Tasting Note: The WineAlign Crü recently tasted several small lot, single block pinots and chardonnays from Trail Estate that were released in March 2026. When tasted beside the Chardonnay Sud in the same vintage, this Nord struck me as just a bit more elegant and elevated. There is lovely fruit on the nose — pear/peach, some florality, lemon and fine spice and just a hint of butterscotch. It is medium-full bodied, creamy and lithe, with all kinds of minerality. The length is outstanding. With so few cases of each of the Sud and Nord produced, it makes sense to compare them side by side. And they should be offered in a mixed case by the winery. Tasted February 2026.
Backgrounder Trail Estate opened in the Hillier area of PEC in 2014, with first planting of the six-acre site in 2011 by former Cambridge, Ontario, bakers Anton and Hildegard Sproll. In 2015 they hired winemaker Mackenzie Brisbois, a Niagara College grad who unleashed her significant passion for low intervention winemaking and organic viticulture. She is also a dabbler, deciding to parse their home site in depth with very small lot single block bottlings. Winery general manager Alex Sproll has called the 2023 growing season “epic,” with a hot, humid summer giving way to a long, dry and even fall ripening season that delivered excellent flavour concentration and acid retention. The chardonnays were pressed whole cluster then barrel fermented with natural yeast and aged, with lees stirring, in a neutral wood for 11 months. This wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered with minimal sulphur.
