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- 2010 Au Bon Climat, La Bauge Au-Dessus Estate Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley
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2010 Au Bon Climat, La Bauge Au-Dessus Estate Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley
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Start Your Wine Collection with 2010 Au Bon Climat, La Bauge Au-Dessus Estate Pinot Noir, Santa Maria Valley
Begin your portfolio with a prestigious wine that has a history of growth.- Enjoy fully managed, secure storage facilities with insurance coverage.
- Get expert advice on when to hold and when to sell.
Critics Scores
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
All three of the Pinot Noirs were outstanding, and have classic, slightly Burgundian profiles, with notable structure and bright acidity. Lastly, the 2010 Pinot Noir La Bauge Audessus is another outstanding Pinot Noir from this estate. Aged 18 months in 50 new oak, it offers crisp red berries, green herbs and sappy flowers in its medium-bodied, juicy, yet nicely structured profile. Give it another year in the cellar and enjoy it through 2020.
Wine & Spirits
Jim Clendenen’s annual blend of fruit from Bien Nacido and his own Le Bon Climat Vineyard is rich and open in 2010, the 24 months spent in barrel lending a nutty aroma as well as a supple, relaxed texture. The acidity is bright and a bit volatile at the end. It feels complete and geared toward food. Open it this fall for rare duck breast.
Wine Enthusiast
This bottling by Jim Clendenen is all about subtlety, with red currants, tiny bits of strawberry and iron showing on the nose. A rusty cherry character shows once sipped, with chaparral and pencil lead emerging as well. This wine requires attention, but rewards those with focus and patience
Vinous
Vivid ruby-red. Highly perfumed scents of smoky black raspberry, potpourri and candied licorice. Seamless and sweet on the palate, offering energetic red and dark berry compote flavors and an exotic floral pastille quality. Gains richness with air and finishes long and focused, with clinging sweetness, supple tannins and a hint of bitter chocolate. As the trend toward more graceful, low-octane wines moves ahead in Santa Barbara County and elsewhere, Jim Clendenen has emerged as perhaps the eminence grise of the movement. That probably rubs him the wrong way a bit as he says that "since (he's) never really changed path since the beginning, everything still seems like it always has" and that he definitely doesn't feel like he's slowing down and moving into his dotage. The Burgundy-trained (back in the late 1970s) Clendenen is definitely as opinionated, emotive and charmingly cantankerous as when I first met him in the late 1980s-even his hair's the same, just greyer-and he's more than happy to take well-deserved credit for paving the way for this generation of winemakers who are trying to make wines "that speak, not yell" at the drinker. But he doesn't see himself as a recipe or dogma follower and, for example, isn't afraid of using new oak "if the wine wants it." He's made many different wines with different expressions over the years, he says, but he hopes that they all have a common theme of reflecting where they're from and what each vintage "gave the fruit."