The Night That Was: Joseph Mellot 500th Anniversary

As I mentioned in an earlier post, last Tuesday night we planned a 500th Anniversary celebration dinner for Domaine Joseph Mellot at Play Food & Wine here in Ottawa. This dinner was certainly worthy of a half-millennium birthday party! Stephen Beckta and his team did an outstanding job. The menu and wine pairings from Chef de Cuisine Tim Stock were classic flavours, but inventively presented and perfectly matched by Wine Director Kerri Smith. There were even a couple gentlemen who loved the dinner so much, they made reservations for our 2nd Mellot celebration dinner the next night in Toronto at Loire Restaurant!

A special thanks to winery President Catherine Corbeau Mellot and her Sales Manager Olivier Rivain for flying in to present their wines at the dinner. Here are a few pictures of the evening's pairings and goings on:

Joseph Mellot 500 Year Celebration

HEADS UP OTTAWA!! We are hosting a very special event ​at Stephen Beckta's Play Food & Wine on Tuesday April 2! Domaine Joseph Mellot from the Loire Valley in France is celebrating their half millennium birthday...That's right, they're turning 500 years old as a family owned and operated estate winery! Established in 1513 Joseph Mellot is one of the oldest and most respected Domaines in all the Loire Valley. They are a benchmark producer of Sauvignon Blanc as their Sancerres and Pouilly-Fumes are some of the most acclaimed wines in the region.

Please join us for this rare celebration being hosted by Joseph Mellot President Catherine Corbeau Mellot and Play's talented Wine Director Kerri Smith. Chef de Cuisine Tim Stock has designed a very special five course menu for the occasion and  Kerri has paired 7 outstanding Mellot wines, including their Sancerre Rouge and the legendary Grande Cuvée Pouilly-Fumé.

Please see the poster below for the details. Seating is extremely limited so please call Play directly to make your reservations at 613-667-9207 or email them at info@playfood.ca. This is sure to be a very memorable evening of food and wine!

Events: Mariposa Maple Celebration

Heads up Ottawa!! Mariposa Farm is hosting a quintessentially Canadian dinner party on Saturday April 6th to celebrate Maple Syrup season! There will be a Sugar Bush tour, Maple Syrup tasting, Quebec cheese tasting and a collaborative 5 course meal prepared by 4 of Ottawa's top chefs. To boost the Canadiana of this already kick-ass event, I'll be pairing each course with wines from Ontario's very best wineries: Tawse, Norman Hardie, Thomas Bachelder and Hinterland. There might even be some champagne sabering...

See the poster below for details and visit http://mariposamaplesyrup.eventbrite.com/ to get your tickets. Seating is limited, so hurry up!

This is food and wine appreciation in The Great White North!​

Dinner with Luca Speri

Speri Viticoltori was one of the first houses to produce Amarone and was part of the original six families in the 1960s when it was granted DOC status. As one of the oldest winemaking families in Verona with generations of grape growing going back well before the invention of Amarone, today only the Speri's and Quintarelli remain family owned and operated of the original six--and both happen to be represent by Lifford.

Luca Speri is the 5th Generation of the Speri family and earlier this moth he spent two days with me in Ottawa visiting restaurants promoting his family's outstanding wines. Fortunately he arrived early on Sunday afternoon and I decided to host a dinner party with some close friends and clients showcasing an incredible lineup of his wines. We pulled out a vertical of Speri Amarone from 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2007, so I thought a simple yet rich wild mushroom and Italian sausage risotto would be a great compliment for dinner. After a glass of Champagne we got right into his Valpolicella Classico and Valpolicella Ripasso to start with appetizers...

I've long considered Speri's entry level Valpolicella Classico to be one of the best on the market, but it wasn't until Luca's visit that I understood why. He told us a great story about his Grandfather teaching them that you cannot judge a winery in Veneto on its Amarone alone (as many houses make impressive Amarone) but you need to taste their entry level Valpolicella and their desert wine Recioto, which is most difficult to produce. He said that if they take the care and effort to produce high quality Valpolicella and are talented enough winemakers to make a great Recioto, everything else in the house will follow suit. This logic comes from the fact that many wineries either buy bulk grapes to produce a cheap Valpolicella, or use all their best grapes from an estate vineyard for the Amarone, then use the leftover 2nds and 3rds for the regular Valpolicella. This often creates that tart, insipid, sometimes astringent style of so many cheap versions we've all had before. By contrast, Speri buys no grapes or juice, using only estate owned and hand harvested fruit. Their vineyards are all hillside vineyards for better sun and wind exposure and their Amarone comes exclusively from their hilltop single vineyard 'Sant Urbano'. This means that outside of the single vineyard reserved for Amarone everything else is 100% dedicated to a great Valpolicella Classico, part of which will also become their Ripasso once the Amarone skins are refermented on it. So further to their logic, the better the Valpolicella base wine, the better the Ripasso will be as well.

This philosophy definitely pays off. The Valpolicella Classico is characteristically light, fresh and fruity as is typical of the Corvina, Rondinella, Molinara blend; but it also has a richness and depth that is extraordinary for an entry level Val. The wine sees no oak, only 5 months of stainless steel and cement vats to retain a purity of fruit and freshness. Red cherry fruit jumps out of the glass, but also keeps going with a rich mid-palate a great lingering ​finish. Amazing pizza or pasta wine. Similarly, the Ripasso is rich, complex, and balanced with great acidity and a very dry long, elegant finish. It's definitely the driest Ripasso I've ever had, and Luca tells us it is one of the driest produced in Veneto. This is another wine that they do not cut corners with, the law permits producers to produce 2 bottles of Ripasso for every bottle of Amarone produced, but they believe that dilutes it too much and can start to extract the harsher tannins on the second round of fermentation. So they produce only one bottle of Ripasso for every bottle of Amarone...a mandate of quality over quantity. Unfortunately this is a disappearing philosophy in Veneto as Ripasso becomes more and more popular many producers are trying to crank out as much as is legally allowable and often need to leave a lot of residual sugar to create a false sense of richness.

Then came the Amarones. As is inevitably the case when you have only one bottle left of each vintage of old wine, something will be corked. And unfortunately the 1998 was, but the rest of the lineup was so outstanding we didn't fret too hard. Starting with the 1996, which according to Luca wasn't the best vintage, but you wouldn't have known it. Not only was it still holding up perfectly, but seemed to have lots of life left. Perfectly smooth and still fresh. The 2000, 2004 and 2007 followed suit, seeming effortlessly elegant. As we got to the younger vintages, the wines got expectedly firmer, but all were still exceptionally drinkable. The current release 2007 actually showed as one of the smoothest, which was a reflection of that vintage. The Speri Amarone's are a benchmark of traditional style, you can find it on many of Ottawa's best wine lists, give it a whirl...you'll be glad you did!

And finally, to bring it back full circle with Luca's grandfather's philosophy, we came to the Recioto with desert. I haven't had as much experience with Recioto, as with the other wines, I've tasted ones of varying quality from Veneto over the years, but several of the people at dinner were big Recioto fans and Speri's certainly satisfied everyone. Luca had packed these in his luggage and we paired it with Pascal's ice cream, drizzled with an aged fig balsamic from Ottawa's The Unrefined Olive.​ My god...ultimate desert pairing. Its safe to say that Luca's grandfather's philosophy checks out: the Valpolicella Classico and Recioto were outstanding...and the Ripasso and Amarone followed accordingly!

Wine Context: Religion, Terroir & Pinot Noir

Recently a number of my Lifford colleagues flew down to New Zealand for ​Pinot Noir 2013, their triennial ​conference that is attended by many of the world's top producers of the grape, critics, writers, importers and enthusiasts. Last week I was forwarded a link to the transcript of Matt Kramer's keynote address titled: Can Atheists Make Great Pinot Noir?  It is definitely worth taking a moment to follow the link for a great read...

Not surprisingly, this is one of the best things I've read recently. Matt Kramer seems to be one of the few broader thinkers amongst the major critics in wine writing and who I've been most philosophically aligned with. Like the title of my graduate work "The Cultural Production of Fine Wine" I've long believed the context, history and sociology is as important to understanding wine as the technical production or tasting. Too often bottom line answers are produced out of strictly scientific data, but as science proves and disproves itself time and time again (as is inherent in its method) there is a lot of value in the things that aren't scientifically proven or measured...like terroir and biodynamics.

A cross outside the vineyards of Burgundy's Vosne-Romanée.​

Kramer makes an interesting and important link between the religion of monks who developed France's major wine regions and how their sacred terroir (of Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne, Loire, etc) came to be so revered today. By using single varietals like Pinot Noir for an unbastardized interpretation of the terroir they were attempting to let the voice of God shine through as purely as possible in flavour. It may not be the voice of God we're looking for anymore in viticulture, but this history has no doubt influenced the same venerated approach and intense respect for the soil that they have today. It accounted for something otherwise unaccountable, as Matt Kramer suggested making 2+2=5.

There are many technically perfect or stylistically typical wines where 2+2=4, but they lack that je ne sais quoi​ that takes it to 5. And we all know those wines that we've tasted that have it, that are somehow extra special and most often come from Old World regions with this type of history. They taste like they're slightly outside the box but perfectly within it, which almost always is an effect of terroir, not "winemaking". Kramer highlights that it's no coincidence the highest proportion of biodynamic viticulture today is found in Burgundy. Even if it not explained in these terms, this is partially how biodynamics helps with viticulture these days. By instilling a philosophy of minimal interventionism and working with the earth's cycles, it allows the vineyard to find its own equilibrium to naturally showcase its terroir...Fostering the conditions necessary to potentially let 2+2=5.

Shortly after the New Zealand Pinot Noir conference, a similar one was held in the Mornington Penninsula and Ted Lemon, winemaker at Littorai in California and Burn Cottage in Central Otago, gave a speech about New World Terroir that helped bring Kramer's idea full circle. Lemon recalled his early days in Burgundy learning winemaking and in his research stumbled upon a history of prestigious vineyards just outside of Paris, which nearly all memory of has disappeared. Lemon extrapolates this forgotten history of once-prestigious terroir to an idea of Noble Places, instead of only inherently superior dirt. He positions 'terroir' as a human construct that is "composed of historical, cultural, economic, scientific and agronomic components." Similar to Kramer's history of religion underpinning the development of France's great regions, here Lemon uses the concept to explain why the New World does not yet have the same venerated 'terroir' sites, because "there will never be pure, great and true New World terroirs until we accomplish the esthetic and cultural parts of building the edifice."

​In other words, 2+2 will not equal 5 solely on the basis of growing grapes on an inherently "better" piece of dirt. Kramer demonstrated this with his mention of the character-less and boring Burgundian wines made through the 70's and 80's when many producers experimented with chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers. Reverting back to the more natural processes developed culturally over time has brought back the ability to produce the superlative wines they were known for. It seems the foundation for many of the greatest wines in the world is as much cultural as it is physical, whether it be through religion, biodynamic philosophy or some other cultural construct. And overall this is another great example how in wine the context is everything.

Jay-Z + Wine

I've long been a fan of Jay-Z and his music--his collaboration with R Kelly on Fiesta was the soundtrack to many high school beach parties and 99 Problems that he did with Rick Rubin was one of the most listened to songs on my iPod. Since working in the wine industry I've also been a big fan of how legit Jay-Z's wine appreciation is. So I was delighted to happen upon this great video on Jay-Z's blog Life + Times over Saturday morning coffee that features Francis Ford Coppola Winery at harvest time, interviewing head winemaker Corey Beck:

Because I represent Francis Coppola's wines--both the Coppola Presents line from Sonoma and the flagship Inglenook property in Napa--I've had the chance to visit the winery and have met Corey a number of times. He's definitely the affable gentleman depicted in the video, and he produces some of California's most sought-after wine. So glad to see them featured on Life + Times and know that Jay-z is a fan of Coppola's wines as well.

Wine has always been a part of Jay-Z's image; and since famously boycotting Cristal as the unofficial Champagne of hiphop in 2006 over perceived racist comments by Louis Roederer's managing director Frederic Rouzaud, Jay-Z has championed a new brand of ultra-premium bubbles: the Ace of Spades by Armand De Brignac in Chigny Les Roses. He is also rumoured to also have a financial stake in the distribution with NYC's Sovereign Brands and it was named #1 Champagne of the year in 2010 by Fine Champagne Magazine. The mainstream recognition of its unique pewter and gold bottles is almost exclusively thanks to Jay-Z replacing Cristal with it in his music videos. But since leaving behind Cristal he's also moved into drinking red wine over backroom card games with Harvey Keitel and hosting Champagne political fundraisers for Barack Obama at his Manhattan 40/40 Club...a party that I imagine looked a little like this:

So be it resolved that between Jay-Z's promotion of Armand De Brignac; his $280'000 Champagne tower for Obama; $250'000 on wine at his buddy Chris Martin's Coldplay concert (with wives Beyonce and Gweneth Paltrow dancing with Champagne in the wings); and featuring guys like Corey Beck and Francis Ford Coppola Winery on Life + Times...Mr. Shawn Carter is one of the most serious wine guys in the music biz.

But maybe the coolest thing is that between hanging with the Obamas, Chris Martin and Gweneth Paltrow, etc he is still humble and comes off like this:

For more info on Francis Ford Coppola and Inglenook wines in Ontario please visit www.liffordwine.com

Wine Context: To Parker and Back Again

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There has been talk of a backlash against Robert Parker's palate for quite a while now, and it seems to be slowly making its way into the mainstream. The famous wine critic began developing a taste for very big and jammy, over-ripe wines in the 1990s, scoring them in the high 90s, while many outstanding traditional wines of more elegant complexity that had once been the age-worthy wines of choice waned and struggled to break the 90 point barrier. A December 2000 in-depth article on Parker in The Atlantic called him the most influential critic in the world, in any field. His influence was so great that his high scoring wines rose to super-stardom, while low scoring wines wouldn't sell at all. As a result many wineries started making wines tailored to Parker's palate, letting their grapes hang on the vine for weeks or months longer, concentrating the sugars to create massive fruitbombs in order to gain higher ratings in hopes of selling more wine. This came to be known as the "Parker Effect", or the Parkerization of wine, and is now mostly referred to in pejorative terms. Parker's former assistant Elin McCoy wrote an excellent piece for The World of Fine Wine in 2010 titled Twilight of the Emperor: The Waning Power of Robert Parker which outlined many of the nuanced effects of Parker's power explaining the backlash and his declining influence.

Napa Valley's Screaming Eagle, the picture of Robert Parker's influence.

Napa Valley's Screaming Eagle, the picture of Robert Parker's influence.

A major problem with the style of winemaking that the Parkerization brought about is that it masks terroir. When you harvest over-ripe grapes that create super jammy wines with high alcohol, both jam and booze become the main profile of the wine, hiding the earthy complexities or minerality that may be inherent in the vineyard site. These wines then often need to be aged in lots of new oak to add different flavours and nuances, but are distinctively barrel notes, not terroir notes. As immediately appealing as these rich, mouth-filling wines can often be, they inherently lack complexity and nuances that make fine wine interesting. As championed by Robert Parker, for a while this style came to be what people wanted: a new breed of high-octane wines that over-delivered a big flavour profile unlike anything before. But most of these wines all started to taste the same. Cabernet Sauvignons from California became nearly indistinguishable from Australian Cabs, big Argentinean Malbecs or Super Tuscans. This result of the Parker Effect created a homogenization in wine globally. When so many big wines from all different parts of the world essentially taste like boozy jam it defeats the regionally nuanced purpose of terroir that makes wine interesting.

It's funny how context changes in wine just like music, fashion or anything else with aesthetic value. I was writing my Master's thesis on this topic of wine sociology a few years ago and got to thinking about this again while reading a few recent articles. Jay McInerney author and wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal did a piece on Jim Clendenin of Au Bon Climat winery in Santa Barbara, California. He presents an interesting retrospective on how during the 1980s Parker loved Jim's wines and their Burgundian, minerally, understated, complex style, but come the mid 90s that changed:

"In 1989, Parker named my Sanford and Benedict Vineyard Chardonnay the best in California. In 1996, the numbers on that wine were exactly the same as in '89—same winemaking, same acid and pH level, same alcohol—and he said it was pinched and lean. The wine was the same but the context had changed." -Jim Clendenin via WSJ

This snippit is a great case study in how contextual the perception of wine quality is, as we see this same story everywhere. Its why so many wineries changed their styles of winemaking. Luckily people like Jim stayed true to their craft and continued making traditional wines and now they're coming back into vogue. In the same article Steve Kistler, of Sonoma's infamous Kistler Winery refers to his own former big winemaking style as "blowzy and overblown", signalling a sure change in tide. Likely tired of homogenous jammy wines, many sommeliers are again looking for the lower alcohol, terroir driven wines that aren't heavily doused in oak and represent the terroir of a place, not the style of one man's palate.

A little closer to home we see the same return happening in the rising popularity of wineries like Tawse, Thomas Bachelder and Norman Hardie who all have a very traditional French inspiration. Tawse Winery owner Moray Tawse actually produces several labels from Burgundy in partnership with Pascal Marchand and makes very similar wines at home in Niagara. Several of which were perceived to be the Burgundian wines in a mixed blind lineup of French and Niagara Chardonnays by The Burghound, Allan Meadows. Similarly Thomas Bachelder, the famous winemaker from Le Clos Jordanne, is now doing his own pan-continental Chardonnay project between Burgundy, Niagara and Oregon--which I wrote about in an earlier post. And recently Zoltan Szabo published an article on Stormin Norman Hardie in Good Food Revolution in praise of his understated, extremely elegant wines which are low in alcohol, but still very ripe and high in flavour. A testament to legit old-world winemaking that is making these guys superstars amongst sommeliers and restauranteurs.

All of this coupled with the recent news that Robert Parker sold his controlling shares of The Wine Advocate to Singapore investors and abdicated his role as Editor-in-Cheif to Lisa Perrotti-Brown, I think its safe to say the end of over-blown high-octane wines dominating the wine market is on its way.

Ottawa Deep Freeze = Wine Time

If you don't live in Ottawa then you may not know we're in the middle of a deep freeze. I wouldn't say unseasonable, as it can regularly get to -30C (plus windchill -46!), but in the past few years this has been a little less common. Its the time of year that wine bottles explode in cars and breezeways over night, and restaurants are taking their breaks after a busy holiday season. For this reason it's been a good month since my last blog post. Its cold as hell and there hasn't been a lot going on of interest, so between heading back to the family farm for Christmas, doing some hunting, having a few dinners out, and plenty of wine evenings with friends, the Ottawa deep freeze is decidedly good for 2 things: winter sports and wine drinking.

So I thought a little post about deep-freeze down-time wine-appreciation in the Great White North might be an apropos way to kick of 2013 on Capital Wine. Here's a few shots of the good times that bridged 2012 and 13.

Exclusive Grand Cru Bordeaux Offer

Bordeaux produces some of the absolute greatest wines known to man, but in recent years many of these have become less accessible due to the rising demand and cost of these prestigious wines. The top wines from Bordeaux have always been justifiably expensive but in the last 10-20 years after the move to enprimeur sales and having become a Veblen Good in the Asian markets, it has been more difficult to get your hands on the top wines.

2006 Chateau Cheval Blanc 18L on auction at Sotheby's

More to the point is the difficulty of getting aged Bordeaux that is ready to drink now. With the enprimeur futures system you need to purchase the top Classed Growth Bordeaux wines site unseen while they are still in barrel because the demand for them is so high that they often sell out before bottling. Couple this with the fact that when supply is fixed and demand rises, so do prices. Therefore many people are in the position of not necessarily wanting to spend increasingly vast amounts of money on wine they won't be able to drink for 10-20 years.

As these bottles find their way onto the auction blocks at Sotheby's or Christie's in New York and Chicago they continue to demand unpredictably large sums. If purchasing is done strictly for investment this isn't a problem as values seem to continue rising, but it is quite a ticket for wines you won't be drinking for at least a decade. Luckily we work with Companie Medocaine, one of the finest negotiant houses in Bordeaux and they have released to us an inventory of their Grand Crus, with selections back into the last 3 decades. This is an excellent opportunity to get your hands on some of Bordeaux's most exclusive wines that are close to being ready to drink without an auction house bidding war. The Chateaus we have on offer include Chateau Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild, Lafite, Haut Brion, Latour, Cheval Blanc, Pichon de Longueville (Baron and Comtesse), Lynch-Bages, Petit-Villages, Angelus, Cos d'Estournel, Montrose, Suduiraut and Yquem...to name a few of the superstars.

But something that gets lost in the shadow of these outstanding Grand Cru wines is the plethora of great Chateaus that were not Classified in 1855 and make incredible, age-worthy wine for a fraction of the cost. Moreover, many of these wineries are owned by the same families who own the top classified Growths and produce very high quality second wines under a different label: Château Les Ormes-de-Pez is owned by the Cazes family who own Château Lynch-Bages; La Fleur de Boüard is owned by Hubert de Boüard de Laforest, the co-owner of Château Angélus; and Chateau Pibran is owned by AXA Millésimes under the direction of Christian Seely along with top Chateaus like Pichon-Longueville Baron and Petit-Villages, and the list goes on. These secondary wines can be 1/10 of the price of their bigger brothers, and are worth every reasonable penny.

But because of all the press the First Growths get along with their prohibitive prices, we can often forget how much incredible wine Bordeaux actually produces outside of the top 10 or 20 Chateaus.  On offer is a long list of various vintages from a mix of the First Growths mentioned as well as many great value houses. For more details and the complete offer please request a price list via the 'By Request' page above.

I filmed this tasting with Paul Pontallier, General Director of Chateau Margaux at Lifford Wine Agency's office in 2010 for my old blog Behind The Wine. It has some great Q&A insights of the inner workings of one of Bordeaux's most famous Chateaus.

Dinner with the Bachelders

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to join Thomas Bachelder and his wife Mary Delaney for dinner in Ottawa at Steve Beckta's new joint, Gezellig. They had just finished of day of restaurant visits with my colleague Vanessa Nisbet showing off their new releases to the city's sommeliers when we met for what turned out to be an excellent dinner.

Thomas in the vineyard in Beaune, Burgundy.

For those of you who don't know the name Thomas Bachelder, he's the man who brought fame to Niagara's Le Clos Jordanne as a top Ontario producer specializing in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. A couple years ago Thomas decided to leave Le Clos to start his own boutique pan-continental Chardonnay brand; a really interesting terroir project making organic Chardonnay in Oregon, Niagara and Burgundy, letting each place and vintage speak for itself. Throughout his past years as the winemaker at Lemelson Vineyards in Oregon followed by launching Vincor's flagship brand 'Le Clos Jordanne' in Niagara, Thomas has built quite a Rolodex of top winemakers and grapegrowers. This is incredibly important to the quality aspect of such an international boutique brand, because if you're not in the vineyard on a day-to-day basis, you better know the best people who are. And he does. Thomas and his wife Mary have used these relationships to rent space inside local wineries and to source all of the very best organically grown grapes, which can be difficult to procure for an outsider. So by making use of all his own winemaking experience as well as great contacts and resources in Niagara, Oregon and Burgundy he's been able to start what looks to be a very very promising venture.

Thomas Bachelder and Mary Delaney: Partners in life and the winery.

We began dinner at Gezellig with a blind tasting for myself and Grayson McDiarmid, Wine Director at Gezellig. The wine was white, so one would assume Chardonnay considering Thomas' gig. But the colour wasn't dark enough and the nose wasn't quite rich enough to be Chardonnay from any of the three regions they produce in. Chablis crossed my mind, but the palate wasn't quite plump enough either. It was fresh, quite complex, had a lot of depth and minerality, but didn't have the fattness of Chardonnay but definitely smelt like it could be Burgundian. Half jokingly I guessed Aligote, and Grayson agreed. Surprised by our guess, Thomas then asked "...Aligote from where?" - "Burgundy?" we responded. Puligny-Montrachet was the more specific answer!

To get some of the top organic Chardonnay grapes Thomas was trying to buy, he needed to buy some Aligote as well. This is often the case with grape growers, to get X parcel of amazing grapes you also need to buy Y. And in this case, whats cooler than Chardonnay's little brother from Puligny?? In Burgundy the vignerons drink Aligote in the fields (their version of Beer O'clock, I suppose), as aperitifs or as starters with oysters--As pictured below in its most legitimate form: in magnum at Joe Beef in Montreal. Thats right, magnums of Aligote...That's how Joe Beef rolls.

But if you think the Aligote is cool, that's just the sideshow. Thomas' stable of Chardonnays are an inspiring exercise in terroir. I joined them for a tasting at the Wellington Gastropub the following day to taste through the entire lineup: Niagara VQA, then single vineyard versions of Wismer and Saunders Vineyards in Niagara. The difference in these 3 Chards was clear, but also very interesting similarities when tasted side-by-side. Then when you line them up next to Oregon then Beaune the contrasts and similarities were drawn out even further. I think right off the bat Oregon was my preference as it seems the most middle of the road to me, but Beaune had such a linear acidity with almost salty minerality I kept going back to it. The Niagara wines were surely the richest, but with subtle and balanced oak integration...definitely some of the best that I've tasted recently from the area.

There is a good reason Thomas is one of Ontario's most celebrated winemakers, and there's far too much I could say about each of these outstanding wines, so you should just run out and try them yourself. Several are released in Vintages right now, but they won't last long, last year they sold out immediately. Click here for tech sheets from Niagara and Oregon. Visit their website for more details at http://thomasbachelder.com/ and follow them on Twitter @Bachelder_Wines