2016 Paul Lato Pinot Noir Lancelot Pisoni Vineyard
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More black fruits, plums, crushed rocks, and spice emerge from the 2016 Pinot Noir Lancelot Pisoni Vineyard, and as always, it's one of the bigger, richer wines in this lineup. Possessing medium to full-bodied richness, good acidity, and ample tannic grip, it needs 2-3 years of bottle age but is nevertheless a beautiful wine. The Pisoni Vineyard is located in the southern end of the Santa Lucia Highlands, a slightly warmer terroir of granite soils, and this wine always sees a touch more new oak than the other cuvées, spending 15 months in 70% new barrels.
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Average Score
Jeb Dunnuck
Antonio Galloni, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Paul Lato's 2016 Pinot Noir Lancelot Pisoni Vineyard is powerful and bold, which is to say very much in the style of this Santa Lucia Highlands site. As good as the Pisoni is – and it is excellent – the natural limits of this site are very clearly exposed in this range.
The 2016 Pinot Noir Lancelot Pisoni Vineyard offers up aromas of wood smoke, plums, tar, spice and berry preserve. On the palate, it's full-bodied and rich, but also more angular, with firm, stony tannins underlying its formidable core of ripe, sweet fruit. While this makes the biggest impact of the Paul Lato Pinot Noirs, I wonder if it will ever attain the same harmony as some of the other wines in the portfolio.