The day after the Bokobsa tasting I sat down with Shlomo Corcos (Guter Wein) and Yoel Kassabi from YayinKosher to taste some of the recent wines from Corcos. Corcos has been the mashgiach behind many wines, including Falesco and some IDS wines, along with his own Guter Wein wines.

It was a short tasting, but there were some interesting and unique wines. Including a 7-year-old rose along with a newly bottled Champagne. The French wines were made at Michel Gonet, including the lovely Champagne and 4 Bordeaux wines.  I was joined by a few of the French forum members, including Ari Cohen, Ben Sitruk, and Elie Dayan.

My many thanks to Mr. Corcos and to Yoel Kassabi for setting up the meeting, sharing his wines with us, and for taking time out of his incredibly busy schedule to meet with us. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2016 Champagne Michel Gonet, Les 2 Terroirs – Score: 91
Lovely nose of baked apple, yeast, with loads of mineral, pear, and pepper, and asparagus. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, well made, crazy acidity, with lovely yeast, baked and almost buttery ripe apple pie, with great minerality, lemon curd, with crazy grapefruit, rich salinity, and piercing focus, Bravo! The finish is super long, green, with crazy citrus, saline, lemongrass, and crazy tart clementine, lovely! Drink until 2022.

2013 L’Arum, Rosado, Umbria – Score: 89
The nose on this wine is unique, it starts off smelling a bit off, or oxidized, but really, this is a funk-bomb, flint, and crazy straw, and hay, and almonds. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is funky, and almost oxidized, weird, with great pith and nice acidity, but a bit too strange, with oak, and apple, lemon, with more mineral, with tannin, and a slight amount of oxidation and saline that gives a very nice lingering feeling, a very interesting experience. Drink now.

2012 Plaisir de Siaurac, Lalande de Pomerol – Score: 92
This wine is 100% Merlot. This is the fourth time I have had this wine, and I found it better than the tastings, but it was with the distributor. This wine is a mineral bomb, with great texture, weight, and incredible minerality, scraping graphite, and mushroom galore.
A nice solid all-around wine, with great green fruit, rich green, red and black fruit, with nice earth, lovely tobacco, and rich menthol. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is incredibly well balanced, showing lovely fruit, with nice mouth coating tannin, great mineral, lovely graphite, with rich saline, green notes, mushroom, and scrapping mineral, backed by lovely earth, and really nice red fruit and currant. The finish is long and green, it shows ripe yet balanced with great graphite, dirt, and tobacco galore, black olives, cloves, herb, and leather – BRAVO!!. Drink by 2021. 12 euro

2014 Enclos de Viaud, Lalande de Pomerol – Score: 92 (Mevushal) (QPR)
This nose is lovely really lovely, with great precision, showing crazy minerality, green notes, black fruit, with red fruit, garrigue, but a bit ripe, but so well balanced it does not bother me, with forest floor, and hints of mushroom. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is lovely, layered, extracted, with lovely concentration, with tar, blackberry, dark fruit, plum, raspberry, green notes galore, garrigue, rich loam, tar, and graphite galore, wow! The finish is long, green, mushroom-laden, with layers upon layers of dark fruit, garrigue, green fruit, mushroom, scraping graphite, forest floor, and herb, wow! Bravo! Drink until 2027.

2016 Verdeto, Umbria – Score: 91
This wine is a blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and 5% Cabernet Franc. This is really ripe, pushed, black, with hints of blue fruit, with crazy tannin, structure, and loads of spice, really big wine. With time, this crazy bold, aggressive wine calms down, thankfully. The nose on this wine, with 10 hours of an open bottle, shows a wine that I can handle, with notes of foliage (really!), ripe fruit of black and red, with loads of mushroom, earth, and lovely new world/old-world style leanings, which is incredible for a wine that started off so ripe! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, layered, with good fruit focus, showing good concentration, ripe and brooding but balanced fruit, after lots of airing out, with lovely loam, dirt, mineral, forest floor, and smoke, that shows an overall plush and extracted mouthfeel, with graphite and flint in the background. The finish is long, dark, but balanced with nice acidity, still, the issue I have is that dark and brooding fruit is out there and when you finish the glass it lingers long. Nice, but for me, this is a drink soon wine. Drink before 2023.

2016 Chateau Haut-L’Eveque, Pessac-Leognan – Score: 90
This wine is a blend of 60 % Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot. The nose on this wine is a crazy oak monster, with loads of floral notes, but really black, red, hints of boysenberry, and loads of green notes behind it. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is crazy, with loads of sweet dill, sweet really sweet oak, with no date, this is balanced, but wow is it an oak bomb, with crazy chocolate, concentration, and layers upon layers of chocolate, blackberry, dark cassis, with plum, and raspberry, with balance, of garrigue, green fruit, sweet oak, and forest floor, with a crazy fruit focus, and loads of spice, with tobacco, and loads of smoke. Drink from 2023 until 2028.

2016 Chateau Luchey-Halde S, Pessac-Leognan – Score: 91
This wine is a blend of 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. The nose on this wine is far less pushed than the Haut-L’Eveque with great balance, lovely green notes, herb, smoke, and red fruit. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is more elegant than the Haut-L’Eveque, with crazy acidity, loads of green notes, with raspberry, strawberry, with hints of black fruit, with loads of forest floor, herb galore, and the smoke and tannin lift it all up and rounds out the acid-driven mouth. The finish is long, green, herbal, and graphite with red fruit that is so well balanced, so well made, it is a wine for the long term, with smoke, green notes galore, tobacco, and tart juicy fruit linger long, Bravo!! Drink from 2024 until 2030.

2016 Chateau Luchey-Halde, Pessac-Leognan – Score: 91 to 92
This wine is a blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot. The nose on this wine is far more balanced than the L’Eveque, with smoke galore, sweet fruit, but well balanced, with herb galore, showing blue fruit, black, and red, with green as well. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is the best of the three, with crazy balance, showing acidity galore, but much more weight, showing less green, with blackberry, raspberry, but also green notes in the far back, with herbs, mint, oregano, and crazy layers and elegance, with concentration and fruit that is intense and nuts, crazy! The finish the crazy, red, black, with loads of tobacco, graphite that scrapes, with flint, smoke, and incredible earth, loam, forest floor, and foliage. Nice! Drink 2024 until 2031.

2016 Chateau D’eck, Pessac-Leognan – Score: 90 to 91
This wine is a blend of 80% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Petit Verdot. The nose is really ripe, not nearly as pushed as the Verdeto, but pushed, with black and red fruit, loam, and mushroom, and loads of sweet oak. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is ripe, with sweet oak, loads of oak, oak-monster, with smoke, and earth, showing ripe and juicy blackberry, earth, plum, and loads of sweet dill, mint, and sweet milk chocolate wrapped inside the concentration and sweet tannin, that is balanced with nice acidity, but it is ripe. The finish is long, black, with ripe fruit, tart raspberry, with loads of tobacco, wrapped in tobacco, and milk chocolate, and earth galore. Drink from 2024 until 2029.

2016 Falesco Tellus, Lazio – Score: 86
This is one of those classical over the top Spanish wines. The wine is a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Syrah. The nose is so ripe and black it is crazy, though it had nice notes of smoke, loads of wood, and graphite. The mouth is where this wine loses me, it is so fruit-forward and ripe it is almost undrinkable at this point, blackberry, dark ripe plum, date, and smoke hit you with such a force, followed by such a fierce and aggressive mouth-drying tannin, you really lose the elegant aspects of the wine, like the garrigue, and plushness. The finish is long, sweet, with loads of sweet oak, tobacco, and licorice, under a bed of black plum. Drink until 2026.