Le Clos Jordanne 'Grand Clos' Pinot Noir 2019

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

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).