Wine Of The Week: Le Clos Jordanne Le Grand Clos

Canada’s Niagara-grown Pinot Noir is alive with dark berries and gravel minerality.

Over the past few decades, the Niagara wine-growing region has quietly turned out some of the smartest, most sophisticated and vastly underrated Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays in the world. Which I write with an inherent bias—I am Canadian, and live just a few hours drive from the area along the U.S.-Canada border.

Le Clos Jordanne knows this. They opened the doors of their winery in 2002, and tapped winemaker Thomas Bachelder (who makes incredibly spectacular wines under his namesake label as well) to turn out their line of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. 25-ish years later, and the domaine is leaning further into Ontario Chardonnay and Pinot Noir by releasing a line of single-vineyard wines called Le Grand Clos. Both are excellent, but the Pinot Noir sticks with me. It’s expansive and enduringly layered, alive with dark berries and gravel minerality, and held together by precise tannins. While this represents the top tier of Le Clos Jordanne’s offerings, it still sits at $52—a fraction of the cost of bottles from Burgundy or Oregon. Canada, eh? $52

Kate Dingwall is a sommelier and wine writer. Her work frequently appears in Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Eater, Forbes.com, Vogue, and Food & Wine, and she pours wine at one of Canada’s top restaurants.