2019 Courtney Benham Pinot Noir Carneros Napa Valley 750 ml

The secret of Courtney Benham’s spectacular string of hits is getting out, and we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to keep breakout values like this one to ourselves. When you’re dealing with something as astonishing as a supple, spice-scented Napa Pinot from a renowned 100-point winemaker, word is bound to get out—there’s practically nothing else like it on the market.

This wine—sourced from a historic Napa site that’s produced Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Cellar Selections bottles—promises to be one of the year’s attention-grabbing California Pinot bargains.

The seduction starts from the first encounter, with wafting aromas of candied raspberry and dark strawberry, which are matched by the satin-smooth palate. The thrill continues to the last ruby drop as this rich, juicy wine dances across the palate with inimitable grace, borne aloft on cool Carneros breezes.

With this price and level of sheer winemaking talent, we don’t recommend waiting around to see how long our supply holds out—Wine Access members have learned well what a fantastic value Courtney Benham offers, and how fast these wines can disappear. 

This latest stunner is so beautifully orchestrated and vibrant, it’ll leave you pondering why other top Pinot houses need to charge four times as much for similar quality. This is the type of deal Napa just doesn’t do anymore.

Maybe the better question to ask is how winemaker Keith Emerson, who achieved perfect-score fame at Vineyard 29, and Talley alum Leslie Renaud managed to make a top-tier Pinot so affordable that even hardcore bargain buyers don’t think twice. Especially when James Suckling is backing up all the hype around the Courtney Benham label, raving over this bottle’s “fine tannins” and “beautiful finish with finesse and pretty fruit.”

But there’s no real mystery to it—just decades of hard-earned Napa experience meeting one of the brightest winemaking talents in the valley.

The connections and long-term contracts behind this fabulous steal are rooted in Benham’s history of producing top-rated wines, which dates back to the 1980s. For this 2019 Pinot, they quietly slipped their hands into a Carneros vineyard that usually commands $80 prices. Thin loamy soils and the brisk winds that define this classic appellation stress the vines, forcing them to direct all their energy into a luminous, ripe concentration—the one at this bottle’s core.