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Niagara provides the wow factor in new 2010 Bachelder Chardonnays

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It’s a blistering hot day in Niagara and a taste of Chardonnay sounds pretty good right about now, even if it is 10:30 in the morning.

Thomas Bachelder has invited a few wine scribes over to his gorgeous house in Fenwick to taste through the sophomore vintage of his Chardonnay project that stretches from the vineyards of Burgundy to Oregon and finally Niagara.

There is always some degree of chaos when tasting with Bachelder but it’s a chaos borne out of passion and the winemaker’s desire to get everything just right: the order of the tasting, the temperature of each wine, and the story of how the wines came to be.

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He talks a mile a minute, painting a picture of the project he and his wife, Mary Delaney, have embarked on, a concept that takes him to Burgundy, Oregon and Niagara in an endless winemaking adventure.

Bachelder applies the same winemaking skills to each of his wines under his label: organically-sourced grapes where possible, minimal intervention, the same deft touch with similar, mostly older, oak barrels for 16 months, and all, or mostly all, grapes fermented using wild yeasts.

“We applied the same thought, a Burgundian thought, in all three places,” Bachelder has said.

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Bachelder has been chasing good Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for most of his brilliant career and is perhaps better known in Niagara for his winemaking skill at Le Clos Jordanne, the now Constellation Brands-owned label that only makes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Niagara. He is known as a hard-working perfectionist when it comes to making wines at the highest end of the quality spectrum.

familyHe left Le Clos to chase a dream — a dream to make cool-climate Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs in three of the regions where he had made them before.

Bachelder and his family, seen in the photo to the left, rented cellar space in Niagara, Oregon and Burgundy and, using similar winemaking strategies, produced a trio of Chardonnays from the 2009 vintage (three Pinot Noirs will be released soon) and has followed that up with three 2010 vintage Burgundies, three Niagara 2010 Chardonnays, one 2010 from Oregon and a tasty Aligote from Burgundy’s 2011 vintage.

All the wines are made with a “small-lot” mentality to “maximize subtlety and demands long aging for terroir expression, finesse and nuance,” Bachelder says.

Bachelder’s plan all along was to discover exactly what would the Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs of Burgundy, Niagara and Oregon taste like if they were all made by the same family, using the same approach. What if they were each handled in the same respectful way, wouldn’t most wine lovers be able to easily taste and learn the differences between the three terroirs?

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Bachelder, a Québécois Chardonnay and Pinot Noir specialist who has lived and made award-winning wines in all three regions, rented cellar space in all three regions and has created this unique concept of making textured and mineral-driven Chards and Pinots.

Tasting these wines with Bachelder and Delaney, the typicity of the three regions shines through the wines. All are fine examples of where they come from but also represent what can happen in the hands of an accomplished winemaker such as Bachelder.

The wines are all  defined by the fruit, not the oak, with a mineral edge that showed more in Burgundy than in the New World regions in the 2009 vintage but, for my taste, a Niagara single-vineyard, single-block wine stole the show in the 2010 vintage.

We tasted through the new collection of wines and then enjoyed them with fresh-shucked oysters, above photo,  and BBQ grilled pork chops on the patio at the Bachelder’s Fenwick home.

Here’s what we tasted in the order they were poured (release dates are just being set for these wines, but look for the first wines to be released at Vintages in September):

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Bachelder Bourgogne Aligote de Puligny ‘Champs Pernot’ 2011 ($22, 88 points) — Aligote was never part of the program for Bachelder, but a purchase of prized Puligny-Montrachet fruit in Burgundy included a bit of Aligote so it was made into this delightful wine. The nose shows lovely slate, lemon-lime and fresh fruit aromas. It has searing acidity, citrus fruit and verve through the finish. Just about perfect with Bachelder’s oysters.

Bachelder Macon St. Veran ‘Les Chatagniers’ 2010 ($25, 89 points) — The difference between the 2009 hot vintage in Burgundy and the more classic vintage of 2010 is like night and day. This may not have the finesse of some of the other Burgundies in the family, but it is a highly perfumed, attractive Chardonnay on the nose with tropical fruits, citrus and lovely oak stylings. It has good weight on the palate, subtle minerality, apple, spice, tropical fruits and persistence through the finish.

Bachelder Bourgogne Blanc 2010 ($30, 90 points) — Lovely subtleties in this Bourgogne Blanc with cream, mineral, beeswax, citrus and apple fruit aromas. It is nicely integrated already with classic mineral, smoke, flint and fine fruit on the palate that presents itself in a clean, textured style.

Bachelder Beaune ‘Les Longes’ 2010 ($45, 92 points) — Such an impressive nose of green apple, soft white peach and poached pear fruit with a gorgeous note of flint just emerging and melding with subtle toast and vanilla. It is complex on the palate, showing youth and vigor, with apple, pineapple, slate, spice and firm acid that all leads to a very long finish. Buy, hold and watch as it matures and comes into harmony.

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Bachelder Niagara Chardonnay ($30, 90 points) — From sourced fruit, this is a pretty tasty treat considering it’s the entry-level wine in Bachelder’s trio of Niagara offerings. The hot 2010 vintage in Niagara is the complete opposite of the cooler 2009 vintage in Niagara and the classic 2010 vintage in Burgundy but Bachelder has managed to tame the fruit and give it some finesse. It’s still voluptuous, but not overtly. Apple, cream, peach, oak spices and opulent aromas waft from the glass. It shows apple crisp, vanilla and fine texture on the palate with layers of spice and pleasure without showing the flab of the vintage. Great effort here.

wismerBachelder Niagara Saunders Vineyard Chardonnay 2010 ($45, 91 points) — This single-vineyard Niagara Chard from the Beamsville Bench is the tightest of the three Niagara wines, especially on the nose, but I anticipate it will open up with a little more bottle age. It’s showing baked apple, some cream and spice and a touch of flinty minerality on the nose. It’s much more expressive on the palate with broad stone fruit flavours, poached pear, cream and spicy caramel and toasted oak flavours. Lovely.

Bachelder Wismer Vineyard ‘Winfield Block’ Chardonnay 2010 ($45, 94 points) — Wow! A stunner. Bachelder calls the famed Wismer Vineyard a Grand Cru of Niagara. But Bachelder goes one better and sources his Chardonnay from a specific block from Wismer’s coveted vineyards. The wine took nearly a year to ferment, as Bachelder likes all his wines to ferment naturally in the cellar. It is a big, showy Chard that makes a statement from the first sniff. Poached pear, fresh-baked apple pie, waves of flint and stony minerality, and then the creamy vanilla spices, toffee and elegant oak that is integrated rather than over-powering chimes in. It is weighty on the palate with bold fruit matching rich and toasty spices and balanced out by racy acidity. It’s a powerful and stylish Chard with hedonistic flavours that all lead to a gloriously long finish. Bravo!

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Bachelder Oregon 2010 ($30, 88 points) — It was Bachedler’s intention to make two wines from Oregon, a regular bottling and a single-vineyard Chard from the Willamette Valley but the Vintages allotment called for more wine than he had available and it was decided to blend all the fruit to make one single wine. The Oregon Chard is over-shadowed somewhat by the Niagara and Burgundy wines, but it is tasty nonetheless. The nose is tight with subtle minerality, stone fruits, caramel and toasted oak vanilla aromas. It is a minerally-drive wine on the palate with spicy fruit and fine oak stylings. A lovely Chard.