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Le Clos Jordanne 'Grand Clos' Pinot Noir 2019

Canada, Ontario
94 CO 94 Points (Club Oenologique)
92 NW 92 Points (Wines In Niagara)
92 WA 92 Points (WineAlign)
92 WA 92 Points (WineAlign)

The alluring, expansive layered red fruit flirts with darker-berries, leading to a long, complex yet focused finish that reveals strong chalky minerality, firm acidity, and present, but finely-tuned tannins.

Country Canada
Province Ontario
Region Niagara Peninsula
Producer Le Clos Jordanne
Vintage 2019
Color Red Wine
Varietal(s) Pinot Noir
¥7,700  (incl. tax)

The alluring, expansive layered red fruit flirts with darker-berries, leading to a long, complex yet focused finish that reveals strong chalky minerality, firm acidity, and present, but finely-tuned tannins.

Country Canada
Province Ontario
Region Niagara Peninsula
Producer Le Clos Jordanne
Vintage 2019
Color Red Wine
Varietal(s) Pinot Noir
Data
Closure Screw Cap
Volume 750ml
Alcohol 12.5%
Product Code A025R00119
UPC 063657040140
Inventory In Stock (12)
Owning & Enjoying

Tasting notes

With Le Grand Clos’ terroir, one first senses a great brooding tension of fruit and longevity under the mantle of a fine perfume. Simply profound. This wine still has much to teach us of local “sense of place,” and of the longevity of Pinot Noir from the Niagara bench’s most august terroirs. Born of a cool, long, late, and ultimately ‘quite ripe’ vintage the Grand Clos Pinot Noir 2019 is overflowing with dry extract and verve.  The vintage and vineyard are beautifully expressed, given the exceptional terroir delineation between parcels that nature gave us in 2019.  Le Grand Clos is always a bit austere, but with the differentiated fruit profiles, it simultaneously presents an alluring purity of red and black fruit and a wine that is unbelievably cohesive, silky, and sure. Alternatively thrilling, wild red raspberry and then deliciously-corrupt black raspberry and blueberry with a minty edge, this wine is “switchedon,” slightly smoky and satisfies in the mid-palate with a long finale. So long, it begs to be put in the cellar for a few years! This is a wine that clearly stands on the shoulders of the ‘17 and ’18 – standing higher yet couldn’t be there without them!  With greater vine age, we sense even greater precision - and yet – confoundingly – a greater weight that will certainly grow up around the wine in bottle.

Cellaring

Drinking Prime: 2022-2030

Press
94Club Oenologique
Sarah Marsh MW.  Rich, red cherry aroma and a supple slide onto the palate. This has delicately glossy generosity and is lightly plump, combining sumptuous fruit with svelte texture, even in the cooler 2019 vintage. It glides elegantly across the palate to a fine, fresh and mineral line to finish. It has both poise and polish.
92Wines In Niagara
The nose is lifted with perfumed cherries, dark berries, raspberry bramble, fresh turned earth, steely minerality, subtle cassis, well integrated oak spices and light cedar notes. On first taste, it has a savoury/meaty edge with the fruit held in check, on second and third tastes, and up to two days later, it showed a complex array of ripe red berries and cassis on top and then complementing earthy/spicy accents and fine-grained tannins that add structure all leading to highly finessed and fresh finish. I highly recommend a heavy decant on this wine if planning on drinking it now, or cellar 3+ years and up to 10 to fully realize the full potential.
92WineAlign
John Szabo, MS. 2019 yielded excellent results for pinot noir (and chardonnay) across Ontario, and that quality is reflected here in the delicate, lacy texture and finely detailed red fruit and spice. Tannins are as fine as powder, while acids are comfortably ripe but ever-present. This is a wine of finesse, not power, so spend some time looking for the finer details. I don't think this it's for much more than short or mid-term ageing - the profile is already advanced and the texture is light, so there's nothing preventing current enjoyment. I'd also serve with a light chill to maximize the freshness and delicacy. Tasted June 2022.
92WineAlign
GOLD - 2022 National Wine Awards of Canada
Production

Appellation

VQA Twenty Mile Bench

Vintage Notes

The 2019 Season in Niagara will be remembered as a good year for ‘Sense of Place’.  2019 started with a cool, wet spring that put us behind approximately two weeks across the region. Flowering occurred quickly as the grapevines accelerated to make up for the late start. The peak summer months were warm and sunny, with several heat waves alternating with summer storms that brought high humidity, resulting in disease pressure in the vineyards. September was uneventful, cool with some rain – but bringing the “prayed-for” conditions we needed to ripen the grapes: generally cool and sunny!  This, combined with low humidity and sunshine, provided enviable ripening conditions, and prevented breakdown of fruit.  It allowed us to let the grapes hang until they could fully ripen, even under the cooler fall conditions, thus preserving pure fruit flavours and acids.

  • “2019 feels like a standout vintage for Pinot Noir, and an eminently-ageable one. With near-perfect combinations of bright acidity, the dance of full-fruited red and black berry flavours plays out across the palate with good length, and classic textured minerality.” Thomas Bachelder
  • “Growing degree days for 2019 were 1380 GDD, and although it was one of the cooler years, September and October made it an outstanding Vintage.  The grapes for Le Grand Clos Pinot Noir 2019 were harvested on October 1st.” Gerald Klose

Viticulture

All our vineyards are farmed sustainably to preserve the natural balance of the vines and respect their terroir. We use traditional practices in the vineyard, which we feel helps maintain the quality of the fruit and its aromatic identity. Each parcel is treated individually according to its terroir specifics, and each vine is cared for by hand from pruning through to harvest.  At the start of the season, we begin by pruning, using a single Guyot system. We then tie down the canes to the fruiting wire.  Following bud-break, we position each shoot by hand, removing lateral and shoulder spurs for better ventilation and better concentration on every single cluster. Just before véraison, we strip the leaves on the eastern side of the vine, exposing the clusters to more sun and airflow.  In wetter, more humid years, we remove the leaves on both the east and west sides of the vine.  This practice promotes healthy ripening and prevents disease development. At mid-véraison, we green harvest if we feel our crop is too large or if disease pressure is present. After véraison, we net the vineyard parcels which are at risk to protect our grapes from bird damage until harvest. In terms of soil management, our goal is to nurture and maintain a natural level of microbiological life. We cultivate every other row and leave a selected cover crop in the remaining rows, which creates competition within the root system and allows the topsoil to remain loose and well-aerated. Each year, we also break up the soil (deep ripping) of every second row, to aerate the soil structure and to minimize compaction.

Vinification

  • Trellising System: Vertical Shoot Positioning: Single and Double Guyot
  • Planting Density: 5299 vines/ha (2145 vines/Ac)
  • VQA Sub-Appellation:  Twenty Mile Bench  
  • Yields: 2 T/Ac
  • Alcohol: 12.4 %
  • pH: 3.6
  • Residual Sugar: 1 g/L
  • Total Acidity: 5.7 g/L (expressed as Tartaric Acid)
  • Racking: Once after 20 months of barrel ageing, from barrel to vat.

Before we bring Le Grand Clos Pinot Noir into the winery, we make sure the flavours are “there,” and that the skins are thick, ripe and in good condition. We want the seeds when they are almost completely brown. When needed, the Pinot Noir bunches are manually sorted on the vibrating table and then completely destemmed. After a short cold maceration, letting the tanks warm up, the naturally occurring yeast from the vineyard slowly starts the fermentation. We believe indigenous yeasts make the most complete, textured, complex wines. After the fermentation, when the wine is dry, we leave the young wine ‘on the skins’ for several days to a week more to extract more fully, (yet delicately) all the aromas, finesse and complexity appropriate to the vintage and terroir. The wine naturally goes through malolactic fermentation, and is then patiently aged in selected French oak barrels (typically 25% new) for 20-22 months to integrate both the tannins and the fruit and to help push terroir to the forefront. We repeatedly taste barrel by barrel to select only those that are truly representative of the Grand Clos terroir.  After bottling, the wines are aged about six months to let the aromatic bouquet and mouthfeel further develop and integrate. We experiment tirelessly with coopers, toasts and forests to find the barrels that express (not mask) terroir with verve and nuance.  French barrels remain our choice.  The oak comes uniquely from forests in the northeast of France; known for their especially tight grain and subtlety of perfume.  Due to the trees’ slow growth patterns and ability to deliver a ‘sense of place’ with complete transparency we source from the Allier, Tronçais, Jura, Bourgogne, and Vosges forests.  These barrels, made of wood that has been airdried for three years, are made principally by the Burgundian cooperages of Sirugue (Nuits-St. Georges), Dargaud & Jaegle (Romanèche-Thorins), Tonnellerie de Mercurey (Mercurey), Billon (Beaune) and Damy (Meursault).

Producer

Producer Description

BEGINNINGS

Originally Le Clos Jordanne was a Franco-Canadian winemaking collaboration between Vincor Canada (now Arterra Wines Canada) and the Famille Boisset of Burgundy. The goal of Le Clos Jordanne was to create a “domaine” in the Niagara region, producing ultra-premium, Burgundian-style Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, expressive of the unique terroir of the Jordan Bench.

TERROIR

The ‘clos’, or enclosed vineyard, of Le Clos Jordanne is surrounded and sheltered by the Carolinian forests and their glacial ravines. The limestone-laced, silt and clay glacial soils are known for bringing intensely focused fruit, minerality and age-ability to the wines produced there.

Le Clos Jordanne’s estate vineyard is located on the premium parcel of the Jordan bench, on the first rise from the plain, a natural plateau near the slope of the escarpment. At 10.45 hectares, it enjoys light limestone soils created by the ancient ice shield with rich sediments and produces the fullest expressions of the terroir. Planted with both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir between 2000-2001 it is surrounded on three sides by environmentally protected forest, woodland and pond nature areas which have been left in their natural state; featuring statuesque weeping willows and a picturesque pond complete with lily pads and wild flowers. It is located at 2738 King Street, Jordan Station, at the T-junction of Jordan Road and Highway 81.

"The Grand Clos is a magical place on the Jordan Bench, arguably one of the top sites for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in all of Niagara." - Thomas Bachelder

THOMAS BACHELDER - WINEMAKER

Thomas Bachelder is internationally recognized and Le Clos Jordanne’s original winemaker - with a speciality in the production of cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. His terroir-revealing wines with distinct, complex minerality truly showcase how Old World, Burgundian winemaking techniques employed on New World terroir - with minimal intervention - can produce exceptional wines.
 

LE CLOS JORDANNE VINEYARD

Le Grand Clos Vineyeard wide zoom

Le Clos Jordanne’s estate vineyard is located on the premium parcel of the Jordan bench, on the first rise from the plain, a natural plateau near the slope of the escarpment. At 10.45 hectares, it enjoys light limestone soils created by the ancient ice shield with rich sediments and produces the fullest expressions of the terroir. Planted with both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir between 2000-2001 it is surrounded on three sides by environmentally protected forest, woodland and pond nature areas which have been left in their natural state; featuring statuesque weeping willows and a picturesque pond complete with lily pads and wild flowers. It is located at 2738 King Street, Jordan Station, at the T-junction of Jordan Road and Highway 81.

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