2013 Rhys "Horseshoe Vineyard" Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay

The 2013 Horseshoe Vineyard bottling of chardonnay from Rhys Vineyards is really starting to reach its plateau at nine years of age and is drinking splendidly. The deep and precise nose offers up scents of pear, a hint of pineapple, paraffin, lilacs, a superb base of soil tones, citrus peel and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, bright and soil-driven in personality, with a fine core of ripe fruit, bouncy acids and lovely length and grip on the complex finish. This comes in at 13.5 percent octane in this vintage and is a pretty ripe interpretation of this terroir, but it has that lovely spine of acidity one finds in the Santa Cruz Mountains and still has plenty of life ahead of it.