Orders are available for pick-up at Restaurant Nicholas at 160 Route 35 South Red Bank, NJ 07701 during the following times:
Monday: 9:30-3:30; Tuesday – Friday: 9:15am – 9:00pm; Saturday: 11:00am – 9:00pm; Sunday: Closed
$30.00 $25.00
Ffter 17 years helping build Joseph Phelps into what it’s become, Bruce Neyers and wife Barbara (Chef & Manager at Chez Panisse) began Neyers Vineyards on a rocky north slope of Pritchard Hill, alongside Sage Creek.
Of course, a winery is no way to make a living so Bruce also began a gig as national sales manager for Kermit Lynch – where he had a 26-year run that left an undeniable mark on his approach to winemaking.
In those last Kermit Lynch years – it was impossible to miss the phenomenon that was coming from the Southern Rhone especially from Chateauneuf, Gigondas, & Vacqueyras. The wines were delicious and with several bountiful crops, plentiful – I dare say even affordable. Robert Parker even called them the most exciting wines of the era.
Bruce became obsessed. At the urging of several of the top winegrowers in France, Bruce and Neyers Winemaker Tadeo Borchardt began an experiment that would take nearly 25 years to perfect.
In the late 90’s, they two scoured California seeking out the top sites working with these under appreciated grape varieties. It took a few years, but eventually they had an inroad with almost everyone. Their strategy was simple. Make each vintage better than the last.
As Bruce told me – he was increasingly receiving more refined advice from a number of the French producers he worked with at his ‘day job’. Over time this led to more traditional winemaking processes, like 100% stem retention, whole cluster fermentation, oak-aging for one year in small, used barrels, and bottling with neither fining nor filtration.
For their first 20 years, each variety was bottled separately until finally in 2008, all the component parts met Bruce’s lofty vision. He began blending these slowly perfected, separate lots into a single Chateauneuf-du-Pape look-a-like. He called it Sage Canyon Red, after the location of the winery.
Out of stock
91 Points, Wine Spectator
Loaded with personality yet balanced and well-knit, offering lively, floral pomegranate and cherry flavors accented by savory bay leaf and white pepper notes, finishing with snappy tannins. Carignane, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah. Drink now through 2024.
Soon to be Rated
With Herve and Fabre Montmayou wracking up NYT features, huge scores, gold medals and lifetime achievement awards, I’m left with one choice: get in now or be left in the cold. Waiting for the scores to roll in is a luxury that we know longer have with Fabre Montmayou. Good for the winery, but not so good for us. Rest assured though, the 2020 Cabernet Franc Herve sent me is fantastic, and will surely be minted with the same kind of high-flying praise as the vintage before it. But by that time, you’ll only have a bottle or two left in the cellar.
In Burgundy’s outraegous 2019 vintage, this is one of the bottles I’m recommending people load up on. It’s gorgeous. Don’t just take my word for it, this is what The Wine Advocate had to say about the wine: “The 2019 Givry Rouge is already hard to resist, bursting with aromas of sweet berries and warm spices. Medium to full-bodied, lively and charming, with melting tannins and juicy acids, it has turned out beautifully.”
Winemaker Pascal Sirat consistently puts out some of the best value Bordeaux in the region but he may have outdone himself in the 2018 vintage. Just south of Pomerol, the vines at Panchille borrow deep in the soil. The resulting wines are ripe but fresh, with an aromatic complexity and stony finish usually reserved for wine twice the price. Daniel Boulud tells me it’s been the hottest bottle of wine at Bar Boulud for over a month, so I figured I’d better hurry up and secure my allocation! Don’t miss it.
Lydia’s 2020 HCN is drop dead gorgeous– old-school Red Burgundy with fine aromatics, crunchy, juicy fruit and a sharp vibrancy that makes it just sing with food. Made from super old vines and a low yield with no new oak in the aging process, the wine is a joy to drink– a bowl full of berries on the nose, high-toned, racy fruit that has been touched by a limestone mineral component in the mid-palate with the structure and length that has become the hallmark of Cornu-Camus wines. It’s drinking fantastically now and should be all the way thru 2030.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.