It’s always a good day for Chardonnay

By Malcolm Jolley, for The Hub

It took me a minute to catch Ilya Senchuk’s point about the 2021 Leaning Post “The Fifty” Chardonnay. It was mostly, he explained, in tanks he bought from Winona Concrete, just down the road from the farm he and his wife Nadia have turned into one of Niagara’s premium wineries. Then I pieced it together: Winona makes concrete from aggregate mined from local quarries.

The Leaning Post Chardonnay might be as Niagara as you can get. It’s literally made in vessels produced from the limestone of the Escarpment. If that doesn’t say something about terroir and ‘taste of place’, let alone cool climate minerality, I don’t know what does.

The Senchuks’ delicious Chardonnay was one of dozens I tasted over the four days I spent at the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (known as i4C), as a guest of the Wine Marketing Association of Ontario in the middle of July. The Niagara-based conference and series of events features most of the Chardonnay producers of the region as well as other Canadian wineries from Prince Edward County, the Okanagan, and Annapolis Valleys, and from far away as France, Italy, and South Africa.

Read more, including mentions of Hamilton Russell Vineyards, 16 Mile Cellar, Dobbin Estate, Flat Rock Cellars, Henry of Pelham and Foreign Affair.