BienNacidoVnyd A HasBeen???

Back in the '80's when JimClendenen started producing Pinot from BN and BobLindquist Syrah from BN, these were the flagship wines coming out of SantaBarbaraCnty. Other producers also produced Pinots from these grapes that were pretty good. The planting of the Hillside block of Syrah ratcheted up the notch a bit on Syrah for Qupe/Ojai/Jaffurs.
As other vnyds have come online in SBCnty since the '90's, it seems to my palate that the BN vnyd wines no longer represent the flagship wines coming out of SBCnty. We tasted thru all the Jaffurs SingleVnyd Syrahs '04 & '05 last night and I thought the BN Syrahs were clearly the lesser than the others. The BN wines from my favorite producers continue to be good/tasty wines, with that sorta plummy/black cherry character BN seems to display mostly. But they no longer seem to me the primo wines.
Anybody else been making that observation??
Tom (stirring the pot as I wait for tonight's snowstorm to hit)

[Robin Garr]

Anybody else been making that observation??
Tom (stirring the pot as I wait for tonight's snowstorm to hit)

Pot stirrer!

Tom, I can't honestly say for sure since I don't drink a whale of a lot of wine from that region. But I really have been following Bien Nacido since back from pretty close to the very beginning, and was certainly slurping up a fair share of the Au Bon Climat stuff and maybe some Alban (?) from BN, and I have a warm spot in my heart for it as one of the first Paul Revere rides through the east that let us know there was more going on in California than just Napa and Sonoma.

I still rank ABC in general highly among the California wines I favor, and certainly don't recall any particular disappointment in recent years. I certainly hope you're mistaken. Or just stirrin' the pot.

I don't think so, Tom.
In fact, lately, I find myself being drawn back to the wines of the Santa Maria Valley as a much needed counterpoint to the Santa Rita Hills stuff.

I still buy the Hitching Post BN pinot noir, and dabble in ABC's and Qupe.
Has been? No sir, not from where I sit. Perhaps not the flagships they once were, but how much of that is due to the aggressive marketing of the Santa Rita Hills appellation?