Bachelder

About Bachelder

In Niagara, Bachelder has found a neat little barrel cellar tucked away in the vines on the Beamsville Bench, but the grapes have been sorted and processed at Southbrook Vineyards from day one. Bachelder has secured some excellent sites on the bench that stretch through Beamsville (organic), to Vineland on the way to the St. David’s Bench.

We make wines from local terroirs, using “wild” (indigenous) yeasts, and grapes from older vineyard parcels when we can find them. We encourage low-impact viticulture – especially organics – wherever possible. Everything goes to barrels for long ageing and development – barrels carefully chosen for their “transparency” and ability to help express terroir.

The intent is to make pure, subtle, 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.

Representative Biography

Thomas Bachelder, Winemaker & Owner and Mary Delaney, Owner

With their two young daughters in tow, Thomas and his wife Mary Delaney have unwittingly become wine gypsies, following their passion to produce terroir-revealing wines from these two most noble Burgundian grapes. Québécois by birth, Thomas’ family hails from the dairy farming belt east of Montréal (l’Éstrie), where the Bachelder family owned two farms for as long as anyone can remember.

Just three years after his marriage, he went off with his young bride to study in Beaune, Bourgogne, to become a vigneron. Domaine de la Créa (Beaune); Domaine Marius Delarche (Pernand/Aloxe); Ponzi Vineyards (Oregon); Château Génot-Boulanger (Meursault) all formed him. Subsequent start-ups in Oregon at Lemelson Vineyards and in Niagara at both the Burgundy/Niagara joint-venture Le Clos Jordanne and, later at Domaine Queylus all enabled him to discover and honour precious new world terroirs, just as vital, just as fragile and just as important.

Thomas Bachelder Quotes

Dust and Pebbles: “Back at school in Beaune, I had a life-changing experience in a tidy vaulted cellar in Chassagne-Montrachet* - a three-hour tasting of white wine in which the grape type was never mentioned – only the vineyard names were discussed – along with descriptions of the poorish, but well-drained, pebbly, sloped limestone soil from which they sprang. It was the moment that I came back to Chardonnay for good!”

Intent is Everything: ‘No matter where one grows Chardonnay, the attitude of the wine grower affects the grape and the resulting wine: the management of the vineyards soils and the grapevine canopy, the picking date, the handling in the winery and cellar can all contribute to the retention of freshness of acidity; minerality and dense yet silky texture that mark all the world’s truly great Chardonnay wines. For only the noblest white grapes are subtle enough to let land pass before fruit; to let their lineage show through the grape flavours. The older the vine; the more it speaks of its birthplace: the more time in barrel, the more a synthesis of terroir and texture is achieved (one can draw a parallel here of the ageing of the most perceptive and elegant of humans, as well!)”
“The pebbles will always be there – but we now know for sure that the dust is gold dust – Chardonnay and its precious lands lie patiently waiting to be rediscovered.
Chardonnay – the real Chardonnay - the very word makes one’s mouth water!”

Why We're Cool

We make wines from local terroirs, using “wild” (indigenous) yeasts, and grapes from older vineyard parcels when we can find them. We encourage low-impact viticulture – especially organics – wherever possible. Everything goes to barrels for long ageing and development – barrels carefully chosen for their “transparency” and ability to help express terroir.

The intent is to make pure, subtle, 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.