Some of the best wines available in Canada are grown in Niagara. Over the years, more than 90 wineries have sprung up in this region, each offering a variety of great-tasting wines. To discover why it is worth sipping these spectacular wines, we have selected 10 Niagara wines you need to try in 2019.
203 Stone Eagle Wine from Two Sisters Niagara Winery
Stone Eagle Special Edition Selection 2013
The Stone Eagle wine by Two Sisters is a richly textured and opulent wine with immense power and depth. You will not find many Bordeaux-varietal red wines in this region reaching this level of complexity and ripeness without being overly unbalanced and tannic.
Fox Croft Block Chardonnay 2017
Fox Croft Block Chardonnay from 2027 Cellars Wismer Vineyard is a restrained and stunning white wine that has all the hallmark of what Niagara does best. This wine is one of winemaker Kevin Panakapka’s favorite It is precise, taut, nuanced, and loaded with this region’s flinty minerality. It does all this at an affordable price. All 2027 cellar chards are 100 percent whole cluster pressed and wild fermented with 100 percent French oak packaging.
Bachelder Wiemer-Wingfield Chardonnay 2015
The Bachelder Wiemer Chardonnay is made in the Wingfield Block of the Wismer Vineyard. It is subtle with saline, flinty minerality starting the attack on the nose. It has a fresh and tight taste with fine oak spice slowly emerging. It is a pretty wine with soft orchard fruits as well as a touch of fresh lemon, acacia honey, layers of flint, and a beautifully integrated oaks spice that doesn’t impede the fruit. It is textured and layered and delicately dances on the tongue.
Bachelder Saunders-Haunt Vineyard Chardonnay 2015
Bachelder Saunders-Haunt Vineyard Chardonnay 2015
This is another top Thomas Bachelder Chardonnay from Haut Vineyard. This is a heavily mineralized and beautifully nuanced Chardonnay with waves of honeysuckle, citrus, pear, chalk accents, wonderful defining slate and integrated oak spice notes. This is all kept freshly by this Chardonnay’s mouth-watering and racy acidity.
Hidden Bench Tete de Cuvée Chardonnay
This Chardonnay is a blend from Rosomel and Locust Lane Vineyards and finished unfiltered and unfined. This is one of Ontario’s best Chardonnays and an ideal example of the Beamsville Bench Style. It has a nose that shows notes of spice, lemon accents, baked apple pie, poached bear, and wet-stone minerality. It is nervy on the palate with minerality through the finish, elegant oak accents, a touch of citrus, nicely integrated orchard fruits, and mouth-watering acidity. This beautiful wine will cellar for over 5 years and get better with time.
Stratus Chardonnay 2015
Stratus Chardonnay 2015
This Chardonnay is made from the best grapes from the picked Stratus Vineyard. With battonage (less stirring), wild yeast, 287 days in 40 percent new French oak before being bottled unfiltered, this wine is still evolving. As it ages in the bottle, it may gain complexity, so consider cellaring a few bottles when you get it. It possesses a touch of lemon, leesy notes/underlying minerality, baked apple, fine oak spices, and a beautiful nose of the poached bear. It has a wonderful texture and mouthfeel on the palate with concentrated fruits of pear and apple that marry well to the minerals and oak spices. On the finish, it is long and luscious with freshening citrus that helps to keep it finessed, vibrant, and lively.
Bachelder Wismer-Parke Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015
This is another vintage wine from Wismer-Parke Vineyard. This version is delicate and pretty on the nose with aromas of perfume, violets, crunchy raspberries, and cherries that leads to slate/iron minerality with notes of soft oak spice. It is also focused on the palate with savory and bramble raspberry spice and fruit, as well as lovely tart cherry all delivered on a smooth bed of tannins.
Fielding Estate Lowery Vineyard Pinot Noir 2016
Some of the best Pinot Noir grapes in the Niagara region come from the Fielding Estate Lowery Vineyard in St. David’s. This wine has a seductive nose of underlying spice notes, cassis, forest floor, violets, bramble, and black cherry with personality and persistence. Although it is a medium-boiled, it shows lovely texture and structure on the palate to go with the evident and ripe tannins to support elegant wood spices, anise, cassis, chalky minerality, and a rich broth of red fruits. You can cellar this for over 6 years and it will get better as it ages.
Hidden Bench Rosomel Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015
Hidden Bench Rosomel Vineyard Pinot Noir 2015
This single-vineyard is from the Rosomel Vineyard. It is 100% certified organic just like all Hidden Bench Wines. It is pretty and beautiful Pinot with a nose of perfumed spice note, strawberries, tart cherry, bramble/raspberry, and a range of mineral and earth accents. It reveals structure and complexity on the palate with integrated oak spices, ripe/plush tannins, savory red fruits, and length through the finish.
Vineland Estates Reserve Cabernet Franc 2015
This is a fabulous treat for all lovers of Cab Franc wine from Vineland Estates Reserve Winery. The nose is fulsome and ripe with the purity of herbs, cocoa, vanilla bean, leather, underlying cherry, cassis, and black currants. On the palate, it straddles the line between ripe and fresh with concentrated cassis, currants, and blackberries, followed by spice, anise, and herb accents in a complex, textured style.
