TN: Pearl Morissette Estate Winery in Niagara, Ontario

WINE TALK
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Berserkers,

I spent a day in Niagara with fellow board member Jay Shampur and Michael Wright. Our first stop was an eye-opening and possibly life-changing visit to Pearl Morissette Estate Winery with a brief tour and extended and generous tasting both led by assistant winemaker Ryan Corrigan. The only other people present were an amiable American couple from Buffalo who were great French wine aficionados and had also heard of the winery and decided to visit.

Ryan is well-traveled and passionate about local winemaking and local farm to table wherever he has worked. He shares partner and head winemaker Francois Morissette’s vision of doing extraordinary things with Ontario terroir that people, myself included up until today, hadn’t previously thought possible with Ontario wine.

Ryan showed us some winemaking items that were brand-new since my last visit. They have brand-new unglazed concrete fermenters, oblong oak barriques from both Germany and Alsace specifically designed for Riesling, and stainless steel aging barrels which I had personally never seen before. Ryan informed me these were used to allow wines to age on lees outside of a fermenter.

Our first tasting was the 2012 Riesling Cuvée Blackball from barrel which knocked everyone’s socks off. As good as an Alsace Grand Cru Riesling costing 2-3 times more. Smells, looks, tastes and feels completely Alsacian in nature. A miracle of an Ontario Riesling and truly eye-opening.

Ryan then told us an interesting story about this wine. It failed the Vintner’s Quality Assocation tasting panel 4 times because the LCBO Product Consultant members of the panel told them that it tastes nothing like an Ontario Riesling. Notwithstanding that this was in fact the whole point, Pearl Morissette decided to forgo the VQA certification and sell it internationally where it made a killing.

Triumphantly and somewhat ironically, they managed to sell the wine in FRANCE, the home base of Alsace Riesling. As you might imagine, this would’ve made a stunning impression for Ontario wines on the world stage… if the wine had been given VQA certification. Instead, Pearl Morissette gets all the glory to themselves.

Ryan told us a funny story of how he and Mr. Morissette’s partners had to explain to him that they were essentially being blackballed by the VQA because his wines made their members very nervous and he didn’t understand what this English slang term meant at the time. So they explained it to him and they could literally see the light bulb going off in his head as they were explaining. He had just decided to name his wine. Our second tasting was the 2011 Riesling from bottle which was the last one they did with just steel aging alone before they had acquired the Riesling barriques. Still extremely Alsacian in style with high minerality and green apple notes.

Next was the 2012 Chardonnay. Extremely well done, this had the flavor of an Aubert from California but the delicacy of a Grand Cru Meursault from Burgundy. Given that I am a certified Chardonnay hater, this absolutely blew me away. How could an Ontario Chardonnay actually equal if not supercede old world Burgundy Chardonnay? With great skill and care, that’s how. Francois is Burgundy trained and in fact originally hails from France and moved his entire family to Ontario based on the potential he saw here. I actually bought a bottle of this! Me, an avowed Chardonnay hater! I BOUGHT THIS!!! [shock.gif]

Next came another life-changer, their 2013 Cabernet Franc Cuvée LPR Rosé. This was a delicate strawberry perfumed wine with the body of a white Alsacian and incredible light yet complex strawberry flavors with a hint of tannin serving as a complement to the wine. It literally made me reconsider my entire approach to Rosé wine as I often wonder what a red wine would be like if unoaked and the maceration cut back so as to let the fruit and not the tannin and wood shine. I just got my answer. I am far too manly to drink Rosé wine and I bought a bottle of this too! Double [shock.gif]

After a brief respite, we went on to the reds and were treated to two Pinot Noirs, a Cabernet Franc and a Gamay Noir all from unlabeled bottles.

The 2007 Estate Pinot Noir – A perfect emulation of Burgundian quality Pinot Noir, as good as any of the ones I had at Mike Grammer’s last Berserkerfest. Delicate, full of strawberry flavor, some light but firm tannins to give the wine structure. I’m sure the Burgundy lovers of the board would definitely be marveling over this one. Again, that they pulled this off with Ontario grapes is an incredible achievement. This is another wine that failed the VQA standards test 4 times forcing them to forgo the certification and sell internationally.

The 2012 Pinot Noir Cuvée Francoistein – Perfumed, delicate body, full of chai tea spices and red cherry fruit flavor. The name comes from the fact that they worked over three different Pinot Noirs to make this blend, one of which was considered “bad” and they were actually considering throwing away.

Ryan convinced Francois to let him experiment with the allegedly bad batch and he came up with the idea of draining the juice from the bottom of the ferment and repassing it over the must cap and top and letting it filter down again. This did the trick as the liquid extracted more fruit and tannin. Ryan told us that the major problem with large batch fermenting is that only the top part of the wine ever gets exposed to the cap.

Yes, everyone does a punchdown but Ryan says this really doesn’t ever expose all of the wine to the must cap and everyone knows this. That’s why he did an Italian Ripasso style repassing, albeit over the existing must cap, and it worked. Now happy with all the components, Ryan jokingly noted that Francois was putting together “a real Francoistein monster of a wine.” Francois eyes lit up again and Ryan said to him “Oh God, no, not that… really?” and tried to talk him out of it but Francois liked the name too much and stuck with it.

I did find this less refined and flavorful that their estate Pinot Noir, but in fairness Ryan pointed out that this wine was meant to be a less expensive wine more along the lines of a standard Ontario $19.95 CDN Pinot Noir that brought Burgundian quality for an Ontario level price. In other words, this is their attempt at a high QPR value wine. In this respect, they have succeeded remarkably.

The 2011 Cabernet Franc Cuvée Persephone was surprisingly delicate and full of black raspberry and herbal notes and flavors. Ontario Cabernet Franc has to be the red wine I detest the most from this province but this was nothing like them. It’s got the texture of a Burgundy Pinot Noir, in fact. I asked Ryan if they use micro-oxygenation and they are adamantly against the technique because while it does make a wine drinkable sooner they feel it will kill the wine in the long run. Nope, the delicacy is achieved through good old terroir, selective hand picking and skillful winemaking.

The 2013 Gamay Noir was all beautiful and delicate strawberry nose and flavors and was by far the most fruit-forward of the reds we tried. It is done deliberately in a Beaujolais style and came really close to Sangria notes, it was so fruity. I have personally always argued Ontario should do more with Gamay Noir and Baco Noir and asked Ryan how they felt about this. They are not big fans of Baco Noir themselves and have chosen not to do anything with it and want to concentrate on Gamay Noir, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc for their reds.
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And now for a mini-rant. If you’ve actually read this far, you’ll notice common themes in my writeup: Burgundian quality, Ontario terroir, VQA certification repeated failures. Not to mention a specific mention of blackballing.

So with just five us of there, we had a frank discussion about what the heck was going on. Basically, Ontario has a restrictive monopoly market and a specific style of wine that has emerged out of this for a specific price point (currently $19.95 CDN for a 750 ml bottle) and that standard has allowed the larger wineries and corporations such as Peller, Vincorp and Constellation to succeed and thrive.

However, where they were once the up and coming New World counter-culture wine mavericks taking on the evil oppressive Old World wine club that refused to allow anyone new in or take their wine seriously, a turnaround has happened where the counter-culture has now become the mainstream culture and the thought of Ontario producing world-class wines that compete with the likes of Burgundy doesn’t seem to thrill them or make them happy.

In fact, it appears that it does quite the opposite. It probably scares them and makes them nervous. Because in order to produce wines like these, the prices would have to go much higher to cover costs of labor specifically and that eats drastically into profits.

And so we are stuck in a surreal bizarro land Twilight Zone type conundrum where we want the rest of the world to believe and know we can make some of the world’s greatest wine but our own industry players have absolutely no interest in doing so themselves and seem to be actually not interest in helping out any other players in our wine industry capable of doing so. Our fellow American visitor summed it up nicely by simply referring to the VQA as “The Man.”

It is no secret to this board that I have a sweet tooth for wine raised primarily on Canadian icewine and I have consistently posted on how much I detest Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, and Sauvignon Blanc and have somewhat of a liking for Pinot Noir but don’t like the ones I get here. I am now wondering just how different this would be if Ontario wineries would actually fulfill their own potential.

And our government monopoly is directly complicit in creating this situation as well. After all, it is their tasters that turned down Pearl Morissette for VQA certification repeatedly. The ones that told them they don’t taste like Ontario wine. The ones that are familiar with Burgundy style quality that they have to sell in stores themselves. Essentially, they have created the “Ontario style” of wine that is now holding us back and have no interest in elevating it.

I have also often posted how I have been blown away and had my eyes opened by these same wines when they are from other regions. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of these have been from California, Italy and especially France. I have believed that Ontario simply couldn’t make anything of this quality but this second visit to Pearl Morissette has proven that we can. The fact that we aren’t as a whole is a complete travesty.

I’ve been a vocal proponent of both this region and our government monopoly ever since getting on this board, but this was before I had the knowledge that the region might actually be working against itself and the government is on board with it. It’s hard to advocate for them when they apparently are not interested in doing it for themselves.
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Tran - Thank you for the visit notes. Francois is one of my favorite people of that region as he doesn’t hold back on and openly shares his opinions. I do like that they experiment with their winemaking to find what works best for their grapes but must say it is risky to do. I wasn’t aware that PM and Ontario LCB are at odds on product VQA. Hope that gets resolved as I would to see more exposure of his wines in North America. Thanks again…Gary

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Thanks for the detailed report, Tran, and for your thoughts Gary. I took Tran for his first visit to Pearl Morissette and have been back twice since, I think. I really adore the 2011 Cuvee Persephone CF and have, in fact, bought 5 of them now—which is a lot of wine for me from Ontario. Love that you had to buy the chard, my boy. It is good, though on my taste a few weeks ago, it may be getting a little sleepy right now. The rose is very, very nice.

I hadn’t loved the Francoisstein Pinot on my first taste-round, but I think I liked it better at this point in time. I do have my notes somewhere and will edit this post with those when I can get them up.

Glad you were able to return with the guys and show them what they had been missing—what did Jay and Michael think?

On the rant, I’m not quite as pessimistic as you, I think, where I can cite Hidden Bench, Kacaba, Sue Ann Staff and, sometimes, Calamus estates as just a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples of places that I find some individualism of product. Daniel Lenko too, of course.

Mike

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Thanks, Mike. I agree with you on the individualism with the wineries that you have mentioned but – no disrespect to the wineries mentioned – there is a world of difference to me between expressing some individualism and achieving world-class level status. Yes, they are allowed to be individual… but just within the VQA standards of style. The issue here seems to be what happens when you not only individualize but absolutely outclass the standard that has been set by a large margin.

Also, you and I both know that Crown Bench and Royal DeMaria have the same individualism within the VQA style itself and still have been in battles forever with the VQA to the point of having to go to court. We did briefly discuss this during our visit there and specifically mentioned the Royal DeMaria icewine case.

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Oh right, Jay and Michael both loved the stuff and Jay in fact had a case already on order for upon our arrival as he had tasted Pearl Morissette’s wines before and is acquainted with their Somm/Brand Ambassador Svetlana, he just had never been at the winery itself until now. All three of us bought substantially from PM.

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Thanks for the write-up Tran. Not to completely nitpick, but you might want to watch your details.

There aren’t any Grand Cru vineyards in Meursault. I have tasted the PM chards 2009-2013 and they are all quality, but I’m missing some mineral and elegance. I find the 2010 and 2012 actually a tad modern. Leesy, viscous, sweet entry. White they told me there is only neutral oak used I get some caramel/vanilla notes on those wines.

Have you had many Grand Cru white burgs? I can’t say I’ve had a lot but I think if you did a side by side you’d see a quality gap.

Also I doubt you tasted a 2014 Gamay as that is still on the vine. I assume you meant 2013. I have tasted that and while young it shows potential. Definitely better than most Ontario Gamay.

I agree that the '13 Rose is great. Best Ontario Rosé I’ve had, though ideally I would prefer less extract and more acid. That’s just me, I like my rosés to drink like white wines.

Similarly I find the cab francs just a bit more extracted that I would like. I’d like a bit more acid, some red fruit, and maybe even a little gasp Brett.

Consider yourself lucky to have been able to try the '07 Pinot. They only have their library left on that and aren’t selling any more. It’s by far their best Pinot to date and I really liked it. The only thing I found was the tannins were a bit hard and drying.

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Chris V - The extraction and acid levels are dictated by the vintage if you choose not to use modern chemistry to alter the wine profile. I know that the 2 CFs I had at Pearl Morissette from consecutive vintages were completely different and reflected the vintage. One was pinot like with light color, high acidity, and great aromatics. The other, the following year, was a ripe, lower acid with heavier body which allowed Francois to use oak more aggressively. The growing season was responsible for this difference and I appreciate that Francois was treating them differently. As far as elegance is concerned I think it is early to make that call until the PM wines have more time in the bottle. I find the wines, especially the chardonnay, to have terrific balance with fruit depth and acid. I would be interested to taste one of these 6-10 years on and see if the complexity increases. Maybe you guys & gals in Toronto can retain a few PMs for a tasting 6 years from now. [dance-clap.gif]…Cheers, Gary

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@Chris: The typo on the Gamay year vintage was especially bad considering that it clearly says 2013 in my own photo attachment! [oops.gif]

In regards to their being no Grand Cru Meursault, me thinks I am possibly confusing it with Montrachet or are there no Grand Crus there either? I am a Burgundy noob after all.

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@Gary: I’d definitely be interested in seeing how the Pearl Morissette’s hold up as the years go by.

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Tran, I suppose you may have been thinking of Montrachet or another Grand Cru with Montrachet in the name. I have had a few of these and I don’t think comparing one to the PM chards even close. Anyways, try it yourself sometime. Do a comparison, I’d be interested to see the results.

Gary, I respect your assertion, however I don’t entirely agree. In my opinion there is more than vintage at play. What about picking time or punch down/pump over regimen. Surely that can affect extract and acid levels.

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Chris V - In northern cool climate viticulture there is less harvest window to work with compared to warmer areas like California. The difference in harvest time can buy you a little extra hang time but the days are getting much shorter and cooler. In the northern tier one is often forced to pick based on incoming weather when close to a ripeness window, otherwise, one risks a weather event that diminishes grape quality. And don’t forget that post harvest the vines need to store energy before dormancy. The decisions a vineyard makes is not only to get the best out of the current year but also not to jeopardize plant health for the winter or following season. One way to enhance ripeness is to do what Andrezj Lipinski is doing with his appassimento style wines by drying the grapes. Punch downs and pump overs are important steps for reds but I believe not for the reasons you suggest…Gary

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For what Chris is speaking of on the chards, Tran, perhaps cast your thoughts back to the Corton Charlemagnes we had when Fred was up visiting. Chris, we haven’t had the chance to try him on any Batard or Criots or Bienvenue-Batard or the like–must rectify that :slight_smile:

To sidestep-address both of your sets of thoughts, Chris and Tran, yes, I don’t really think the VQA is doing much good with respect to the high-level producers. But, in regard to quality as a whole (and Tran and I have had this discussion with others a bit), a) the whole industry here is still incredibly young—young as in maybe they’re at where California was at the end of the 60s, b) as a result, there’s still the incipient “disease” of wineries wanting to make everything for everyone, and c) Whenever I go out tasting in Niagara, I do my best to put out of my mind any thoughts of Bordeaux, Burgundy, California or Rioja, e.g., and just taste Ontario wine in the context of other Ontario wine I’ve tasted. Occasionally—as with the PM Cab Franc (in my case) or the Clos Jordanne Le Grand Clos Chards when Bachelder was still doing the work, or Daniel Lenko’s one vintage of Viognier icewine, or Hidden Bench’s Tete de Cuvee Chard, an Ontario wine will reach the level where I am proud to “take it on tour” to anywhere I go and match it up against pretty much anything that is brought out that night. But those are still rare instances. What I am looking for in the Ontario wine I buy is a) for it to be good and interesting/idiosyncratic even, and b) for it to outperform the bulk of other Ontario wines I’ve tried. I will freely admit that this is probably the only geographic area I treat in such a determined way.

As an example, I’ve been following the discussion on the thread of “best New Zealand Pinot” with some degree of interest as I see some rough-and-ready analogies.

Cheers,

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Any thoughts on the longevity of these recent wines?

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Great thoughts, Mike. I’m in agreement on all accounts. It’s a realy shame that so many producers are making so many different varietals. I think one thing that is so welcome about PM is that they are focusing in on four core varieties (I guess Gamay technically makes 5).

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First of all Tran, thanks for posting this. Morissette was off my radar, I have seen the name and written it off as I had assumed that it was related to the singer, as the Ciconne winery is in Michigan (Madonna). I travel through the area every once in a while and will definitely try to stop by the next time.

However, I am a little puzzled by much of the mini rant. There are many small wineries in Ontario that ask premium prices for their wines and are getting it. Are they scaring the big boys? And what is Morissette missing out on by not getting the VQA certification? I see from the Cab Franc and Chardonnay labels that they are able to label those wines as VQA appellation. Can they not do so for the Riesling?

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In order of your questions:

  1. I will presume you are thinking of wineries such as Le Clos Jordanne and Bachelder. Constellation owns Le Clos Jordanne and are quite powerful in the region and are therefore “The Man.” Thomas Bachelder was founding winemaker at Le Clos Jordanne so I think he knows his way around the politics of the Ontario wine business by now.

As to whether they are scaring the big boys, it kind of depends on what their relationships are. I would like to see their VQA certification tests for one. I know LCJ and Bachelder have been sold in LCBO so they are definitely not blackballed.


2. Morissette is probably missing out on access to the LCBO for that specific wine without that VQA certification seeing as how its own LCBO tasters are the ones that have the power to deny its certification. Other than this they are honestly not missing out on anything. It’s the Ontario wine industry itself that is missing out by not certifying them when they are sold internationally.

  1. No, they cannot label the Riesling as VQA without passing that certification. This would legally be considered fradulent here and treated as if it were actually a counterfeit wine if the label were put on and he tried to sell it with it.
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This is not entirely true. Let me clarify:

First, the VQA outsources their tasting panel to the LCBO. If it doesn’t pass panel, it doesn’t mean it can’t be sold at the LCBO. Non-VQA wines from Canada get sold at the LCBO, but it’s likely significantly more difficult to get shelf space.

The biggest thing that affects the winery is profit, pure and simple. The Black Ball Riesling retails for $25. If it passed panel and received VQA status, the winery would pay approximately $5 in tax per bottle sold. Since it didn’t, they pay $13 tax per bottle. No, that’s not a typo. How’s that for the government being sneaky and subsidizing the Ontario wine industry and punishing producers that don’t conform to some BS “ideal” of what the wine should taste like. In my opinion, I think someone at the LCBO and/or VQA have it out for Pearl Morissette. BTW, all PM wines passed lab, so there are no faults in the wine.

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Ouch. Now that you mention it I recall a vague mention of taxes but didn’t realize it was that substantial in difference. Yep, someone’s got it out for them, hence the blackballing theory. S’Okay, the cream always rises to the crop and TRUE wine lovers will always find them. In fact, now that I remember, Ryan may have even said that himself during our frank conversation.

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I’d expect Francois and Ryan et al to be scrupulous about lab testing. I have heard more than one winemaker comment that lab testing is a very significant capital cost, right up there with barrels at least.