The abstruse vocabulary is balanced by the numerical rating systems that many wine critics use, chiefly the influential American critic Robert Parker, who employs a metric yardstick, with 100 representing a perfect wine. He sees himself as a force for democracy but speaks in the aristocratic third person and wields a pope-like power, replacing the tyranny of the French elite with a personal tyranny that is sold as American populism. But even the comfort and familiarity of a numbered system doesn’t necessarily provide clarity. In a tiff over the 2003 Château Pavie, from the Premier Grand Cru Classé estate in St. Émilion, Bordeaux, Parker gave the wine a 96”“100 and claimed it to be “a brilliant effort”; his critical nemesis, Jancis Robinson, wine columnist for the Financial Times of London, gave it 12 out of 20, noting its “completely unappetizing overripe aromas...[a] ridiculous wine more reminiscent of a late-harvest Zinfandel.” Some critics sided with Parker (Charles Metcalfe of Wine International gave it 90”“94 out of 100, and said that it represented “a return to traditional form”), while others agreed with Robinson (Clive Coates of The Vine wrote, “Anyone who thinks this is good wine needs a brain and palate transplant. This wine will be scored simply as undrinkable.”). There is a vast landscape between a brilliant $150 wine and an undrinkable $150 wine, a nervous thought when it’s the same wine. And that landscape is where we, the untutored enthusiasts, live in fear and doubt.
Six years after standing with Triggs in his empty field, I met with Le Clos Jordanne’s viniculturalist, Thomas Bachelder, in the vineyard’s temporary headquarters, a warehouse along the Queen Elizabeth Way. We were swishing, sniffing, sipping, and spitting our way through the last few seasons. Bachelder, a very tall, informative Quebecer who learned his trade in Burgundy and worked with Pinot Noir in Oregon, talked about wines as children, growing inside those barrels, becoming strong and complex, or occasionally, despite his best efforts, wayward.
” This one is still fighting me,” he said, spitting. “Can you taste it But I think it will come around. I think it has the greatest potential.” The various wines taste of rose petals, rhubarb, and black raspberry. Some of the wine still has a rawness, though it possesses that Pinot signature. An hour later there is something that lingers on the palate, or at least the palate’s unreliable memory, a chalky, wistful taste. This is the mythic strength of Pinot Noir: it becomes more complex and delivers more meaning as the evening wears on. It is the spiritual opposite of those oversized Australian reds that come out of the bottle swinging like Russell Crowe, delivering a big, immediate taste. Though it could be argued that this, too, is a valid expression of culture.
Le Clos Jordanne is making its debut in October with the release of several wines from the 2004 vintage. Constellation’s Robert Sands has been out to the temporary winery for a tasting. Though circumspect about the future of Le Clos Jordanne, the self-professed Pinot Noir lover wrote in a statement that the wines “are absolutely incredible!!!” (emphasis his).
Bachelder and I drove through the vineyard in his truck. The Jordan Bench lies near the south shore of Lake Ontario, its slightly rolling terrain a quilt of small and subtle microclimates. As we ascended a slight rise, the vines became thicker, leafier, the upper part of the vineyard getting better wind and sun than the lower section thirty metres away. Bachelder pointed to where he feels the Bench’s sweet spot is, an innocuous field that somehow captures the area’s best elements. Alongside the road, Mexican and Jamaican field workers tended to the vines under an intense June sun. To the north, air pollution covered Toronto like poisoned flannel.
The soil contains limestone that was dragged from the mother rock by a retreating glacier (rocky soil is good for the vines because it forces the roots deeper and holds the heat from the afternoon sun). The hot, strong wind ventilates the grapes. Le Clos Jordanne is organic and low yield, the grapes picked and sorted by hand. Workers don’t use pesticides and they apply homeopathic doses of seabird guano mined in Peruvian islands as fertilizer. To invigorate the soil, the paths between vines are seeded with a combination of white clover, alsike, yellow blossom sweet clover, and creeping red fescue.
Bachelder outlined in meticulous detail the workings of a vineyard and the combination of technology, ancient knowledge, agriculture, and art required for producing a premium wine. It is science that allows winemakers to deliver consistency, controlling when the process stops and starts, what type of yeast is used, and the level of humidity in the cellar, but Bachelder is also an artist. He talked in a stream of consciousness that recalled the Pinot Noir soliloquy in the film Sideways, in which the main character described the difficulty with the Pinot Noir grape, how it can’t just be grown anywhere, how it represents something approximating truth. “In Burgundy,” Bachelder said, “they had five centuries to find the right terroir, the right techniques for each vineyard. Here we have five years.”
With a certain sense of resignation, Bachelder pointed to new development along the edge of a vineyard. “They’re building houses before we even know where the best fields are. And once the houses are there, the fields are lost. The soil is gone.” He steered the truck off the road to get a closer look at the vines. “Part of creating great wine is getting out of the way of the wine, letting it grow up, like a child, to be what it is. If you ask too much of the vine, you get a diluted wine. It should develop after you open it. The same bottle could take you somewhere different an hour later. Pinot Noir is a bitch. It should dance on that line between the red and black fruit tones. Sometimes in the Niagara we lean too far toward the red.”
There are now more than twenty Pinot Noir producers in the Niagara region, their wines costing between $12 and $50 a bottle. But not everyone agrees with Triggs’ prediction that Pinot Noir will become the dominant grape of the Niagara industry. Jean-Pierre Colas, a native Burgundian and the winemaker for Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery, doesn’t make Pinot Noir and is doubtful of its potential. “It is still based on a dream,” he said. “It is a myth. Everyone is a Pinot fanatic, but they don’t know how to make it. I don’t understand all the excitement here.” He remained unimpressed at a tasting of fifteen different Ontario Pinot Noirs. “They don’t have the structure,” he said in the accent that is such a good medium for disdain. “Some were average, some were faulty, and some were quite stupid. And an average Pinot Noir is just a red beverage.”
He tasted Bachelder’s Pinot Noirs from the barrel and conceded there was something Pinot there, something interesting. “But without disrespect to Boisset and Vincor,” he said, “they are not quality producers, they don’t have that reputation. They are more mass market.” Colas acknowledged, however, that Vincor had been a large part of the Canadian wine industry’s development. Constellation, which doesn’t have the same nationalist stake, has arrived on the scene at a delicate moment, when the Canadian industry is poised to reap the benefits of its years of hard, often frustrating work. “There has been a revolution in the last ten years, even the last five years,” Colas said. “It’s the beginning of everything here.”
