Bachelder Les Villages Bench Chardonnay
£42.95
The Bachelder Chardonnay “Les Villages” has a floral and apple blossom start, leading to a creamy mid-palate with refreshing mineral notes, alongside flavours of apple and a hint of smoke. The finish is delicious and full of both mineral chalkiness and acidity. The grapes were fermented to dryness in oak barrels using indigenous yeasts. The wine remained then in barrel for 17 months to enhance its texture.
The Niagara Chardonnay is produced from fruit grown in the Saunders Vineyard on Beamsville Bench, as well as older vineyards in Vineland and Four Mile Creek, and several sites across the Niagara Peninsula.
Ideal with grilled shellfish, roasted chicken, turkey, tuna steaks, and swordfish.
Thomas Bachelder and his wife Mary Delaney have produced high-quality, cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in France, Canada, and the US, since 2009. Originally hailing from Canada, the couple has returned to their roots and are now entirely focused on making wine in the Niagara Peninsula and raising the profile of this region. 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. Inspired by the love of their spiritual home – Burgundy – where the grapes of the vineyard originally evolved, where even the tiniest of vineyards are put separately into a bottle. Their aim is to help discover, quantify, and name the Terroirs of Niagara.