The Grange of Prince Edward Sees the Future of High-End Winemaking in The County
With its Aurelia Series, the Prince Edward County winery raises the bar yet again.
It’s been said time and again in the few short years since it became a designated appellation: Prince Edward County’s wines are on the rise. Its sparkling wines and pinot noir- and chardonnay-based still wines have propelled the region to a cult popularity that rivals the best of the much larger and more prolific Niagara Peninsula appellation. However, unlike Niagara, the wineries of Prince Edward County have tended to focus on quaffable, everyday table wines—well-made and delicious bottles that appeal to wine drinkers of all types but rarely elicit the scores and prices of the top cuvées from the more established region to its southwest.
The Grange of Prince Edward’s Aurelia Series, the new premium line of wines that it announced with the release of a pinot noir and a chardonnay from the 2023 vintage, represents the future of high-end winemaking in The County. According to The Grange winemaker Jonas Newman, the Aurelia series was one of the joyful happenstances that occur in winemaking. “We start out trying to make the best wine we can—and the better-than-the-best wine turns up,” he says. “Something happens in the cellar—we don’t know what it is until it is, and the wine takes shape in that moment.”
In the case of the Aurelia Series, pure magic seems to have happened not in just the cellar but in the winery as a whole. The pinot noir comes from The Grange’s Diana Block, one of the oldest plantings in its estate vineyards, and the chardonnay comes from 23-year-old vines in the estate vineyards, but it is the barrels used rather than the age of the vines that sets these surprisingly rich County wines apart from the others in The Grange portfolio. Aged partly in new Ermitage and Radoux barrels from France, the maiden Aurelia Series wines defy the perception that The County is a producer only of lithe, high-acid wines with their robust mouthfeels and structured tannin and acid profiles.
Produced in limited quantities—about 100 cases each of the pinot noir and chardonnay—The Grange of Prince Edward’s Aurelia Series wines may compete with the cream of the crop from Niagara and beyond, but the quantities are still 100 per cent Prince Edward County.
