Black Bank Hill

About Black Bank Hill

Black Bank Hill is a vineyard and artisanal winery producing premium-quality wines from grapes grown on its own vineyard, made by hand, using traditional methods.
Winemaker Jonathan McLean crafts exceptional wines from this 20-acre vineyard nestled at the base of the Niagara escarpment in the Lincoln Lakeshore VQA. Established by vintner Taylor Emerson in 2017, Black Bank Hill’s vision and passion is to combine the art and practices of grape growing and winemaking at a small scale with an uncompromising focus on quality, to produce wines of character that uniquely express the vineyard, climate and culture of the people who make it.

Representative Biography

Taylor Emerson, Vintner

About Taylor Emerson, Vintner
Having been interested in food and cooking from an early age, Taylor’s full passion for wine developed in his early 30’s and continued unabated for many years. In 2016 at the age of 45, during a juncture in his career when looking to start a business of his own, Taylor took a little time to indulge his passion for wine with a WSET 3 course. During that course he discovered and then enrolled in Plumpton College’s Viticulture and Oenology program in Sussex, England, which resulted in his decision to pursue a career in wine and winemaking. In 2017 he purchased a 22-acre former fruit farm at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment that in 2018 became the Black Bank Hill vineyard.
For Taylor, wine is both a food and a creative and cultural act, an expression of place and identity. During the course of his studies abroad, it became central to Taylor’s winemaking vision that as a Canadian he return to Southern Ontario to express his creativity in wine and to participate in collective identity of the region’s terroir. Niagara’s cool-climate naturally produces wines that express Taylor’s preference for wines that highlight elegance, dynamics and nuance over power, concentration and weight.
A quote from Taylor: “My love for Niagara’s cool-climate Chardonnay is very simple: the best of our Chardonnays stand up amongst the best in the world.”

About Jonathan McLean, Winemaker
Jonathan joined Black Bank Hill in 2021 with over a decade crafting award-winning wines at top estates in the Okanagan Valley, including Cedar Creek, Tantalus, Le Vieux Pin, La Stella and Culmina. Previous to this, Jonathan’s career began in hospitality in Kelowna, and the exposure to wine culture while managing restaurants and bars led to his enrolment in Brock’s CCOVI degree program to fully commit himself to wine. His prior B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Dalhousie proved to be an ideal and serendipitous foundation for his new career in wine.
Jonathan’s experience working under a breadth of seasoned winemakers in the Okanagan, from France, North America and abroad, allowed him to absorb a variety of ideas, techniques, and approaches, internalize them, and develop his own practical and intuitive style of winemaking. As winemaker at Black Bank Hill, Jonathan is also responsible to manage the vineyard and crop, thus bringing to life the full circle of artisanal winegrowing by bringing a homogenous and consistent vision to the wine from vine to bottle, driven by an overarching pursuit of exceptional quality from vintage to vintage.

Why We're Cool

Black Bank Hill vineyard has a number of characteristics which uniquely influence the wines, as well as reflect some core Niagara qualities:
Location: seated at the base of the Escarpment just east of the town of Beamsville, it is very much an Escarpment site, supported by its warming influence in winter as well as acting as a shield from prevailing winds that provides for heat accumulation year-round. The vineyard is comprised of a consistent, gentle slope providing good drainage, and fully open to air-flow and sunlight without shadows and direct light late into the evening.
Soils: sitting at the lakeshore on the ancient Glacier Lake Iroquois lakebed, the heavy clay soils of the vineyard provide a number of unique functions: (i) high water absorption and retention, (ii) mineral retention and slow recycling, and (iii) limiting and balancing vine vigour to promote veraison and fruit ripening. The soil’s impact on the wines and palate is distinct, and as we continue to explore and understand the wines, quite special.
Viticulture: as winegrowers, our site management focuses greatly on cropping levels and balanced yields, with a focus toward fruit quality in the vineyard as the basis of all our wines. As sustainably focused farmers, we take a low impact approach in the vineyard, maintaining only necessary sprays, minimal tillage, and the allowance for cover crops to develop roots and flower and support biodiversity in the vineyard at all times. A tremendous amount of vineyard work is done by hand throughout the season, and all our fruit is hand-picked for harvest.
Winemaking Style: as traditional winemakers our approach to Chardonnay is based on the Burgundian technique of wild barrel ferments with long barrel aging on lees and bâttonage. Low cropping levels and slightly later picking dates strive toward concentration of flavour, good body and perhaps a slightly riper style of Chardonnay without diminishing the fundamental minerality and cool-climate profile of the wine. Balance, again, is the guiding principle with latitude to allow for the unique year-to-year expression of the wine due to vintage conditions which we embrace.