2016 Pinot Noir One

While Brad McLeroy's 2015s and '16s show the detail and freshness that I usually associate with his wines, I detected greater heft from these recent vintages than I have in the past. There was also a sense of darker fruit, but again, they showed the typical energy that I have always found from his wines. Having cut his teeth as cellar master at Domaine Drouhin from 1994 until settling in full-time at Ayres, his family's 38-acre estate and winery, it's not surprising that McLeroy's own wines track along the DDO model of power and structure aligned with detail, not to mention ageworthiness. Both 2015 and 2016 are big successes here, but don't expect them to be on the market for long, as this producer's wines always sell through quickly.