Professional Ratings

• 94 Jeb Dunnuck
  The 2016 Pinot Noir Isabelle comes mostly from the Bien Nacido Vineyard yet is from six different sites spread throughout California. Cherry pits, spicy oak, white flowers, and hints of earth and forest floor all emerge from the glass. It's still tight and reserved on the palate, yet has good tension, vibrancy, and purity as well as fine tannins. This beautiful, elegant wine will benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and should drink brilliantly over the following 15 years or more.
  Rating: 94+
• 93 Wine Spectator
  Offers a crystalline structure, with powerful flavors of dried cherry and raspberry tart, backed by crunchy acidity. Intense minerality emerges midpalate, leading to a finish filled with baking spice notes and hints of cream. Drink now through 2024.
• 92 Connoisseurs' Guide

  Sourced from a half-dozen sites throughout California, the latest “Isabelle” bottling is, as always, comprised from what Au Bon Climat considers its very best cuvées and, in 2016, is a remarkably deep Pinot Noir that counts careful composition and balance first among its many virtues. It is weighty and racy and surprisingly light on its feet all at once with layered, extraordinarily long flavors of optimally ripened cherries and sweet oak, laced with hints of minerally soil, and, even though it is so wonderfully well-tailored that it invites drinking now, it is an eminently ageworthy rendition that is destined to repay upwards of another decade of cellaring with compounding dividends.

• 92 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  The pale to medium ruby colored 2016 Pinot Noir Isabelle gives up very spicy aromas of dried cranberry, dried red cherries, amaro and citrus peel with old leather, dusty earth, woodsmoke, cola and wild blackberries. It's light to medium-bodied with intense, earthy fruits, a firm frame of grainy tannins and integrated freshness, finishing long.