Bachelder Wismer Parke Pinot Noir 2019

Club Oenologique

Sarah Marsh MW.  2019 on the Niagara Peninsula was a cool, slightly austere but elegant vintage. This has a fresh gamey aroma. The palate is dynamic, straight and quite lean. It has fresh earth and smoky minerality and is slightly grippy with a bitter phenolic bite and a snappy well extended finish. Vibrantly fresh. The cooler vintage is reflected in the attractively strict profile. My sort of wine.

Decanter (UK)

Michelle Cherutti-Kowal MW. - The Wismer vineyard is considered the sweet spot of the bench, at 133m altitude and 5.5km from Lake Ontario, which gives good protection and hang-time. From the Parke parcel, this shows tart red fruit on nose and palate with crisp acidity. Firm tannins and notes of iodine give it a steely frame. Lean more than generous but with amazing typicity for Pinot Noir – almost Pommard-like. Needs time to round out. P

Wineanorak (Jamie Goode)

Delicate but not lacking in flavour, this has fine structure with subtle reductive hints and a nice spicy, grainy quality. There’s a touch of meat and iodine savouriness as well as some grainy structure. This is juicy and expressive with almost perfect balance: there’s fruit, but also savouriness, some fine meaty hints, some bloody hints, and fine sappy green notes. Such a classic.

WineAlign

John Szabo, MS - Adjacent to the Hanck vineyard, another single vineyard bottling in the Bachelder range, the Wismer Parke stands defiantly on it's own for me, one of the wildest and gamiest pinots in Niagara and a world apart from the fruitier Hanck expression. This is all forest floor and rusty iron, peppery, savoury and woodsy, with edgy texture, gritty/grippy tannins and incisive and authoritative, tangy acids, especially in the cooler 2019 vintage. Length and depth are amazing, and this will go down as one of the great vintages, particularly for true cool climate pinot lovers for whom sense of place really matters - this is all limestone tension. Best after 2024. Tasted December 2021.

WineAlign

David Lawrason - Planted in 1999 on a gently sloping site with magnesium and limestone soils, this is a nicely firm, cohesive pinot with quite lifted fragrant aromas of red cherry, pomegranate, raspberry, light florality, gentle herbs and spice. It is light to medium bodied, fairly firm, tart edged and quite mineral on the palate. Tannins are gritty, the length is excellent. Best 2024 to 2030

Meeting Wismer-Parke was like meeting a child I had to ‘learn to love.’ (in real life with our children, it was always ‘love at first sight.’ ;) I had to give olives, beer, brussel sprouts, goat and feta cheese a second, third, fourth chance, and learn to love them I did! Hence, the wild bloody, ‘bit your tongue’ gaminess of Parke I had to get used to - much like Gevrey-Chambertin in Burgundy, which is never my first choice off a restaurant’s Burgundy list, but always a terroir I greatly admire - from a safe distance! Not understanding, I declassified Parke to our ‘Village’ blend for a couple of vintages, slowly & eventually figuring out that rustic, grainy-yet-fine Wismer-Parke character - despite it Not being my favourite expression of the grape - was nevertheless the ‘real thing! I then proceeded to isolate the blocks, the rows, the barrels that MOST celebrated this unique, defining character. That is what stewardship, what élevage, what child-rearing is all about: helping them "get where they are going."