Kistler Pinot Noirs must be amongst the most polarizing wines for wine critics. Leading critics such as Robert Parker, Allen Meadows and Stephen Tanzer have given them widely disparate scores over the years. Parker was an early proponent of these wines, helping to turn them into cult Pinots with a mailing list that was closed long ago, by repeatedly scoring many of them in the mid to high 90s. The Burghound’s Allen Meadows, on the other hand, has typically given many of the same wines scores in the mid- to high-80s. Stephen Tanzer has scored a number of them in the low 90s. John Gilman rated at least one of the wines we tasted in this blindtasting ('01 Kistler Sonoma Coast) a mere 63 points.
Steve Kistler studied enology at U.C. Davis and Fresno State University for two years, and was an assistant at Ridge Vineyards for two years before founding Kistler Vineyards in 1978. He serves as winemaker and oversees vineyard operations. Steve and his wife Cathleen made their first Pinot Noir in 1991, a Cuvee Catherine, named after their first daughter, with fruit from the Kistler Vineyard in the Russian River Valley. By 1994, they were making four different Pinots, and they have continued to produce four or five Pinots in subsequent years, mostly from individual vineyards along the Sonoma Coast, adding a Cuvee Elizabeth and a Cuvee Natalie for their second and third daughters. Kistler Pinot Noir is fermented in small open top fermenters. The free run juice is barrel aged and remains in barrel for 14 to 18 months until bottling.
I’ve had a number of Kistler Pinot Noirs over the years and found them on the overripe, over-concentrated side for Pinot, and sometimes a little hot. Since Big Bob Parker seems to like his reds ripe and super-concentrated, even if the varietal is a delicate flower like Pinot Noir, it made sense to me that these would be his cup of tea. Allen Meadows, on the other hand, prefers wines with finesse, elegance and minerality, so super-concentrated fruit bombs like Kistler Pinot are unlikely to be his thing. Me? I like wines with balance and complexity, so there are some, but not many, ripe Cali Pinots that float my boat, as well as many fine Burgundies that I love. This unusual blindtasting of Kistler Pinots with some age on them, going back to 1997, was a special opportunity to assess how these wines are aging, and to see if it’s possible to parse the wide differences amongst major critics with respect to these polarizing wines.
As a “pre-tasting” wine, we started with a Kistler Chardonnay–the '01 McCrea–that ended up being one of the two wines of the night for me, at 92 points, along with another '01 Kistler–the Kistler Pinot Kistler–that I rated 92. Stephen Tanzer, whom I usually find I’m within a point or two in scoring at least 80% of the time, if we’ve scored the same wine, gave the '01 Kistler Chard 91+ points back in 2004. He also rated the '01 Kistler Kistler Pinot 92+ points. So far, then, I find that I’m rating these two about the same as Tanzer, which is par for the course. Neither Parker nor the Burghound have published ratings on either of these two wines.
My point scores on the nine Kistler Pinots we tasted, all poured blind, ran from 77 to 92 points, averaging 85.3 points. The problems I found with many of them were over-concentration, heaviness and over-ripeness, leading in some cases to what I can only call “lumpiness” on the palate, a lumpiness that some bottle age seems to have exacerbated rather than smoothing out. The over-ripeness also led to alcoholic heat on some of our samples. One has to keep in mind, of course, that bottles with age on them vary. I don’t presume to say that my scores below would be the same for every sample from the same year and vineyard, due to bottle variation and differences in storage. But there were definite trends in the nine wines we sampled.
A few, like the '06 Cuvee Elizabeth, '04 Kistler Kistler and '01 Sonoma Coast, were so bound up and heavy with fruit at the front of the palate that there was no palate length at all–they had short “cliff” finishes due to the heaviness upfront that one hardly expects from such concentrated wines (let alone from wines that average $110 to $160 according to WineSearcher.com, if you can find them). Meadows had rated the '06 Elizabeth at 89 points in the fall of '09, his highest rating on any of our nine wines. Tanzer awarded 94 points. Parker had rated it 96-98, describing it as having a “soaring mid-palate, as well as length,” estimating that it “should drink well for a decade or more.” The decade isn’t half up and I didn’t find that it was drinking well at all, and it certainly lacks palate length. I gave our blind sample 83 points, finding it oaky on the nose, and hot, with that relatively short, cliff finish. Parker gave the '04 Kistler Kistler 92-94 points as a “complex Pinot Noir to drink over the next decade,” while the Burghound rated it 87, finding it “almost too ripe” and “lack[ing] obvious pinot character.” Tanzer gave it 92 on release. After several years in bottle, our sample was porty, overripe, showing VA, and heavy bodied, with stewed cherry on the palate. It also had that surprisingly short, cliff finish. I rated it 79 points. Parker didn’t score the '01 Sonoma Coast, but that’s the one Gilman rated 63 points, calling it “one of the nastier renditions of this varietal that I have tasted in a very long time.” I found it bound up and unbalanced at 10 years of age, but rated it higher than John did, at 84 points. John’s colorful description of the '01, however, does fairly accurately typify at least a few of the wines in our blindtasting: “On the palate the wine is full-bodied, jammy and a touch spritzy, with no focus or delineation, noticeable residual sugar, and a fat, dull and heavy finish that closes with notes of damp, charred wood redolent of a campfire pit after a strong rain storm.” Sounds like John has had some vividly negative camping experiences.
The best of the lineup were simply very ripe and rich, characteristics that Burghound is unlikely to rate highly, but that Parker usually lauds. The top one of these, for me, was the 2001 Kistler Kistler, as noted above. Next best for me was the '99 Sonoma Coast, which was rich, ripe and velvety textured, with firm tannins and good balancing acidity. I rated that one 91+ points. Neither Parker, Tanzer nor Meadows had rated it. Next highest for me, in third place, was the '04 Cuvee Catherine Occidental Station. It was relatively monolithic, and showing the oak on the nose, but had a long finish. I rated it 90+ points, considerably up from the 87 points I’d given another sample a few years back. Parker had rated it 94-95 points, claiming the nose was “reminiscent of a Comte de Vogue Musigny.” Tanzer rated this one 93, while Meadows scored it 88, finding it reasonably well balanced for this producer but suggesting there were better Pinots for $90 or more a bottle. The 2000 Sonoma Coast was also doing relatively well after more than a decade, with a rich, heavy bodied, baked cherry and ripe fruit palate. I rated this one 90 points, and don’t see any ratings on this vintage from Parker, Tanzer or Meadows.
The remaining wines in our lineup were the '99 and '97 Kistler Kistlers. I found both overripe and unbalanced. The '99 I rated 82 points, finding the nose oaky, along with the baked fruit character, and the palate overripe and hot. It possessed more of a finish, though, than the few I rated at the bottom for their short, cliff finishes. Parker had rated this 93-95 points, noting its “purity” and “equilibrium,” predicting it would age for a decade. Tanzer had scored it 92. The '97 KK also had a finish, but was stewy and overripe on the palate. I scored it only 77 points. Parker had claimed it possessed “fabulous concentration and purity, a grand cru-like level of potential complexity,” and rated it 94-96 points. Meadows scored it only 84, finding that the flavors “are blurry and lack focus,” and complaining about the heat on the finish.
So what do I take away from this tasting experience, and reviewing the major critics’ scores (mostly delivered on or near release)? This tasting confirmed, for me, that these are Pinots in a super-ripe, over-concentrated style that are likely to be pretty attention grabbing on first release, due to their sheer thick gobs of fruit, but that are risky choices for aging. Some, like the '01 Kistler Kistler and '99 Sonoma Coast, had aged reasonably well, but others, like the '97 and '04 Kistler Kistlers, had just become alcoholic, bound up messes. I like to take more calculated long term risks when I’m plunking down $100 or more for a bottle. If highly concentrated, ripe Pinot is your thing, however, the best of these might be just what you’re looking for.
As to how the critics and I lined up, on the data points detailed above, Parker, for me, continues to be a highly unreliable source for recommendations on balanced Pinot Noirs with aging potential. On the six of these he had rated, the closest we were in scoring was on the '04 Cuvee Catherine, which he rated 94-95 and I gave 90+. On the others, we diverged by at least 11 to 17 points. No wonder RP is no longer my go to critic on Pinot (or most other wines, for that matter). On the three of these that Meadows had rated, I found his much lower scores to be more predictive of my blindtasting scoring. On the four that Tanzer had rated, I found my scores very close to his on two and much lower than his on two. And John Gilman, who loves traditionally made wines of all kinds and can be quite damning when it comes to the souped up and non-traditional, was just darned entertaining with his note on a single one of these wines.
I very much appreciate the antidote to these highly concentrated and non-gracefully aging wines that my buddy Dan brought along and shared with us at the end. It was a relatively humble Bourgogne, albeit from Maison Leroy, but it had that authentic Pinot character and minerality that I’d been missing the rest of the night. That said, it also spoke of excessive stem inclusion, but that’s a rant for another post. 
For my detailed tasting notes, and the group’s and my rankings of the nine Pinots in our blindtasting, see below.
Kistler Chard starter
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2001 Kistler Chardonnay McCrea Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Mountain
Light medium golden yellow color; mature, ripe lemon, baked apple, pineapple nose; rich, creamy textured, ripe pineapple, apple palate with good balancing acidity; medium-plus finish (92 pts.)
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2006 Kistler Pinot Noir Cuvée Elizabeth - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast
Group’s #1 (my #6) – 55 pts; 7 firsts, 3 seconds, 3 thirds, 0 last places – dark ruby color; oak, tart raspberry, tart cherry, menthol nose; rich, tart cherry, tart raspberry palate; hot with a cliff finish, not aging well; short-medium finish (83 pts.) -
2001 Kistler Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast
Group’s #2 (my #5) – 66 pts.; 2, 2, 6, 1 - bricking medium dark ruby color with pale meniscus; baked cherry, baked raspberry, tart cherry nose; mature, tart cherry, tart raspberry, baked cherry palate, bound up and unbalanced, with short, cliff finish; short-medium finish (84 pts.) -
2000 Kistler Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast
Group’s #3 (my #4) – 69 pts.; 3, 2, 4, 0 - bricking, medium dark ruby color; baked cherry, baked raspberry, baked strawberry nose; rich, heavy bodied, ripe raspberry, baked cherry, ripe cherry palate; medium-plus finish (90 pts.) -
2001 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
Group’s #4 (my #1) – 75 pts.; 1, 4, 2, 0 - bricking, medium dark ruby color, slightly cloudy; ripe raspberry, baked cherry, nose; rich, heavy bodied, ripe cherry, ripe raspberry, red berry palate, verging on overripe; medium-plus finish (not my style, but best structured of a flight of 9 Kistler Pinots) (92 pts.) -
2004 Kistler Pinot Noir Cuvée Catherine - USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
Group’s #5 (my #3) – 86 pts.; 1, 3, 1, 0 - slightly bricking dark ruby color; reduction, oak, tart cherry, sour cherry nose; rich, velvety textured, tart cherry, raspberry, ripe cranberry, basically monolithic; long finish 90+ points (90 pts.) -
1999 Kistler Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast - USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast
Group’s #6 (my #2) – 93 pts.; 1, 3, 2, 0 - bricking medium dark ruby color with pale meniscus; big, high pitched, ripe cherry, baked cherry, baked raspberry, berry nose; rich, velvety textured, high pitched, tart cherry, tart raspberry, cranberry palate with firm tannins and good acidity; medium-plus finish 91+ points (91 pts.) -
1999 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
Group’s #7 (my #7) – 96 pts.; 2, 1, 0, 2 - dark ruby color; porty, baked cherry, oak, baked raspberry nose; rich, heavy bodied, baked cherry, baked raspberry, overripe and hot palate; medium-plus finish (82 pts.) -
2004 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
Group’s #8 (my #8) – 130 pts.; 1, 0, 0, 5 - dark, slightly cloudy ruby color; porty, overripe, VA, baked cherry, stewed cherry, brown sugar nose; overripe, super rich, heavy, baked cherry, stewed cherry, sugary palate; so bound up it leads to a short, cliff finish (79 pts.) -
1997 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard - USA, California, Sonoma County, Russian River Valley
Group’s #9 (my #9) – 139 pts.; 0, 0, 0, 9 - bricking, medium dark ruby color; mature, baked cherry, stewy nose; stewy, overripe, baked cherry palate, unbalanced; medium-plus finish (77 pts.)
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2002 Maison Leroy Bourgogne - France, Burgundy, Bourgogne
Bricking, medium red color with pale meniscus; tart cranberry, herbal, stems nose with a weedy note; a little tight yet, tart cranberry, stems, sous bois, mineral palate; medium-plus finish (89 pts.)
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