Bachelder Wines
"Thomas Bachelder is one of the most talented winemakers in Canada, and his pinot noir ranks along side the best of Burgundy". - Will Lyons, London (UK) Sunday Times
In just over a decade, Thomas Bachelder has made a name for himself as a producer of world class, terroir-based, organic Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Burgundy, Oregon and Niagara. With their two young daughters in tow, Thomas and his wife Mary Delaney have unwittingly become wine gypsies, following their passion to produce terroirrevealing wines from these two most noble Burgundian grapes.
Made with intention
They make wines from local terroirs using ‘wild’ (indigenous) yeasts, using organic vineyards wherever possible. Everything goes to barrel for long ageing. The intent is to make pure, suavely-textured wines that sing lightly and clearly of their vineyard origins with as little makeup as possible – wines that are finely-perfumed and tightly-wound, offering the classic refined fruit and textured minerality of the delicate silt, clay and dolomitic limestone-laced ancient lakebed terroirs of Niagara.
A little note from Thomas and Mary
We’re inspired by the love of our spiritual home – Burgundy – where the grapes we love originally evolved, where even the tiniest of vineyards are put separately into a bottle. Our aim is to help discover, quantify and name the Terroirs of Niagara, one-by-one, from west (just outside Hamilton) to east (just outside the “Old Town” of Niagara-on-the-Lake) – and to deliver their energy and their purity of spirit to your glass! Pull the cork and dream of the vineyard from which it comes!
Santé! Cheers!
Thomas & Mary Delaney-Bachelder
“…Bachelder is evidently on a monk’s errand to map out the escarpment with Burgundian-like precision.” - John Szabo, MS
| Address | Locust Lane, Beamsville Bench |
|---|---|
| Wine Maker | Thomas Bachelder |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Ontario |
| Region | Niagara Peninsula |
From this Producer
The 'Les Villages' series occupies a rung just below the top single-vineyard expressions from Thomas Bachelder, but consists of fruit from those same vineyards, making it a great value series!
The 'Les Villages' series occupies a rung just below the top single-vineyard expressions from Thomas Bachelder, but consists of fruit from those same vineyards, making it a great value series!
This wine, vinified with 33% whole grape clusters, is the finer, more closed, and more structured (for ageability) of the two Foxcroft Crus. Incredible presence and verve. It possesses a slightly longer and more tannic finish.
Bachelder Wines - Les Village 'NOTL (Niagara-on-the-Lake)" Chardonnay 2020
Chardonnay hallmarks of honeyed, mentholated waxy notes, with white peach and pear. Silky-rich, even a bit exotic, but dead-dry with a spicy but savoury minerality, tight but not stony. One might even call this a ‘N.O.T.L. Chardonnay for lovers of Bench wines!’ (The Willms, Bator, Bai Xu and Patte Rouge parcels make up this complex blend.) Ageing-Improvement Potential : Will hold for several years, improving all the long.
A reserve blend of barrels from Bachelder's Niagara-on-the-Lake fruit that is notably well-balanced and exhibits unexpected vibrancy and savoriness. Dried herbs compliment the ripe stone fruit with an appealing zestiness and minerality on the palate. Voluminous but not heavy, there careful winemaking at play here. Memorable length. Tasted July 2022.
Some ‘get’ "Da Wiz" right away, some suddenly find they prefer it with a little age. Always noble, closed-in, restrained when young, the ‘Wismer-Wingfield’ Chardonnay is our latest ripening parcel, furthest from Lake Ontario (6,8km!), at the highest elevation (169m at the very top). The ‘Hill of Wingfield" describes sharp slope through the shorter rows. Look back a page at the Fox’s pick dates! "Da Wiz" comes in 10 days to three weeks after that parcel! One wants to call the "Hill of Wingfield" a ‘Grand Cru,’ however, with no classification system yet in place in Niagara, one is not allowed.
WHY THIS MATTERS FROM A ‘SENSE OF PLACE’ PERSPECTIVE. Both on the Vineland Bench and on the Jordan Bench*, the majority of vineyards are planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This is a magic place for Chardonnay: amateurs of Niagara Bench Chardonnay from around the world (who may have never visited the region) have amply proved this point with their laurels, with their support. The secret lies in the ex-marine soils, and in the altitude and distance from the lake. In toto, it forms what could be called "Niagara’s Grand Cru strip." Vineland Bench Chardonnay?" "Nuanced, fine, scented, great length, mineral, long-lived."
Quickly becoming a reference vineyard for Niagara, with several different versions from local high-end producers available in any given year, the Wismer-Foxcroft Chardonnay vineyard is a steep, stony-silty clay and limestone site that is 5.4 km from Lake Ontario, at an altitude of 110 metres. For the first several years, Fox was but a component of our restaurant ‘glass-pour’ wines, however in 2013 I isolated the SV from the ‘Nord’ lower mid-slope. While briefly passing through Niagara, British wine cult journalist Andrew Jefford (Decanter and others) saw both northern and southern wines during fermentation that I had pressed and barreled separately. Incredibly, though the wines weren’t yet finished fermenting – Andrew first pointed out the stony ‘salinity.’ Since, we ‘trip’ on the heavenly marine smells of crushed oyster shells, the savoury texture and lemon oil finish that only the northern slope of this vineyard imbues to the wines produced thereof! Unforgettable.
On the tail-end of the St. David’s Bench, planted on the shores of the old riverbed of where the Niagara River used to run many moons ago, lies the picturesque Lowrey Vineyard. It is surely one of the great honours of our lives to work with this special place. The oldest, Eastern part of the vineyard was planted in 1984 by the Lowrey family for Karl Kaiser (winemaker and co-founder of Inniskillin). Karl used the vineyard for his groundbreaking international collaboration ‘Alliance’ series Inniskillin made with Burgundy’s Jaffelin (Bernard Répolt, now with Rémoissenet).
This bottling is a deft blend of the ‘88 & ‘93 vines and is redolent of pretty roses and slightly-corrupt red raspberries, with forest-sourced tiny strawberries and an indescribable chalky-cherried edge. Fascinating; fine; fresh; mineral; so complex, long and just-unsettled tannins suggest its ageability: A ballerina with great core strength!
The Wismer Parke Vineyard has long been the source of some of Ontario's most exciting Pinot Noirs. There's an immediacy about the Wismer Parke bottling that's hard to miss. Mouthfilling texture and a core of ripe red fruit make this instantly enjoyable, while the fragrance, structure and length suggest this is a Pinot that will continue to charm even after it sheds its luscious primary fruit notes
Our Wismer-Parke Pinot Noir shows the classic Vineland (as distinct from Jordan) combination of plush richness, tight minerality, and the wild, ‘bloody’ iron-grip of red soils. At once a hedonistic, ageable and yet perfumed Pinot Noir, Wismer-Parke’s vocation would seem to be one of a certain firm, wild prettiness, finishing with a long, ferrous-meets-chalk minerality. Planted just south of Highway 8 just uphill on the Bench, on a well-drained slope on the east side of Victoria Street in Vineland, the Wismer-Parke site is arguably one of Niagara’s ‘Grand Crus’ for Pinot Noir.