Drink This: Nathan K 2019 Pinot Noir

Finger Lakes pinot noir has come a long way over the almost 20 years that I’ve been tasting it. They’ve truly never been better on the whole. But that doesn’t mean that that it’s all good or that there is a lot of consistency. Vintage matters, of course, but some of the variance isn’t so straightforward. Too much new oak here. Excessive volatile acidity there. Sometimes it’s just a matter of old sparkling wine-intended clones.

To this day, I can still count on one hand the number of winemakers or wineries that I can count on for good-to-great pinot no matter the vintage (even pretty bad ones like 2018).

Winemaker Nathan Kendall — specifically his Nathan K. wines — is one such winemaker.