complete Sonoma Coast bottling that is the most open knit of the 2020 lineup right now. Once again this wine was aged in 0% new oak, obtaining all of its richness and palate impression from site and vintage only.
2020 Rivers-Marie “Bearwallow Vineyard” Chardonnay Anderson Valley—135 cases
This wine shows how well the Anderson Valley fared in 2020. There is a completeness here that helps it stand out in the lineup. Tasting this wine today, you wouldn’t know there was any trauma out there for this vintage. In the past, the Bearwallow Chardonnay bottlings have primarily featured a yellow-tinged, tropical banana quality that made them easy blind tasting targets when we would open an entire vintage to taste. The 2020 is a much more multi-dimensional wine leaning more to apple/pear and riding a nice middle ground of equal parts tropical and citrus. The acidity is what you notice first, preserved by the warm year, followed by an openness showcasing all those perfectly ripe fruit flavors.
2020 Rivers-Marie “Joy Road Vineyard” Chardonnay Sonoma Coast—90 cases
Joy Road feels like it is becoming more and more consistent every year. It’s been hard to pin down the vineyard signature over the 7 or so years we have sourced fruit from this tiny parcel west of Occidental. In 2020, it is pretty exuberant reflecting the overarching vintage characteristic. All the fruit notes here lean to tropical but with bracing acidity to give the wine balance and present the wine more as exotic than overblown. This, like the Sonoma Coast, is very open right now, unusual for Joy Road. Maybe we finally picked this in its sweet spot, no doubt aided by the dueling factors of a warm year with a small crop and a site well situated to survive those vintage conditions. The fruit profile contains guava, ripe peaches, tangerine, salted pineapple but all buffered by a lemon zest/brulee undercurrent that helps to pull out and prolong the finish. There’s also a nice textural component on the finish that provides just enough scratchiness to add complexity. With only 4 barrels produced, we didn’t have a lot of options for new oak so we went with one new Louis Latour barrel that also helps with the citrus/mineral side of Chardonnay’s expression.
2020 Rivers-Marie “Purrington Rued Vineyard” Chardonnay Sonoma Coast—105 cases
In looking to expand our Chardonnay production, we doubled our footprint in this 50+ year old Sonoma Coast site. Given the vintage though, we made a little less 2020 than we did in 2019. Try as we may, we can’t seem to make more than 4 barrels of Purrington Rued. This wine right now I’d call medium expressive. When we sat down to taste all the Chardonnays post-bottling, this was somewhere in the middle as to what you’d expect from the vineyard site. Like Platt and Thieriot, this wine seems to be a little inward leaning and more vertically built in 2020. There are some nice exotic fruit notes on the palate and nose which indicate clone but there are also mineral/savory elements of lemon oil, slate, sage, chalk and mint. The combination of yield and vine age has built an incredibly packed Chardonnay from Purrington Rued in 2020, one that feels like it may need a couple years to unwind.
2020 Rivers-Marie “Platt Vineyard” Chardonnay Sonoma Coast—135 cases
Given the heat of the vintage, there’s not much botrytis to speak of in our two most coastal sites of Platt and Thieriot. That honeyed character I think is usually what separates Platt from the pack aromatically every year. Here the nose is much more spice focused with hints of mint, white pepper, chalk and chamomile. There are some white flower notes in there too which are quickly followed by a wave of high toned citrus fruits, lemon oil and tangerine zest being the most prominent. Like in all years, the natural acidity is what best balances the wine providing cut and focus for the very long, mouthwatering finish. There’s a tiny saline-tinged element at the very end that hints at the site’s proximity to the coast.
2020 Rivers-Marie “B. Thieriot Vineyard” Chardonnay Sonoma Coast—140 cases
If I gave a slight nod to Platt in 2019, I’d say Thieriot has once again taken its place as the crown jewel of our Chardonnay lineup in 2020. It’s a more inward focused edition right now but with some coaxing all the salty minerality begins to emerge along with orchard and stone fruits, lemon curd, honeycomb and white flowers. Being a low botrytis year out on the coast, there’s more of the sea spray/oyster shell quality creeping in on the finish with citrus blossom, mint and chamomile creating an intense inner mouth perfume. The completeness of the wine is what probably most sets it apart from the other wines, no easy feat in 2020, and a testament to the greatness of this site.
2020 Rivers-Marie “Bearwallow Vineyard” Pinot Noir Anderson Valley—195 cases
I should have started this mailer more specifically with thank goodness for Bearwallow. If there has ever been a debate about the value of geographic diversity, it has been answered in the affirmative with this wine in 2020. At barrel down, this was so much better than all the other Pinots we attempted to make. This wine was harvested September 10th and I don’t think any smoke had made it to the deep end of the Anderson Valley at that point. Given the warmth of the year, the fruit here is a bit darker than years past, leaning more toward black cherry, plums and dark currants. There is the usual Anderson Valley wildness on the palate with roasted herbs, black tea, loamy earth, sandalwood and violets. The tannins are firm but well integrated adding a warm, spicy note to the finish.
The Future
Due to the extraordinary circumstance of the year, we are going to release the 2021 Pinots early. That mailer will drop the third Tuesday of July in place of the usual Cabernet release. Not only does 2021 mark a return to the lofty qualitative levels of 2018 and 2019 but the vintage was also bountiful combining strong yields for existing sites and the emergence of two new Pinot vineyards, Bodega Thieriot and Joy Road. As much as we’ve tried to limit the number of SKUs, you will see a couple new bottlings in July. We then will release 2021 Chardonnays in January 2023 followed by the return of Cabernet July 2023. Hopefully everything then returns to normal the following release cycle. Not trying to look too far ahead but very excited to see the 2021 wines to bottle, quality looks extraordinary especially on the Sonoma side.
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Thanks, Will!
Are you guys bottling the 2021 Pinots earlier than usual or are you just offering them for sale earlier?
Waiting for the offering like 
Wow, small offering that should go quick. Likely a break for me but if I was a buyer I’d move in quickly
i took all the chards (not all of them, just the ones offered to me). asked for more SC’s.
order in, kept it to 10 since I over ordered on Carlisle yesterday.
Thanks Will!!
Order in for a case, low allocations.
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All in 18 bottles.
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Order in…don’t think I have ever purchase this many whites vs reds at one time. Looking forward to venturing out of my normal buy.
Order in. Left some for others.
Ordered a case. It says ground included, but there is $60 ‘delivery’ fee. Anyone know what that is?
There is a legacy piece of verbiage from the Cab offer I’m trying to root out. Shipping is $4/btl in CA, $5/btl out of CA, as it has been for awhile on this offer.
Thanks, Will. You are the gold standard for customer service. Certainly didn’t stop me from ordering!
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Ditto