By Tesseron Estate
Pym-Rae 2016

Wine Description
Depth, balance, and freshness - every detail is carefully considered to reveal the potential of this rare vineyard, and gracefully highlight its unique character. The first vintage of Pym-Rae stays true to the spirit of the Tesseron family and is both the culmination of a long journey and the beginning of a new adventure. What matters most to us are the memories you will keep.

Vineyard Details
Appellation: Napa Valley
Vineyard Surface Area: 18.53 acres
Vineyard Blocks: 2 at elevations of 1,640 and 1,968 feet
Soils: Sedimentary
Average Vine Age: 29 years
Harvest: By hand in small crates

Production
Destemming: Manual
Vinification: In 264-gallon round concrete tanks
Aging: 16 months; 70% in new French oak barrels and 30% in concrete tanks

Staff
Owner: Tesseron Family
Estate Manager: Thomas Comme
Winemaking Consultant: Michel Rolland
[Information provided by Folio Fine Wine Partners]

Wine: Pym-Rae Tesseron Estate, [...] Napa Valley, California, USA 2016
Score/Rating: 98
Suggested Drinking Window: 2023 - 2035
Review Date: 09/27/2023
Reviewed By: Jonathan Cristaldi
Tasting Notes: Beautiful opaque ruby colour, leading with a subtlety that reveals lovely cedar and tobacco spices and Bay Laurel. Full-bodied, exhibiting a delicate balance between the structure's intensity and the fruit profile's lightness. A substantial backbone of acid tension, a hallmark of the 2016 vintage, lends buoyancy to the density of fruit, which lands on the mid-palate and stays there, building in stature and gaining intensity. A blanket of long, velvety tannins wraps itself around the palate, and the finish is long and exacting with spearmint and a wealth of warm earthen hummus notes. The Tesseron family, owners of Chateau Pontet-Canet, purchased the estate in 2016. It was owned by the late actor Robin Williams, who had planted the vines on the estate. Jerome Ledit is the Estate Manager and Michel Rolland is the consultant oenologist. The vineyards are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc and have been dry-farmed since the first day in 2016 that Alfred Tesseron set foot on the property. It is already unquestionably one of Napa Valley's greatest understated assets.

Wine: Pym-Rae Napa Valley Tesseron Estate 2016
Score/Rating: 98
Review Date: 01/18/2020
Reviewed By: James Suckling
Tasting Notes: This is the debut vintage of this wine from the esteemed Bordeaux owner, Alfred Tesseron, who bought the property in the Napa mountains in 2016. Aromas of plums, wet earth, fresh herbs and tobacco. Some green olives. Turns to blueberries and blackberries. Full-bodied, yet reserved and layered with chocolate, walnuts and plums. Firm yet polished tannins give a framed sense to the wine. Savory. Racy and beautifully structured, it’s extremely drinkable already. Real wine.

Wine: 2016 Tesseron Estate Pym-Rae
Score/Rating: 97
Suggested Drinking Window: 2025 - 2067
Review Date: 12/21/2021
Reviewed By: Jeb Dunnuck
Tasting Notes: The 2016 Pym-Rae continues to show well, with a rich, meaty, powerful style as well as loads of chocolaty black fruits, tobacco, black olive tapenade, and leather-like aromas and flavors. It's beautiful on the palate, with massive concentration and depth as well as terrific balance. This gorgeous, deep, opulent beauty is going to benefit from another 4-6 years of bottle age and live for 3-4 decades.

Wine: 2016 Tesseron Estate Pym Rae (Napa Valley)
Score/Rating: 97
Review Date: 07/05/2021
Tasting Notes: The debut vintage simply rocks! Deeply colored, the wine is almost opaque with its blackened purple hue. Aromatically, you find black, dark red and blue fruits along with flowers, smoke, vanilla, chocolate, forest leaf, cigar box, and fresh earth. Richly textured, full-bodied, concentrated, and yet light on its feet, the wine finishes with layers of ripe, sweet, polished, opulent dark red and black fruits. The wine blends 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot and 7% Cabernet Franc.

Wine: 2016 Tesseron Estate Pym-Rae
Score/Rating: 97
Suggested Drinking Window: 2020 - 2048
Review Date: 10/29/2018
Reviewed By: Lisa Perrotti-Brown
Tasting Notes: A blend of 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot and 7% Cabernet Franc, the 2016 Pym-Rae displays a deep garnet-purple color and reveals wonderfully fragrant notes of candied violets, wilted roses, damp soil and black tea over a core of red and black currants, black cherries and warm blackberries plus touches of cigar box and camphor. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is evocatively singular, offering that rock-solid structure of mountain fruit, yet these are wonderfully ripe, silt-like tannins that beautifully support the elegant red and black fruit layers, finishing very long and very perfumed.

Wine: Pym-Rae, Napa Valley (California) 2016
Score/Rating: 95
Review Date: 01/20/2020
Reviewed By: Rebecca Murphy
Tasting Notes: [...] At first glance and sniff, there is no mistaking Pym-Rae for a Bordeaux. Its color is a deep ruby red, almost purple, and the nose has lovely rich, ripe black plum, black cherry, cassis aromas. The flavors are rich and redolent of ripe, dark fruits, with notes of spice, tobacco and toast, yet the overall impression is of freshness and lift, perhaps a bit of Bordeaux peaking through. Tannins are deftly managed; integrated and balanced with the fruit, alcohol and acidity. It will be a joy to watch it mature. This may be the family’s first wine in Napa, but it shows their respect for terroir and their wisdom to let it shine.

Wine: Tesseron Pym-Rae Napa Valley 2016
Score/Rating: 93
Suggested Drinking Window: Drink now through 2038
Review Date: 03/31/2025
Reviewed By: James Molesworth
Tasting Notes: A heady, dark, slightly rustic offering, this is full-bodied and packed with warmed fig and black currant fruit that tumbles through, with a mix of alder smoke, chestnut leaf, black sesame and cast iron. Its dense and stolid persona is shy on purity but long on character. Definitely not a first date wine, but fans of the old-school will dig this. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Best from 2026 through 2038.

Wine: Pym Rae 2016 [...]
Score/Rating: 90
Suggested Drinking Window: 2024 - 2036
Review Date: 06/2024
Reviewed By: Neal Martin
Tasting Notes: The 2016 [...] from Pym Rae is named after the children of much-missed comedian Robin Williams, who originally owned the farm. Tesseron respectfully decided not to change it. I actually tasted this wine three times, here at Hatched and then twice more in Washington, DC, with Tesseron himself. Cassis and violets on the nose, this is quintessential Napa, as you would expect. I found it a little flashy, though I have it on good authority that subsequent vintages are more restrained and complex. The palate has plenty of blackberry and blueberry fruit, lush in style and thoroughly enjoyable. Glossy on the finish, I would actually afford this another year in bottle to lose some of that puppy fat.

Wine: Pym-Rae 2016 Napa Valley
Score/Rating: 16.5/20
Suggested Drinking Window: 2020 - 2030
Review Date: 04/23/2017
Reviewed By: Jancis Robinson
Tasting Notes: [...] Very sweet and thick. Good stuff in a California context but awfully sweet next to all these Bordeaux! Very dry on the end. Falls away a bit.