Tasting Note Those who prize bushels of fruit in their chardonnay may not appreciate first scents of this natural-leaning, reductive-edged County chardonnay. But, my goodness, the laser precision, tight balance and minutes-long finish sure caught my attention. The fairly deep yellow-gold colour speaks to some maturity. The nose is nicely generous, but again not all fresh fruits and flowers. I was thinking more savoury, nutty notes atop dried apple, and lemon, herbs, almonds and sunflower seed with barrel spices. It is medium-full bodied, taut and tensile, yet flavour-rich with a dry, typically stony County finish. The length is outstanding. First blind tasted at the Judgement of Kingston 2026, then again revealed solo in January 2025. By the way, VI is the sixth vintage of this wine.
Backgrounder Trail Estate was in the second wave in PEC, opened on Benway Road in the Hillier area 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 had helped start a winery on Vancouver Island (now closed Wolff Estate). She unleashed her significant passion for low intervention winemaking and organic viticulture. The winery range includes bottlings from Niagara and the Beaver Valley on Georgian Bay, but this chardonnay is 100% Prince Edward County. It is actually the most conventional wine in the portfolio featuring pet-nats and orange wines. It was hand harvested from estate vineyards and pressed whole cluster inducing the savoury notes. It was barrel fermented with natural yeast then aged on its lees, where it completed full, natural malolactic. Aged for 10 months in 50% second-fill French oak and 50% fourth-fill French oak. Bottled unfined and unfiltered with low sulphur.
