8 Wines That Will Sell You On Canada's Viticulture Potential
Recently, the Canadian wine scene has bloomed under a recent surge of patriotism. As retaliatory tariffs and tariff-related boycotts removed American wine and spirits from the country's major markets, Canadian winemakers stepped up. Missing Oregon Pinot Noir? Consider British Columbia. Do you have a California Chardonnay-sized hole in your heart? Niagara can offer some equally exciting options.
Curious? It's time to try something Canadian. The following bottles are jumping off points for exploring Canadian wine. Start here, and explore from there.
And, it's Canada Day! to tip your hat and pop a cork to your neighbors in the North.
In Canada's Ocean Playground, crisp, sparkling wines have a maritime swagger. It's literal—the majority of Nova Scotia's vines grow within a mile or two from the ocean, on soil filled with deposited minerals and ancient sea creatures. The tidal activity is some of the world's most extreme, spraying showers of salt onto the vines.
At Wolfville's Benjamin Bridge, sea-kissed sparkling wines come in many forms, from Champagne-like to low-alcohol and fruit-driven piquettes. Founded in 1999, the sparkling wine house played a pivotal role in elevating Nova Scotia's budding wine scene. Mission Hill's Award-Winning Oculus
This is Canada's gold standard - the first 100-point wine the country has turned out. Looking at the winery it's easy to understand how vines and wine thrive from the land. Mission Hill sits on a grand hill above the Okanagan Lake, with the vines unfolding on the green slopes. Deer weave in between and under the vines, working away at the ground cover.
When Anthony von Mandl opened Mission Hill in 1981, the valley was better known for its stone fruit — he was a strong, and sometimes sole, advocate for the valley's viticultural potential.
He was right. When they first launched Oculus in 1999, it quickly became cult wine, a Meritage, Bordeaux-by-way-of-British Columbia bottle well worth the three-figure price tag. And it is, in its youth, muscular but tamed and elegant, with the bolder cedar box and blackberries softening under notes of wild flowers and violets. Let it age to fully explore Canada's potential. Thomas Bachelder's Curious Gamays
Thomas Bachelder is known for his Chardonnay and Pinot Noir—inquisitive and exacting interrogations on the Burgundian grapes conducted in Niagara soil. He's made this apparent at both Le Clos Jordanne and his namesake winery, where he champions Burgundian grapes through a sustainable lens.
On his own time, he's also a micronegotiant, pulling grapes from microplots and specific soils to look at what Niagara can do. Appropriately, his list of SKUs is dizzying—Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Gamay from here, there, and everywhere. Bachelder examines all them, where they're from and why they're worth knowing. Then, he ushers them through vinification, pulling lessons from his time in Burgundy and Oregon to puzzle together a wine that best represents each plot. I love all of them, but I am always most excited by the Gamays, which offer up many different personalities, and all of them well worth knowing. Checkmate's Exacting Chardonnays
Checkmate, perched on an Oliver bench, specializes in two things: Chardonnay and Merlot. Which, in the wine world, is an odd coupling—both grapes are seldom grown in similar regions.
In the Okanagan, it works. The cool climate and influence of the lakes and mountains allow both grapes to have long, elegant growing seasons (well, if the frost holds off).
Checkmate approaches their wines by taking each vineyard and looking at its personality – the story of each microclimate. Which sounds like more of a cerebral exercise, but consider where Checkmate is. The winery sits on the Golden Mile bench, at the foot of an Oliver mountain. Its highest vineyards are at 1,200 feet – crisp, cool and kissed with mountain air. Other vineyards (like where the 'Little Pawn' is made) are on the adjacent side of the Valley, which is dry, hot, remote and arid.
Showcasing each is an exercise in terroir, and a flex of winemaking prowess but mark my words, all of Checkmate's Chardonnays are beautiful and benchmark, threaded together by their draping acidity and tension. Martin's Lane Precise Pinot Noirs
Despite what the Kiwi accent may suggest, winemaker Shane Munn has a deep-rooted understanding of Canadian terroir. His focus is Pinot Noirs and Riesling, which speaks volumes about his precision - those are two of the wine world's most prestigious and prickliest grapes. He constantly sticks the landing, turning the mountain air and ancient forests of his surroundings into intuitive, cerebral, special single-vineyards Pinot Noirs.
The winery itself is designed in wood and corten steel to mirror the cliffs hovering over the winery and the soaring pines that surround the winery. It's a tiny property, producing only 2,000 cases per vintage and the majority gets snapped up by the wine club (which is wait-list only, sorry).
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