Category Archives: Kosher Wine
2008 Yarden Rose Brut, 2011 Teperberg Malbec, and 2010 Yarden Malbec
This past week, I was once again in Israel and it gave me the chance to taste the recently released 2008 Yarden Rose Bubbly, which was one of the highlights of my trip. I also finally had the chance to sit with and enjoy a bottle of the 2011 Teperberg Malbec, that I tasted at the winery, and it lived up to my hype. Finally, I tasted the recently released Yarden Malbec, and though it is a well constructed wine, it was too sweet for my palate.
Please be clear – the Yarden Rose will not be making its way to the United States, for reasons I do not know, but it is a wine that is well worth finding in Israel. The wine notes follow below:
Top Kosher Malbec wines from around the world
Before I left for China and India I had the chance to hang with friends and go through many of the best kosher Malbec wines on the market. Since then a few new ones have popped up, which I have yet to taste, so I will add those to my next tasting run of Malbec wines hopefully.
As you know if you read my blog, I like wines that are blue in nature and I have no problem saying that out loud! The blueberry and boysenberry fruit are so rare and unique in wine that I am always overjoyed to taste them. That said, in a Merlot or a Cabernet Sauvignon they taste downright weird. So what about Malbec? Is Malbec a blue fruit wine or a black fruit wine? Well that depends, in the very same vein that can be asked about Syrah, is it a blue or black fruit wine? While were at it what about Zinfandel or Petite Sirah?
To the Petite Sirah question, until Israel, I had not tasted a PS without blue fruit, but I think the extreme heat in Israel kills the blue fruit, much like it does to the Syrah fruit (this is not a scientific statement – just my experience). Case in point, the Ellla Valley PS is black and earthy, but no blue fruit to be found. Same goes for the 2010 Yarden Malbec, black and earthy, just like in France. What can I say, it is interesting that these four varietals have the possibility of displaying blue fruit, but when grown in Israel there is less of an option. Now to be fair, the Dalton PS is full of blue fruit, as is the Teperberg Malbec.
There is a reason why Petite Sirah and Zinfandel go so well together, like in the Recanati Petite Sirah/Zinfandel blend, or the Hajdu NV Besomim wine. Either way, the fruit compliment each other, as does the spicy notes, the earthy components and the bramble. Same can be said for some of the insane blends that Tzora, Ella Valley, and others are perfecting in Israel. The Ella Valley 35/25 wine, a blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah, and Merlot (in 2008) is such a wine that is full of blue and black fruit (from what I hear I have not personally tasted it). Same goes for the wonderful Misty Hills or Shoresh wies from Tzora which take the Australian blends to the max, mixing Cabernet or Merlot with Syrah. Read the rest of this entry
To Asia and Back twice within a couple of weeks, all with no good kosher wine
WOW! That is what I can say, when I last blogged, I was just about to leave for India, and then I went to China and then Israel and now I am back. In a single sentence – there is very little to no good kosher wine in Asia, which is a shame! I was thinking of shlepping my own wine, but truly it would not have been worth it. In the end, I suffered a bit, drank beer and some absolutely undrinkable wine (which was all I needed for a blessing), while in India, the Rabbi made Kiddish on grape juice (which I refused to drink!). What can I say, it was a truly bad string of wine weeks, that culminated in a great wine weekend with a BUNCH of great Malbec wines and then a trip to Israel (yeah a snowed in Jerusalem – coming next).
To be honest, I was truly shaken by my experience in India, the people are really nice in Bangalore India, but the infrastructure – the very basic things we take for granted in the developed nations of this world, are so deeply lacking there. On the Shabbat I was terrified to walk the streets because there were no sidewalks, sewage ran under what was defined as a sidewalk – raw and honest – no pipes and no hiding the smell. Worse the roads are underdeveloped, made for a few cars and a few cows, not millions of cars. A road that can accommodate two cars, is traversed by three cars, two auto-rickshaw, and god only knows how many “Tasmanian devil” moped drivers shifting in and out of the melee called a street in India. Sure, many would find this invigorating, but I guess I have lost that mad-insane-loving gene, and now I do not mind a dollop of calmness in my life. If you are like me – pass on India, enough said. Read the rest of this entry
Top kosher Rose, White and Sparkling wines that I have tasted
A recent discussion over Twitter with a few people left me wondering why I had not already covered this topic in some sort of detail; namely – the best kosher white and sparkling wines out there. To be honest, the list of good to very good kosher red wines would be a very long one, which in and of itself is GREAT news. The list of A- to A or better red wines is rather short, and that should indeed be the next article to compose (but I am so very behind on other topics). However, the kosher market for top-line white wines is a market that was deeply intertwined in a catch-22. There were few really top-line kosher white wines while at the same time there were few takers for a really great or very good kosher white wine. Why? I have no idea! Why would you not want a great white wine for the hot summers in Israel, Europe, and the US?
For the longest time, Israelis were happy drinking beer on a hot summer day and the idea of a wine was very foreign indeed. Americans like white wine, but the kosher wine market does not! The kosher wine market for the longest time was dominated by big bold red wines and about not much else. If you were starting a winery, you were required to have the French Noble reds and not much else. A Cabernet, a Merlot, a blend of the two, and maybe a Syrah/Shiraz. Thank goodness with time that has changed. Israeli wine consumers are drastically changing their tastes, and producers are getting the message that the US kosher wine consumer has become more sophisticated as well. They are both craving both sweet and dry, with varying opinions of what dry is, white/rose/sparkling wines for the summer and even all times of the year! This desire is pushing producers to start creating truly very good white kosher wines and it is a godsend – in my humble opinion.
The next clear change has been the realization that Chardonnay is NOT the only white grape out there! There are now many white kosher wines that are not of original descent from Burgundy (Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc) or even Bordeaux (Sémillon, Sauvignon blanc), and yet doing wonderfully in the market. Viognier, Roussanne, White Riesling (AKA Johannisberg Riesling), Gewürztraminer (both “dry” and sweet/late harvest), Greanache Blanc, Chenin Blanc, maybe a Grigio (on a very good day), and of course the a fore mentioned Noble French white grapes as well.
Ten years ago, five years ago – these ideas were beyond foreign. To be fair, Ernie Weir and the Hagafen Winery have been on the forefront of this push along with the Herzog Winery, Royal Wines (the largest importer of Israeli wines), and others. Weir, to his credit has been producing white wines (beyond the Noble whites) for many years now, and blessedly he never gave up on us! Yarden was creating Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay in 1986, and thankfully helped push the desire to add in Viognier, Gewürztraminer, and other white varietals. Indeed, many companies, winemakers, and of course consumers have all been part of this new revolution in kosher white wines.
Now, there are many great white kosher wines out there, but unfortunately, many have stayed in Israel, and are not being shipped out here. Why? Because as the Israeli public has awoken to their desire for good sweet and dry white wines, for their Mediterranean climate, they are screaming for the wines, and that leaves nothing to export. The sad thing is that winemaking is a very slow process in many ways. By the time a wine fad or trend has been realized, it takes at least two years to meet that need from a winery perspective. First you need to figure out where to get these grapes or worse, you need to plant the vines – which in that case it is a five-year process, taking into account Orlah (not picking fruit for the first four years) and the year of production. Let alone convincing the owners and partners that it is a good idea. Then powering up the marketing and distribution – making and selling wine is not an easy task! It is for this reason, that I am amazed at the speed of which wineries added a fair amount of good white wines to their portfolios. Sure, white wine, for the most part, can be released quickly, but as explained it is getting to that point that takes the most work. Read the rest of this entry
Solid QPR kosher Syrah wines and 2007 Herzog One Over XII Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Without any attempt on my side we enjoyed a Syrah weekend, along with a unique Cabernet Sauvignon from Herzog. This past weekend we were invited to the home of some very good friends of ours, ER and HK, ER of the baking culinary fame! Well this meal was culinary all the way, roast beef, perfectly cooked chicken and great side dishes to boot! OH! I cannot forget that split pea soup, which was quite lovely as well.
We brought two Syrah like wines and another guest brought a Syrah wine, while yet another guest brought the new and limited 2007 Herzog Napa Cab 7. Sorry, I have no pictures, though most of the wines are well-known wines, other than the special Herzog Cabernet. The wine is called: 2007 Herzog One Over XII Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and Vivino has an image of it, which is displayed to the left. The wine has a great story, a bunch of barrels from the 2007 Herzog Napa Cab, which we tasted, was left in a barrel for 55 or so months. So, one would think it would be an oak bomb, but it is not overpowering, though friends of mine disagree. The thing that is really lovely about the wine is its caressing and insane tannins and the mineral that jumps up and slaps you across the face! Like I say in the notes – this wine is polarizing and to me that is what good wine is all about! This bottle is limited and available only at the Herzog Winery’s wine bar.
Thanks so MUCH to ER and HK for hosting us and putting up with me! We love hanging with you guys! The wine notes follow below:
2010 Tabor Shiraz, Adama, Terra Rosa – Score: B+
The nose explodes with awesome blueberry, plum, currant, cherry, with loads of dirt and licorice. The mouth on this medium plus bodied wine is nice and spicy with good concentration of date, sweet blue and red fruit, nice candied raspberry, sweet cedar, with good integrated tannin, and good extraction. The finish is long and spicy with garrigue, bramble, fig, date, chocolate, light leather, and animal notes. This is a wine that is a hair under the QPR line, though if pressed it could well join the ranks. A great Israeli “supermarket” option for sure. Read the rest of this entry
City Winery in New York and its kosher wine program
So, what is the City Winery? Why would you want to make a winery in the middle of a city, far from where the grapes grow, heck really far from where the grapes grow, like a different continent away! To be honest I did not get into all that with the Michael Dorf, Chief Executive Officer or David Lecomte, Chief Wine Maker. However, the basic premise of the City Winery, in the words of Dorf; In summary, our brand is starting to represent the image of being the highest-end experience combining a culinary and cultural offering. We are paying attention to our image from the time the consumer connects digitally through their onsite visit to the reputation and memory which lives on.
I had the chance to go there earlier this year, for the City Winery and Jewish Week kosher Wine Tasting. Though it is not the first time I ever visited the winery and each time I visit I was always impressed by its simplistic beauty. That is not to say that the event hall/winery is plain and boring, rather it is lovely and urban, even slightly rustic, but all of its innate beauty is not brazen and in your face. Rather, the winery is as subtle in its innate beauty as many of the wines that are available in the winery.
The winery makes wine – every year, they import either juice or grapes and make the wines, 80% non-kosher and 20% kosher (and that number is growing). They make some crazy good kosher wines and they are available only at the winery. I did not get the chance to taste these wines before, other than a few barrel tastings with Yanky Drew two years ago. So, it was great to taste these wines at the wine tasting – more on that soon.
The winery is a crush winery – which makes wines for the wine lovers, allowing them to buy partial parts of a barrel or an entire barrel, and it allows them to be part of the wine-making experience. The entire effort is overseen by the head winemaker – David Lecomte, a Frenchmen in NY, with a love for wine and all things winemaking. Yanky is the associate wine maker and the cellar rat for the kosher wine barrels.
“We’ve had the luxury of buying our grapes from the best terroir in the country. For example, we’ve been getting Cab and Merlot from Napa Valley, Pinot Noir from Sonoma and Russian River, Syrah from Mendocino or Paso Robles,” says Dorf. The winery gets grapes from all over California, Oregon, and as far as Argentina!
However, wine is not the only part of the City Winery, Dorf is also a famous music promoter and that is the second arm of the winery – music. The intimate setting allows for small, close-knit interactions with musicians that come to the venue to rock out or jazz out and enjoy the crowds of music fans, drinking wine made at the winery and beer made at the winery. It is a dual armed business that makes for a great combination of good times and libations – what more could anyone ask for? Read the rest of this entry
2008 Four Gates Chardonnay
This past weekend we enjoyed a lovely bottle of Four Gates Chardonnay, one that I have held on to and one that is ready right now. The wine is not going down, but I do not see it improving much at this point. The classic approach with Four Gates Chardonnay is either to enjoy them two or three years after release, or to save them for another 5 years. Early on Four gates Chardonnay normally show tropical or summer fruits, with good bracing acidity and hints of oak. Recently, the oak has come out more in Benyo’s wines – but not like Domaine du Castel C or Yarden Chardonnay. Either way, drinking them early (within 3-4 years of release) you should expect fruit, oak, acid, and great spice. As the wine ages more, the fruit takes a back seat, the citrus comes out, along with the oak influence, and the crazy mounds of bracing acid take front stage. As it ages further, the wine turns soft, mellow, fuller, richer, but lacking much of the fruit. It is at that point – where older Four Gates Chardonnay can become pure joy in a bottle and blow one’s mind. However, if you do not hit the window perfectly, you may end up with acid juice or oak juice. So, the safest route is to enjoy it within 2 to 5 years of release and get a lovely balanced and rich Chardonnay. If you are a gambler and willing to bet a bottle or two, please set them aside and hope that you hit the window dead on, like a Hank Aaron moonshot into the upper deck!
2008 Four Gates Chardonnay – Score: B++ to A-
This wine is at its time and one that I do not see improving with time, nor anywhere near its death. The wine starts off a bit closed, but with time it opens to nice oak, citrus, peach, apricot, sweet grass, toasty almonds, lychee, grapefruit, lemon, and butterscotch. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has toasty oak, summer and tropical fruit, with spice and pepper. The finish is long with butterscotch, spicy oak, orange peel, and spice.
2013 Terrenal Chardonnay (and all Trader Joe Terrenal Wines)
As I described a few weeks ago, Trader Joe has recently released the new red Spanish wines from Terrenal. I also said that I would post the final new wine, the 2013 Terrenal Chardonnay when I get around to tasting it. I got the chance to do just that over the last weekend, and so here is the note for that. I have also posted the previous notes as well, for clarity sakes.
The Chardonnay is one of those wines that does fly off the shelves. So, buy one or two and if you like them buy a case and enjoy them for a year or so.
The wine notes follow below:
2013 Terrenal Chardonnay, Chile (QPR) – Score: B++ (Mevushal)
The nose on this straw-colored wine is ripe with fresh tropical and stone fruit, peach, apricot, straw, and pineapple. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is round and ripe with good bracing acidity, quince, guava, and classic pink grapefruit. The finish is long with more good acid, citrus, mineral, orange pith, and slate. Quite a lovely wine, though with less complexity than previous years, but with better acid and ripe fruit. This is a wine that will pair well with fish and fowl, along with maybe even white pasta sauces, given its very good acidity.
2012 Terrenal Tempranillo (QPR) – Score: B++ (NOT mevushal)
This wine is a real surprise! The last Tempranillo from Terrenal did not impress me that much. This wine has the attention grabbing notes and enough layering to make me take notice. Still, the clear winning aspect of this wine is the rich mouth coating tannins and bright searing acidity that makes this a great pairing for things like Tomato pasta and meatballs.
The nose on this wine opens to lovely blackberry, rose hip, floral notes, dark cherry, along with good earthy notes and cola aromas. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is a wake-up call, with nice bright acid, crazy blue and red fruit, all wrapped in a cloak of mouth coating tannins that linger long. The finish is long with dark cherry, tobacco, currants, crazy and zany cloves, black pepper, spice, along with forest floor notes that linger long!
2012 Terrenal Cabernet Sauvignon (QPR) – Score: B+ (NOT mevushal)
This wine is nice with blueberry, raspberry, dark cherry, rich earthy elements, mineral, graphite, and almost hints of peach or apricot. The mouth is medium bodied with good mouth coating tannin, nice cranberry, eucalyptus, blackcurrant, spice, and more roasted herb. The finish is long and spicy, with searing cloves, black pepper, kirsch cherry, more green notes, and spice.
Lovely kosher red and white wines for Succoth
This past week I spent some time with family and we enjoyed some great white and red wines. Mostly white and rose wines were enjoyed simply because I was in a very hot climate (no not the Bay Area), and so white and rose wines were truly the only option.
I wanted to have some red wines so I included two reds that I have been wanting to taste for a long time and both were great. The only real “let down” was the Tavel Rose which I have still not come to appreciate. To me it lacks the bracing acidity and it is far too bitter, for my tastes.
So, I will keep this short and sweet – the wine notes follow in the order they were enjoyed:
2012 Makom Grenache Blanc – Score: A-
This bottle is back!!! The last bottle we had was right after bottling, and it was not showing beautifully. This week, it was showing alot more like what it did before bottling. The nose explodes with rich slate, followed by lovely floral aromas, ripe lime, lemon, grapefruit, jasmine, lovely cut grass, and herbal notes. The mouth is ripe and medium bodied, with nice lemon friache, good strong and balancing acid, and ripe peach. The finish is long and spicy, with hints of banana, ripe fig, and nice mineral. I am so happy this wine is back -be sure to enjoy!!!! Read the rest of this entry
2012 Dalton Viognier, Reserve, Wild Yeast
Viognier (pronounced Vee-Ohn-Yay) is a very special grape and one that must be handled with great care. The Viognier grape/wine is a special treat. It is a wine that has distinct characteristics: perfume, floral notes and acidity, but it is also a very picky grape. It is very easy to lose to mold and because of this wineries will plant roses next to the grape vines to act as a canary for detecting mildew early on. The grape needs to be picked late otherwise; it does not generate the classic perfume that we are used to seeing in Muscat and Riesling wines. The wine maker has many choices with how he/she wants to manage the grapes. The wine maker can allow the wine to go through malolactic fermentation (to give it a bit more weight) or let the wine lie in the must (to give it more perfume) or to let it have a bit of wood to give it roundness. With all the choices and difficulties that Viognier wines have, they rarely meet expectations and are therefore, not one of the current popular white wines. Finally, Viognier is not meant for long storage – hence the VERY early release dates on these wines, also the wine should have the acidity, fruit, and perfume to make it a real winner.
The 2012 Dalton Viognier Reserve Wild Yeast is a very special wine, and one that really shows the wine making skills of the Dalton Winery. To start, Viognier is one of those grapes that are super finicky to grow and produce. A Viognier is classified by its creamy and rich consistency, famous Viognier perfume, and rich fruit, all packaged in a dry white wine. It differs from Chardonnay, because where Chardonnay normally has residual sugar (non fermented sugar that adds a lift and some sweetness), Viognier is normally bone dry. It is ironic that when you taste this magnificent wine, you may initially think this is a sweet wine, but instead what you are sensing is the ripe fruit and the rich perfume that make this wine a truly successful Viognier!
I have been waiting with baited breath for this wine to be released, and I must stress that this wine is different to some extent from previous vintages, but equally lovely. To start this wine is pure oak, and a wine that you would think was a total disaster – but you would be VERY wrong! This is a classic example of a wine that needs time to let the oak settle and let the fruit appear! What fruit WOW! Once that oak becomes a background, rather than a primary sense, you get the full throttle Viognier effect! The lovely flower perfume, followed by the wine’s classic oily texture makes the waiting all worth it!!! Read the rest of this entry
Wine Musings Blog 