SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch steps away from Italy to sing the praises of this delicious, naturally farmed Pinot Noir from the shores of Lake Ontario.
I got into wine for the travel—both actual and armchair—so this wine was an especially exciting discovery for me. Despite fancying myself a worldly wine drinker, I’m only vaguely familiar with Canada’s Niagara Peninsula and had only ever tried sweet ice wines from the region prior to sampling this superb Pinot Noir from Pearl Morissette. It’s not just a novelty; it’s a wine (and a grape) that makes sense in this place and delivers accordingly. Grown on the shores of Lake Ontario and crafted by a well-traveled, Burgundy-trained winemaker, this bright, savory Pinot had kindred qualities to some of our favorites from Oregon, while also hinting at Burgundy. So now I’ve got a “new” terroir to learn about; if there are more wines like this one lurking around up there, we may be scheduling a visit sooner rather than later!
Pearl Morissette was created in the late-2000s by winemaker François Morissette, a Quebec native who first moved to Burgundy in his early twenties to work for Alain Gras in Saint-Romain. He came back to Quebec and became a well-known sommelier, only to return to Burgundy for a longer (seven-year) stretch, working at top estates such as Roulot (Meursault), Henri Gouges (Nuits-St-Georges), and Frédéric Mugnier (Chambolle-Musigny). Morissette partnered with Toronto developer Mel Pearl to acquire vineyards on the Niagara Peninsula, which juts out at the southern end of Lake Ontario—it’s technically an isthmus separating Lake Ontario from Lake Erie, and reaches to the New York border, which is marked by the Niagara River. The Pearl Morissette partnership owns roughly 12 hectares of vineyards in two different Niagara appellations, or ‘VQA’s’ in Canadian wine parlance: Creek Shore VQA, which runs along the shore of Lake Ontario, and Twenty Mile Bench VQA immediately to the south, a higher-elevation escarpment.
Both appellations are crisscrossed by streams that trickle down to Lake Ontario through glacially formed soils that mix silt, sand, limestone, and clay/loam. Vineyards have north-facing aspects, and the microclimate, while cool, is moderated by the nearby lake. Morissette farms organically and works not just with Pinot Noir but Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Gamay, and Riesling—all varieties well-suited to the cool climate and soils.
The Pinot Noir for Morissette’s “Jeunes Vignes” (“young vines”) was planted in 2010, and his winemaking approach is decidedly ‘natural’: The wine is fermented using whole grape clusters in open-topped wooden fermenters and cement vats, then placed in cement vats for a short period of aging. Only the tracest amount of sulfur is added at bottling.
While this 2016 has a smoky, earthy soil character, it is nevertheless a clean, correct, and beautifully perfumed Pinot Noir. In the glass it’s a youthful, reflective ruby with magenta highlights at the rim, with aromatics that combine sweet and savory to great effect: black cherry, raspberry, forest floor, damp leaves, violets, and crushed stones. Medium-bodied and silky-smooth, it’s got good mid-palate weight but might best be dubbed
vin de soif (‘wine for thirst’). The cool kids might also throw out the phrase
glou-glou (kind of a Frenchified ‘glug-glug’) to describe it, but regardless of terminology, it is objectively delicious and well-priced. Open it now and over the near term and serve in Burgundy stems at 60-65 degrees. I think we need to go “French-Canadian” on the food pairing here, and an old-school Poutine will be nicely complimented by the bright acid and earthy savor of “Jeunes Vignes.” What a fun discovery; I look forward to more!
