2023 Bachelder Les Villages Bench Chardonnay | 91+pts

A classic Thomas Bachelder wine, offering a great deal of value and overall Niagara typicity. Made from fruits sourced from various Bachelder single vineyards on the Beamsville Bench, including the famed Foxcroft and Wingfield vineyards, this wine consistently over-delivers for the price point. The 2023 has great texture, great energy, and great acidity. On the nose, a hint of Twenty Mile Bench perks you right up, but then brings you to orchard fruits. The palate is approachable and pleasurable with flavours of white peach, pear, yellow apple, lemon tart, a hint of white pepper, and obviously a lingering seasalt-oyster shell minerality we have come to know from the Twenty Mile Bench. A wonderful, versatile Chardonnay. (Carl Boucher, Nov 14, 2025). 

91+pts Carl's Wine Club | 92pts Rick VanSickle

A word from Thomas: Long, rich, yet lean! This Les Villages Chardonnay is sourced uniquely from our single vineyards on the Twenty Mile Bench and Beamsville Bench. We bottle this under the newer Niagara Escarpment VQA. Compact pear, apple, and lemon flavours intermingle; the fruit is beautifully set off with briny oyster flavours of sea spray and flinty minerality. With the fresh acidity to easily age a half a decade, it is gorgeous and bright to drink now — alone or especially with food. Great purity. All the classic elements of Bench wines — the sea-at-low-tide savouriness and stoniness and this, all with the class and lemon-oil flavour development of a ‘grand vin!’ A savoury, chalky, mineral viscosity lingers on the finish. 

A Word from Mary: Delicious oyster-shell finish!