2015 Walter Hansel Pinot Noir Cuvée Alyce
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Just as it was last year, 2015 Pinot Noir Cuvée Alyce is decidedly flamboyant. There is not a ton of subtlety here, but I am not sure that really matters much at all. The Alyce expresses all of the intensity and raciness that are such signatures of Russian River Pinots. Plush fruit and soft contours add to the wine's undeniable allure.
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Robert Parker
Antonio Galloni, Vinous
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Hansel's 2015 Pinot Noir Cuvée Alyce is super-ripe, rich and exotic, with a full-throttle expression of fruit and tons of intensity. Succulent red cherry, plum, mint and sweet spice are all pushed forward. This is one of the most flamboyant wines in the range. Readers should expect a full-throttle Russian River Pinot.
Produced primarily from Dijon cone 115, but also 777, the 2015 Pinot Noir Cuvée Alyce is another blue and red-fruit dominated wine, but with notes of rose petals and violets. It is more closed than the other Pinot Noir and seems to be almost pushing to get out of its relatively structured mouthfeel. This is intense, rich, more backward and probably has a significant upside, but will need several years of bottle age on release next year. The 2015 Pinot Noirs are still in barrel, hence these notes are all barrel samples. This was the earliest harvest for Stephen Hansel in more than a generation and the yields were frightfully low, averaging 40% off their average production that is never that high to begin with. All of these Pinot Noirs enjoy a 5-6 day cold soak and tend to see 50%-60% new oak and the rest one-year-old oak. They are set to be bottled unfined and unfiltered in November 2016.