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The Top and Best 34 QPR Kosher Wine WINNERS of 2024
In May 2020 I wanted to drive home the need for QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) wines. So I set out to create what I thought a QPR metric should be! Gone were arbitrary price ranges and such. Instead, I let the market define what the QPR price range should be. I did this by grouping the wines by their type (white, red, rose, sparkling, and dessert) and then further refined the grouping by age-ability within the white and red wines. This gave me the following groups:
- Drink “soon” White Wine (Simple whites)
- Rose Wine (always drink soon)
- Drink “soon” Red Wine (Simple reds)
- Mid-range aging Reds (4 to 11 years)
- High-end Red wines (11 and more years)
- High-end White wines (7 and more years)
- Sparkling Wine (No need here for extra differentiation)
- Dessert Wine
I then made the mistake of trying to create an Orange wine range/group – that was a HUGE mistake. Again, the wines themselves were not the issue, the issue revolved around trying to group such a small sample set into its group. They will go into their respective white wine category, next year.
Throughout the year, I posted many QPR posts, for almost all of the main categories. I will continue down this road until I find a better way to categorize and track wines that are QPR WINNERS. Talk about WINNERS, that secondary QPR score was a 2.1 revision to my QPR scoring, and that is explained in this post. All the wines listed here are QPR WINNERS from my tastings in 2023.
Let us discuss the approach
I have heard from a few of you. I do not understand your QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) scoring. So, let us take another shot at this! Every time a customer comes into a shop or goes online to buy kosher wine, they have a choice of a few thousand wines, online, or many hundreds in a store. The question is how does a buyer differentiate one wine from the next?
If they like Terra di Seta wines, as I do, and it costs 30 dollars, then he/she will compare other wines to that wine, in regards to the wine and the price. That is the same for any wine they like and any wine they are looking at buying. Price matters! Now, the real question is how can you compare two wines to each other. Any two wines in the world of kosher wines? What characteristics can you use to compare them?
Let us say they like the 2022 Elvi Wines Clos Mesorah. It is a red wine from Montsant, Spain. OK, what other wine can you compare with it? You can compare other Montsant kosher wines, like the Cellar Capcanes wines. However, the Cellar Capcanes wines have an issue – they have been poor for many years! As the ratio states it is QUALITY to price! Quality is primary; once you have a good wine, you can compare it with similarly good wines.
OK, so we need equal or comparably equal quality and that is it??? So, let us say there exists a rose from Montsant that scores the same quality score as Clos Mesorah, are they comparable (by the way no such wine exists!)? What about a white wine – same? Can/should someone compare them? The answer is no, of course. People will compare similar items. OK, are we then forced to compare ONLY Montsant wines with Montsant wines? Of course not, that is NOT how people think. People will compare like-scored red wines with like-scored red wines. Further, there are literally SIX Monstant Kosher red wines on the market. How can one compare six wines to each other? It has no value.
So, the question remains how do we compare two wines? What criteria can we use to compare them? The first step is for us to agree that people will compare wines that are similar in style, but not in locale, region, or price. So what is that characteristic that they will use to compare two arbitrary kosher wines? Price IS NOT the answer.
So, let us recap – we have two similarly scored wines (AKA quality) but they are very different in many ways. Let us look at three of the wines below, two of which are from the greater Medoc region:
- 2022 Chateau d’Agassac Cru Bourgeois, Haut-Medoc – Score: 93+ (QPR: WINNER)
Drink until 2038 - 2022 Chateau Fourcas Dupre, Listrac-Medoc – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
Drink from 2034 until 2040 - 2022 Chateau Royaumont, Lalande de Pomerol – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
Drink from 2030 until 2038
These wines sell for between 38 dollars and 60 dollars. So, are these wines comparable? I would state they are, and further state that wine buyers compare them every time they read my lists and other lists that like these wines. Again, the primary requirement is quality – these all scored roughly the same quality score.
So, next, would you at least compare two Medoc wines to each other? The Chateau Fourcas Dupre and the Chateau d’Agassac? I would say yes for sure. Well, why is the Royaumont any different? Of course, they are very distinct wines, but in the end, what do oenophiles buy such wines for?? To store them and share them at a later date, meaning that wine buyers classify wines by regions, but ultimately they classify them by their ability to age gracefully or not! This means some wines age beautifully, and many will be good to enjoy in the coming years.
So, now you see the logic to the categories I use to compare wines – this is the list once again:
- Drink “soon” White Wine (Simple whites)
- Rose Wine (always drink soon)
- Drink “soon” Red Wine (Simple reds)
- Mid-range aging Reds (4 to 11 years)
- High-end Red wines (11 and more years)
- High-end White wines (7 and more years)
- Sparkling Wine (No need here for extra differentiation)
- Dessert Wine
Essentially, ignoring sparkling, rose, and dessert wines, there is white wine and red wine. Each of those two major categories is broken into their age-ability. Red wines have three age ranges while white wine has two. Then there are the other three aforementioned groups, rose, sparkling, and dessert wines.
Once you have scored a wine – IRRELEVANT to the price – this is KEY, you must place that wine into one of the 8 categories listed above. Once you have done that, any wine in that category is available for comparison. Using the median approach, wines are stacked and ranked by their price, within that category, and some rise above others, by having an equal or better quality for a lower or equal price. Please read more about this here and here.
The Summary
Before we get to the list of the best QPR wines for this past year, I wanted to give you some raw stats. I tasted more than 1200 wines this past year. In actuality, it is probably far more, I just did NOT care to write notes on hundreds more because all it would have said was NO. I made sure to taste all the Israeli wines at three KFWE, and while some were worthy of notes, none garnered these scores. The pain was all I remember. In the end, 188 wines were scored with a QPR score of WINNER, for the blog year 2024.
I have stated it over and over again now, there is no way we can buy all the good wines out there unless you have a local warehouse to store them and you drink two or more bottles a day. That is the excellent news about Kosher Wine today! I hope we have not yet hit peak QPR WINNER Wine.
This year, the list came to a total of 34 names, and none had to dip below 93 in the scores, which is a large number and better scores overall than last year, but again, the pool from where they are culled continues to grow, and the diamonds in the rough are getting harder and harder to find. This year, there are 34 or so QPR WINNERS who scored 93 this year but not in a single area.
The 4 regions that encompass the 34 WINNERS are in order of size, France (27), Spain (4), USA (2), and Hungary (1). Within France, it is not all Bordeaux! There are wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Chateauneuf du Pape.
Of the 34 WINNER, 4 of them are white, 28 are red, and 2 are sweet. However, at the lower price and quality QPR WINNERS (think 20 dollars 91 scoring wines), you will find that white wines are the majority!
This year we have 9 wines that are a WINNER in Europe and the rest of the world and NOT in the USA.
- The 2020 Chateau Haut Brisson) is because of pricing here in the USA.
- The 2023 Domaine Raymond Usseglio & Fils Chateauneuf du Pape, Blanc is not the same here in the USA as it is in Europe. I have no idea what happened to it but the quality is vastly different.
- The 2021 Tokaj-Hetszolo Tokaji Aszu 6 Puttonyos is because of pricing here in the USA.
- The 2020 Chateau Haut Brisson is because of pricing here in the USA.
- The 2022 Chateau Royaumont is because the wine is Mevushal here and not as good, though still a WINNER, but not at the same quality.
- The 2022 Les Roches De Yon-Figeac is because the wine is Mevushal here and not as good.
- The 2022 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt is because the wine is Mevushal here and not as good.
- The 2022 Chevalier de Lascombes is because the wine is Mevushal here and not as good.
- The 2022 Château Olivier Grand Cru Classe is because of pricing here in the USA.
- The 2022 Chateau Haut-Marbuzet is not available at all here in the USA.
Sadly, there were no new Sparkling or Rose wines to make it to the score of 93 and to meet its counterpart pricing. To me this is a HUGE issue in the kosher wine market! The kosher wine market has lifted up one of the previous sad wine categories, white wine! Which is HUGE! Sadly, we have not moved from there. We have a dominating red and white kosher wine scene. What is lacking sorely, is quality, sparkling wines! The rose wines will never reach the upper echelons, at least in the Kosher wine markets! However, there is actual demand for sparkling wines, and sadly, the products being sold are nice, but the prices are too high, or the quality is too low.
Maybe, Avi Davidowitz, from Kosher Wine Unfiltered, can create a list like that for Israel, this year, a bunch of wines became available there, and a proper QPR list would be worthwhile!
The wines on the list this year are all available here in the USA, and in Europe, and a few can be found in Israel, as well. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2022 Elvi Wines Clos Mesorah Garnatxa, Montsant – Score: 95 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is lovely. It pops with intense brightness, followed by a massive attack of ripe but controlled fruit, dense minerality, rich salinity, intense graphite, lovely cloves, cinnamon, warm spices, loam, dirt, earth, lovely raspberry, strawberry, and ripe/bright red berries. WOW! With time, the wine becomes even more complex, showing floral notes, ripe fruit, and lovely sweet spices. Bravo!
The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is so elegant, complex, and singular in grape, and there is nowhere to hide in this bottle; it is complex, lithe, rich, and layered but intensely refreshing. This wine is the Pinot Noir of the Rhone and Spain; there is nowhere to hide, and yet the wine is so impressive. This wine is pure black magic; it is ripe, lithe, tart, acidic, elegant, and dirty, all in the same glass, and yet this is a wine that does not exist in Kosher. Sure, there are lovely blends, but a wine this ripe that is also elegant, lithe, and smoky, you want to drink it all!
The mouth is lovely, ripe, layered, elegant, and toasty, with sweet spices, lovely raspberry, and strawberry, nice umami, really fun, expressive, and captivating; it is so unique and special, with umami, and mouth-drawing elegance, WOW! Bravo! The finish is long, dirty, earthy, smoky, and umami-dense, with great graphite and ripe, mouth-draining tannin. Dirt, minerality, graphite, ripe and tart red fruit, and intense acidity linger long. Drink from 2030 until 2036. (tasted December 2024) (in Clos Mesorah, Spain) (ABV = 15%)
The Best and Top 25 Kosher Wines of 2024, including the Wine of the Year, Winery of the Year, the Best Wine of the Year, the Best Mevushal Wines of the Year, and Best QPR Wine of the Year Awards
First, I must start this by saying I am sorry for this being two months late. The late tasting of the 2022 wines in Paris pushed all the dates forward. Such is life! It was worth tasting those wines in their correct place. As stated below, I love at KFWE, but it is not a place to taste wines for a blog or a post. It is a place to taste wine and know if I should taste it in the correct setting. It is an excellent filter to help fine-tune the wines to sit down with.
Like last year, I wanted to make this post short and sweet – so the criteria are simple. I could care less about price, color, or where it was made. All that matters is that it is/was available this year sometime to the public at large, that I tasted it in a reliable environment, not just at a tasting, and that it scored a 94 or higher. PLEASE NOTE the improved quality of the top wines this year! This is the best year – that I have posted about – in regards to scoring. All 25 wines are 94 or above. The closest we had before was the 2021 blog year, which had a fair number of 93+ scored wines.
We are returning with the “Wine of the Year,” “Best Wine of the Year,” “Winery of the Year,” “Best White Wine of the Year,” “Best QPR Wine of the Year”, along with the – “Best Mevushal Wine of the Year.” Wine of the Year goes to a wine that distinguished itself in ways that are beyond the normal. It needs to be a wine that is readily available, incredible in style and flavor, and it needs to be reasonable in price. It may be the QPR wine of the year, or sometimes it will be a wine that has distinguished itself for other reasons. The wines of the year are a type of wine that is severely unappreciated, though ones that have had a crazy renaissance over the past two years. The Best Wine of the Year goes to a wine well worthy of the title.
The Mevushal wine of the year is something I dread. I understand the need for a wine that can be enjoyed at restaurants and events. Still, when we start seeing Château Gazin Rocquencourt and Chevalier de Lascombes go Mevushal – we know we have a problem. As I have stated in the past, if this is what needs to happen, then please sell both options as many do with Peraj Petita/Capcanes, Psagot wines, and many others. Still, it is a wine; as such, it needs a best-of-the-year moniker, so we do it again!
This past year, I tasted more wines than I have ever, in the past. Now, to be clear, I tasted thousands of Israeli (and other) wines but did not write notes on them. At this point, I refuse to post notes that demean the Israeli wine situation. I understand that goes against my long-term stance, but the situation there also goes against any logical or even human stance. As such, if the wine is good, I post. Otherwise, I am not adding value. I still think, long-term, Israel needs to change its winemaking style. However, as long as folks buy the wines, they will stay as they are. Enough said.
I spent a fair amount of time tasting all the US, French, Southern Hemisphere, and European wines I could get my hands on, and I feel that is where I added the most value, IMHO. For those who like the Israeli wine style – other writers/bloggers can point you in some direction. Thankfully, the 2022 vintage did pull up the overall quality from Europe, so we have some good options.
There are wines from the 2018 and 2020 Bordeaux vintages that snuck in, along with many from the 2022 vintage. Also, there are wines from around the United States and Europe. There are even a couple from the 2021 Bordeaux vintage. This proves wrong the idea that all of the 2021 vintage was a waste of time.
Now, separately, I love red wines, but white wines – done correctly, are a whole other story! Sadly, in regards to whites, we still had no new wines from Germany, still. Thankfully, we have some fantastic entries from ESSA, Domaine de Chevalier, Marciano Estates, Chateau de Rayne Vigneau, Domaine Raymond Usseglio & Fils, Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt, and Le Nardian. Some of these wines that scored well were ONLY the French versions. The USA versions of Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt are Mevushal and the Domaine Raymond Usseglio & Fils – it is a very different animal than what I tasted/enjoyed in Paris. However, they all scored a 93 or lower, and I do not see the point in putting a white wine in – just to cover that base. Therefore, this year, I am going with the “white” 2021 Tokaj-Hetszolo Tokaji Aszu 6 Puttonyos, Tokaj. I hope to post a roundup soon of the top white wines out there like I did last year.
The wines on the list this year are all available here in the USA, and in Europe, and a few can be found in Israel, as well. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
The 2024 Kosher Winery of the Year
This award continues to get harder and harder each year. The sad, cold, hard truth is that there are too few great kosher wineries. When I started this award some five years ago, I thought it would only get easier. Sadly, there are a few truths that limit my ability to give out this award.
First, as much as we have been blessed with great Kosher European wines in the past 6 years, most of those blessings come under the auspices of single-run kosher wines. Chateau Leoville Poyferre, Château Smith Haut Lafitte, you name it, are all based upon kosher runs. What we have in Europe, kosher-winery-wise, is Terra di Seta, Cantina Giuliano, and Elvi Wines (including Clos Mesorah), Domaine Roses Camille, which only became 100% kosher in 2020. Still, for all intent and purpose, Domaine Roses Camille has been producing the vast majority of their wines in kosher since 2011.
The requirements to receive this award are simple, the winery must be kosher, not a kosher-run, the quality must be consistent, and the wines must be readily available. The last requirement is the main reason why Four Gates Winery has yet to win the award, but at this point, it is only a matter of time, as kosher wine availability is becoming less of an issue overall, given the sheer number of cult-like kosher wineries that exist today. Also, I may be forced to start playing with percentages instead of wholly kosher wineries if the people understand what I mean.
This year’s winner starts to break down one of my unspoken laws. Never give awards to one of your best friends, but Josh and Chana Rynderman have forced my hands. No, they have not done so physically or even by voice; it is all in their work. This award is worthy on so many levels. I have written about ESSA Wine before, as well as Kos Yeshuos Winery. Both are worthy of this award, and one could not exist without the other.
It is crazy to think that Kos Yeshuos started “unofficially” in 2015! I was not even scoring wines with numbers back then! Ten years ago, Kos Yeshuos made a lovely Vin Gris from Cabernet Sauvignon, and the game was afoot! From there, he made wine for sale in 2016, the first “official” vintage of Kos Yeshuos, with two reds, a Syrah and a Grenache (I had just turned over to numerical scores and started to dabble with QPR). The 2016 Syrah was excellent last year!
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Paris tasting of Royal Wine’s 2022 and 2023 Bordeaux and other French wines – January 2025
Let us start with some facts; Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and I were in Paris together this past week. We were there to taste as many Kosher Bordeaux wines from the 2022 and 2023 vintages as humanly possible. We arrived on a Monday and by Noon, we were knee-deep into a plethora of Bordeaux wines. As is typical, the trip started with a massive tasting of Royal Wine’s latest releases, followed by two more organized tastings, and many tastings we did in our hotel room, as usual.
The first wine tasting that Avi Davidowitz and I organized during our trip to Paris was with Menahem Israelievitch, the Managing director and Winemaker of Royal Wine Europe, in his lovely home.
The 2022 Vintage in Bordeaux
So, the 2022 vintage is one that I will openly say surprised me. Until this trip, I had found the 2022 Bordeaux to be a ripe mess. Yes, there were a few exceptions, but the majority of wines, until that week, were a mess. However, even after the week of wonderful wines, I finally realized my issue, there is a difference between a good wine and a wine I want to drink. In this post and the rest of the 2022 Bordeaux wine posts (with more yet still untasted), the theme will be ripeness. Now, ripeness can be managed with good acidity, but at 15.5% ABV or 15% ABV, you may say that the wine is too ripe. However, that is not true. There are examples on this blog of wines we have tasted at that ABV that are actually refreshing!
Some of the wine notes you read below will state those words, the magic refreshing word. The wines, without that word, are still wonderful, and wines I may buy, but there is a sense of weight to those wines that I wonder about. How will they manage themselves in 15 years?
Let us talk about the age-ability of these 2022 Bordeaux wines. They are 100% UNDRINKABLE at this time. PERIOD. Sure, for tasting sake, we can taste them, but they are either horribly closed, horribly fat (meaning showing absurd fruit), or just so large and clumsy that they are not enjoyable at this time. So, when you look at the drinking windows, do not be shocked to see 30-year windows. The Leoville Poyferre, Pontet Canet, and even the Moulin Riche are wines that will cost you dearly now and in the future. These are wines that you will need to put away for 20+ years. In my opinion, these are not wines that will get to their tertiary dream state before a long time. These are wines that will require a very long and patient approach before you will get that payoff. For many of us on this earth, I wonder if I want to buy a wine that will not meet that plateau before I am pretty old. Ignoring mortality or the desire to enjoy wines like that at an advanced age – it is also the knowledge that the space in your cellar is locked away for these wines, and you really are not going to touch them for an extended period.
With all that said, sorry for the tangent; these are very special wines that should deserve some thought on how/where you will age and preserve them, given the long drinking windows. Now, I hear all of you. What about 2015, 2016, and the like? Are they not also akin to this? The answer is NO! Those vintages were balanced and, as such, will come around soon enough. Still, it has been 10 years now, and they are not ready, and they will not be ready for some time. I guess I am just projecting my thoughts here regarding what I can buy, store, and dream about enjoying in 20+ years.
Finally, unlike the 2021 vintage, these wines are not green. Maybe they have roasted herbs, but that is more oak, and they rarely show vegetal notes.
How do I see the 2022 vintage in comparison to other recent vintages? I say the quality and personal interest I have in buying these wines are behind the 2019, 2016, and 2014 but ahead of the 2015, 2018, and so on.
Looking through this list of wine notes below for the 2022 vintage and the ones coming for the other wines we tasted from this vintage, you will see a pattern, good scores, and many QPR WINNERS. Mr. Israelievitch and the team did an excellent job with the 2022 vintage. As you will see soon, there are many wines here. This is an outlier vintage BOTH regarding the number of labels made by Royal and others and the ripeness of the wines. I am not sure, but this feels like the largest number of French labels made by Royal in a single year. That does not even include the dual label (Mevushal and non-Mevushal issue/situation). Even if you look at Bordeaux alone, it has to be the largest, in my opinion. So, when you compare this vintage’s number of QPR WINNER scores, it is unfair. A more interesting thing is to look at the percentage of QPR WINNER to wines. Something I hope to explore.
The truly great vintage, for me, was the 2019 vintage, as I stated many times already, but even there, the 2019 vintage only had 13 QPR WINNER. It was the most balanced vintage so far, outside of 2014 and some of 2015. Of course, PLEASE be clear, I speak of kosher wines. I am sure many think 2020 was the perfect vintage in Bordeaux. However, IMHO, and I think I have tasted every kosher wine made from Bordeaux over the past 8 years; 2019, 2014, and some of 2015 were the winners. Still, the 2022 vintage takes the award for the most QPR WINNER wines produced by Royal Wines, 28! That is an incredible number! I state again that the 2022 vintage is incredible; it shocked me, and the ripeness is my issue. I crave balance, both in my life and in the and in the wines I drink. I think that most will find these wines enjoyable, and they will fly off the shelves, even given the more significant number of wines made.
To me, the 2014 vintage was crazy fun because it is less ripe than the 2015 or 2016 vintage. They were also FAR cheaper. Then you had the 2015 wines, which were more expensive and far riper than the 2014 vintage. This 2016 vintage is the best of both worlds but comes at a crazy high price. During the epic post of my visit to Bordeaux with Mr. Israelievitch, I warned you at that time that you better start saving your money; sadly, nothing has changed about that. The REAL shocker price-wise of the 2016 vintage was Chateau Malartic, which rose to almost 150 or more a bottle! That was close to double the 2014 vintage.
The 2022 vintage is more expensive than the 2021 vintage, which was more expensive than the 2020 vintage. The “deals” were from the 2019 vintage and the upcoming 2023 vintage. In between, the prices went up and up and up! The real Chutzpah was 2021. It was not a good vintage and yet Bordeaux raised their prices! The 2022 vintage is just one of those generational vintages, to those that crave massive fruit, and as such, garnered so many high scores during “En Primeur week” that they had to raise prices, yet again.
In a previous post about the most recent French wines (at that time in 2017) that were arriving on the market, I already discussed pricing and supply, so there is no need to discuss that again in this post.
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Paris tasting of Royal’s 2021 and other French wines – November 2023
With my last KFWE post, I have now caught up to my trip to Paris in November, which I think is awesome, because I was really behind! This was a multi-day tasting trip with Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog. It started with a massive tasting of Royal Wine’s latest releases, followed by two more organized tastings, and many tastings we did in our hotel room, as usual.
The first organized wine tasting that Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and I went to, during our last trip to Paris, in November 2023 was with with Menahem Israelievitch in his lovely home.
In May I made my way to Paris and I posted the Royal wines I tasted, they were mostly white, rose, and a fair number of red wines as well. For the past many years, I have been tasting the new releases from Royal wines with Menahem Israelievitch. Two years ago, because of COVID-19, I tasted the 2018 vintage in my house. Thankfully, those days are over and things have mostly returned to normal.
The 2021 Vintage in Bordeaux
Vintage-wise, I think 2021 is a mess. I say that because that is the overall feeling I get from tasting the wines from Royal and countless other producers. The 2021 wines, on average, the poor wines, show in one of these three styles:
- Thin-tasting wine that is overly green and has notes of Jalapeno and bell pepper
- Medium-bodied wines that are horribly hollow and overpowering with their Jalapeno or sometimes cooked/candied Jalapeno notes
- Over-ripe and candied cherry wine with green notes
Looking through this list of wine notes below, for the 2021 vintage, and the ones coming for the other wines we tasted from this vintage, you will see a pattern, low scores, and very few QPR WINNERS. Mr. Israelievitch and the team did a wonderful job with these wines given the product (aka the grapes) they had to work with. There are 6 QPR WINNERS here and some good wines.
In comparison, the 2020 vintage was OK, there were some clear WINNER wines, with the 2020 Pavillon de Leoville Poyferre and the 2020 Chateau Montviel. Though 2020 had 11 QPR WINNER wines. The truly great vintage was the 2019 vintage as I stated many times already, but even there the 2019 vintage only had 13 QPR WINNER. It was the most balanced vintage so far, outside of 2014, and some of 2015. Of course, PLEASE be clear, I speak of kosher wines. I am sure many think 2020 was the perfect vintage in Bordeaux. However, IMHO, and I think I have tasted every kosher wine made from Bordeaux, over the past 8 years, 2019, 2014, and some of 2015 were the winners.
The 2014 vintage to me, was crazy fun because it is less ripe than the 2015 or 2016 vintages. They were also FAR cheaper. Then you had the 2015 wines which were more expensive and far riper than the 2014 vintage. This 2016 vintage is the best of both worlds, but it comes at a crazy high price. I warned you at that time, during the epic post of my visit to Bordeaux with Mr. Israelievitch, that you better start saving your money, sadly nothing has changed about that. The REAL shocker price-wise of the 2016 vintage was Chateau Malartic, which rose to almost 150 or more a bottle! That was close to double the 2014 vintage.
In a previous post about the most recent French wines (at that time in 2017) that were arriving on the market – I already spoke about pricing and supply, so there is no need to talk that over again in this post.
NOTE: Mr. Israelievitch only had the Mevushal 2021 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt Grand Vin, Blanc. I will have to wait until I return to Paris to taste the non-Mevushal as the USA imports only the Mevushal version.
Mevushal Wine Push
The Mevushal push, from Royal wines, is continuing for the USA labels. More wines are being made in a Mevushal manner and while I wonder if this is good overall for myself, it makes sense for Royal wines, which in the end, I guess is what matters to them. Will this be an issue? In the past, I have found that the mevushal work of Mr. Israelievitch is top-notch, and just ages the wine rather than ruining it. Sadly, that trend has been failing in recent years, especially when it involves white and rose wines. More and more the mevushal white and rose wines have shown a difference between the two variations, mostly in regards to acidity. I have no idea why the flash affects the acidity but it has been clear to me and the best example was the 2019 Gazin Rocquencourt, Blanc. The non-mevushal version is solid while the mevushal version was not.
So, once again, as I have been doing for YEARS, I will again ask Royal to treat their own, personally made French wines, with the same courtesy that they show Binyamina, Psagot, Capcanes, Shiloh, and others. Why are you OK with importing BOTH the mevushal and non-mevushal versions of wines that are not worthy of the glass they are in but are more than happy to throw a blind eye to wines you personally produce? The French wines deserve better and again, I AM ASKING for you to import BOTH the mevushal and non-mevushal versions as you do for so many other brands.
The Mevushal wines from France for the 2019/2020/2021 vintages will be the
- 2022 Les Marrionniers Chablis, Petit Chablis
- 2022 Les Marrionniers Chablis, Chablis
- 2022 Domaine J. de Villebois Pouilly-Fume
- 2022 Domaine de Panquelaine
- 2022 Domaine J. de Villebois Sancerre
- 2022 Chateau Les Riganes, Bordeaux
- 2022 Chateau Genlaire, Bordeaux Superieur
- 2021 Des Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild Les Lauriers, Montagne Saint-Emilion
- 2020/2021 Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild, Haut-Medoc
- 2019 Chateau Greysac, Medoc
- 2021 Chateau Le Crock, Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux
- 2020/2021 Chateau de Parsac
- 2021/2022 Chateau Les Riganes, Blanc
- 2019/2020 Chateau Mayne Guyon
- 2021 Chateau Tour Seran
- 2021 Pavillon de Leoville Poyferre
- 2021 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt (Blanc and Red)
- 2021 Chevalier de Lascombes, Pessac-Leognan
- 2022 Clos Triguedina Malbec du Clos
- 2021 Chateau Lamothe-Bergeron
- 2021 Chateau Roubine Lion & Dragon, Red
Now does mevushal impede the long-term viability of aging in regards to the wine? Well, that too is not something that we have scientific proof of. I have tasted a mevushal 1999 Herzog Special Edition and it was aging beautifully! Same with the Chateau Le Crock, over the past few years. So, would I buy the mevushal versions of the wines I tasted below? The answer is yes! Would I age them? Yes, I would hold them for slightly fewer years. To me personally, it is very clear, that if Royal had their way they would make the Pontet Canet Mevushal! Nothing to Royal is sacred and this will not stop with the list above, it will grow, proof is Chevalier and Gazin were made mevushal in 2019. Now Pavillon and others in 2021. I personally guess the next wines to be Mevushal will be Chateau Moulin Riche and Chateau Tertre, IMHO.
Other than the mevushal aspect, there are no differences between the European version of the wines and the USA version of the wines. While that sounds obvious, I am just stating it here. The wines will be shipped now and the temperature issues that affected Israel’s wines of old, have not been a factor here.
Read the rest of this entryThe top 25 QPR Kosher wine WINNERS of 2021
This past year I wanted to drive home the need for QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) wines. So I set out to create what I thought a QPR metric should be! Gone were arbitrary price ranges and such. Instead, I let the market define what the QPR price range should be. I did this by grouping the wines by their type (white, red, rose, sparkling, and dessert) and then further refined the grouping by age-ability within the white and red wines. This gave me the following groups:
- Drink “soon” White Wine (Simple whites)
- Rose Wine (always drink soon)
- Drink “soon” Red Wine (Simple reds)
- Mid-range aging Reds (4 to 11 years)
- High-end Red wines (11 and more years)
- High-end White wines (7 and more years)
- Sparkling Wine (No need here for extra differentiation)
- Dessert Wine
I then made the mistake of trying to create an Orange wine range/group – that was a HUGE mistake. Again, the wines themselves were not the issue, the issue revolved around trying to group such a small sample set into its group. They will go into their respective white wine category, next year.
Throughout the year, I posted many QPR posts, for almost all of the main categories. I will continue down this road until I find a better way to categorize and track wines that are QPR WINNERS. Talk about WINNERS, that secondary QPR score was a 2.1 revision to my QPR scoring, and that is explained in this post. All the wines listed here are QPR WINNERS from my tastings in 2021.
This year, the list came to a total of 25 names, and none had to dip below 91 in the scores, which is a large number and better scores overall than last year, but again, the pool from where they are culled continues to grow, and the diamonds in the rough are getting harder and harder to find.
I have added a few new things this year. The first is QPR for France, the prices for many wines there, are dirt cheap! Maybe, Avi Davidowitz, from kosher wine unfiltered, can create a list like that for Israel, this year, a bunch of wines became available there, and a proper QPR list would be worthwhile!
Shoutout to a GREAT wine that is just sitting around!
I am sorry to get on my soapbox before we get to the top QPR wines of 2021. But I have to ask what is wrong with the 2018 Vitkin Grenache Blanc??? Yes, it is a bit expensive, but it is also one of the best white wine on the market currently, hailing from Israel. It is incredible – funky, acidic, rich, and expressive – please folks – try the bottle and then once you find out how awesome it is, buy some!! As always, I get nothing for promoting/suggesting a wine, NOTHING, I am simply reminding folks – great wines still hail from Israel!
The wines on the list this year are all available here in the USA, in Europe, and a few can be found in Israel, as well. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
The 2021 Red QPR kosher WINNER
The 2017 Clos Mesorah is lovely! It is available in the USA and elsewhere. I tasted the 2018 and 2019 as well, and they are lovely, but I will taste them again on the release here in the USA.
2017 Clos Mesorah, Montsant – Score: 94 (QPR: WINNER)
This is a super elegant, floral, and feminine wine, bravo!! The nose on this wine is beautiful, showing floral notes of violet, white flowers, with blueberry, black fruit, smoke, roasted duck, earth, and loads of smoke, dirt, and loam. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is so elegant, layered, concentrated, earthy, fruity, smoky, and richly extracted, with boysenberry, lovely green olives, blackberry, dark cherry, plum, smoke, earth, loam, and lovely sweet cedar, with green notes, sweet tobacco, sweet basil, and lovely acid. The finish is long, green, with draping elegant tannin, showing a bit more acid than even 2019, sweet smoking tobacco, dark chocolate, white pepper, and anise. Bravo!! Drink from 2025 until 2035. (tasted November 2021) (in Montsant, Spain) (ABV = 14.5%)
The 2021 White QPR kosher WINNERS
These two wines were available before but I fear the 2019 Netofa Latour, White is sold out, and the 2020 vintage is not as good as the 2019 vintage. The 2018 Tel Qasser, White is lovely and available.
2019 Netofa Latour, White – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose on this wine is pure heaven, incredible, refined oak, with a refined approach to the fruit, straw, earth, pear, white apple, and smoke, with creme brulee, awesome! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is truly impressive, with layers of acidity, elegance, sweet oak, with oak tannin, but the creme brulee and smoke are beautiful, with green notes, pear, tart guava, and sweet apple brioche, wow! The finish is long, green, tart, with sweet fruit, mineral, slate, and more freshly baked goods. Bravo! Drink from 2023 until 2030. (tasted January 2021)
2018 Netofa Tel Qasser, White – Score: 92+ (QPR: WINNER)
The 2018 vintage shows far more of the classic Roussanne reductive aspects than 2017 does today, but it is also far richer, deeper in intensity, and approachable, but I would let this lie. The nose on this wine, like 2017 starts closed, yes, it is open, but please there is so much more here, it is just covered in marzipan, almonds, walnuts, oak, smoke, orange, orange blossom, with rich salinity, big bold and bright fruit hiding, and lovely spice. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is incredible, just WOW, and that is with 10 minutes of air, this wine will improve with a couple of years, but I do see how approachable this wine can feel, and if you want to go ahead, but it will be better in a few years, with layers upon layers of smoke, ripe controlled fruit, with ripe peach, apricot, melon, incredible nutty notes, lovely tannin, green olives, wrapped in an unctuous and oily mouthfeel that feels like being wrapped in a sushi roll of oak, smoke, fruit, and nori – WOW! The finish is so long, I AM VERY HAPPY it was my last wine of the tasting, this is crazy, so incredible, with lingering notes that last forever of almonds, walnuts, nuts, smoke, grip, orange blossom, orange, tannin, acid, rock, hay, and more acid, incredible! BRAVO!! BRAVO to the master! Drink from 2023 until 2027. (tasted March 2021)
Rest of the top QPR Winners (in no particular order)
2019 Chateau LaGrange Grand Cru Classe En 1855, Saint-Julien – Score: 94+ (QPR: GREAT)
WOW, what wine for a 12.5% ABV wine, come on, the next time someone says I need to wait for the phenolics to talk with me, the answer is this wine! This wine is a blend of 80% cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, & 2% Petit Verdot.
The nose on this wine is lovely and perfumed with rich minerality, dense loam, graphite, smoke, roasted animal, clay, black and red fruit, all wrapped in more dirt, tar, and licorice, wow!
The mouth on this medium-plus bodied wine is beautiful, the acid is perfect, balanced and tart, elegant and layered, with lovely raspberry, plum, dark currants, hints of blue fruit, with ripe cassis, scraping mineral, dirt, loam, roasted herbs, menthol, with sweet vanilla, and lovely licorice.
The finish is long, with draping tannin, scraping mineral, and lovely tar, loam, nice leather, and rich garrigue, really lovely! Drink from 2031 until 2042. (tasted November 2021) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 12.5%)
My top 25 kosher wines of 2021, including the Wine of the Year, Winery of the Year, the Best Wine of the Year, and the Best Mevushal wines of the year awards
Like last year, I wanted to make this post short and sweet – so the criteria are simple. I could care less about price, color, or where it was made. All that matters is that it is/was available this year sometime to the public at large and that I tasted it in a reliable environment, not just at a tasting, and that it was scored a 92 or higher. Also, there are a few lower-scoring wines here because of their uniqueness or really good QPR.
We are returning with the “wine of the year”, “best wine of the year” along with “Winery of the Year”, and “Best White wine of the year”, along with a new one – “Best Mevushal wine of the year”. Wine of the year goes to a wine that distinguished itself in ways that are beyond the normal. It needs to be a wine that is easily available, incredible in style and flavor, and it needs to be reasonable in price. It may be the QPR wine of the year or sometimes it will be a wine that so distinguished itself for other reasons. The wines of the year are a type of wine that is severely unappreciated, though ones that have had a crazy renaissance, over the past two years. The Best Wine of the year goes to a wine well worthy of the title.
The Mevushal wine of the year is something I personally dread. I understand the need for a wine that can be enjoyed at restaurants and events, but when we start seeing Château Gazin Rocquencourt and Chevalier de Lascombes go Mevushal – we know we have a problem. As I have stated in the past, if this is what needs to happen, then please sell both options as many do with Peraj Petita/Capcanes, Psagot wines, and many others. Still, it is a wine and as such, it needs a best-of-the-year moniker, so this will be the first year where we do it.
This past year, I tasted more wines than I have ever, in the past. Now to be clear here, I did not taste many Israeli wines as they have proven to me over and over again, even with the much-ballyhooed 2018 vintage that they are not worth me spending my money on. So, no I have not tasted as many Israeli wines as I have in the past, but overall, this is the largest number, for me. I spent a fair amount of time tasting all the French and European wines I could get my hands on and I feel that is where I added the most value, IMHO. For those that like the Israeli wine style – other writers/bloggers can point you in some direction.
IMHO, this past year brought the best wines I have seen in a long time.
IMHO, this past year brought the best wines I have seen in a long time. No, I do not just mean, the lovely 2019 Chateau Pontet Canet, but overall, the scores garnered this year are on keel with my top wines of 2017, which included the best wines from 2014 and 2015 vintages. Nothing has come close since that list, until this past year – so that really excites me as there are still a few wines from the 2019 vintage that I have yet to taste.
As I will talk about in my year in review post, 2014 will come out as the best vintage for the past decade in France. That is a hotly debated subject, but IMHO, in the world of kosher wine, there were FAR more best wine options in the 2014 vintage than any other vintage in the past decade. That may not be the case for non-kosher wines, but news flash, I do not drink non-kosher wines, or even taste them, and further this blog is about kosher wines. The 2018 vintage may well have some serious “best wine of the year” candidates, but sadly, not all of those wines are here and I could not travel to France to taste them all, as I do commonly. The 2019 vintage may have as many once we taste them all, but for now, the 2014 vintage across all wine producers has created a far more complete and consistent product than any of the years, up until 2019.
There are also interesting wines below the wines of the year, think of them as runner-up wines of the year. There will be no rose wines on the list this year. If last year, I thought the roses were pure junk, this year, you can add another nail in the coffin of rose wines, IMHO. Thankfully, the task of culling the bounty of great wines to come to these top wines was more a task of removing than adding. We are blessed with a bounty of good wines – similar to 2017. To highlight the last point, I scored 109 wines with a 92 or higher, and 66 of those were given the QPR score of WINNER (or WINNER in FRANCE).
The supreme bounty comes from the fact that Royal released the 2019 French wines a bit early! Throw in the incredible number of kosher European wines that are coming to the USA and being sold in Europe and this was truly a year of bounty for European kosher wines.
Now, separately, I love red wines, but white wines – done correctly, are a whole other story! Sadly, in regards to whites, we had no new wines from Germany, still. Thankfully, we have some awesome new entries, from the 2019 Chateau Malartic and the 2019 Château Gazin Rocquencourt (NON-Mevushal), and the new 2020 Meursault!
The wines on the list this year are all available here in the USA, in Europe, and a few can be found in Israel, as well. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
The 2021 kosher wine of the year – is new!
This is a new wine for the kosher wine market and it sits a bit above where I would like it, price-wise, but it is the best wine for a price that is still comfortable for the value. It is one of the rare wines that score a GREAT QPR – when priced above 100 dollars. Still, it fits right there to make it GREAT. There were so many to choose from this year – I am so happy to restate, but in the end, this award goes to a reasonably priced wine that garnered the highest score. The 2014 and 2015 Domain Roses Camille was an option, but the price pushed out of the competition. There was the 2017 Elvi Clos Mesorah, at a far better price than the LaGrange, but again, the LaGrange fit right in that space, barely above the Clos (quality-wise), and within the range of QPR. There was the 2018 Malartic and the 2017 Leoville, but they, like the DRC, were priced out. Finally, there was the 2019 Jean Luc et Paul Aegerter Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru, Les Vallerots, but that wine is almost impossible to find, sadly!
If there was a single QPR WINNER that blew me away – it would be the 2012 Château Cru Ducasse – in France, I can see no reason not to buy as much of this as humanly possible! Either way – the new Chateau LaGrange is a wonderful wine and one that is worthy of the 2021 wine of the year!
2019 Chateau LaGrange Grand Cru Classe En 1855, Saint-Julien – Score: 94+ (QPR: GREAT)
WOW, what wine for a 12.5% ABV wine, come on, the next time someone says I need to wait for the phenolics to talk with me, the answer is this wine! This wine is a blend of 80% cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, & 2% Petit Verdot.
The nose on this wine is lovely and perfumed with rich minerality, dense loam, graphite, smoke, roasted animal, clay, black and red fruit, all wrapped in more dirt, tar, and licorice, wow!
The mouth on this medium-plus bodied wine is beautiful, the acid is perfect, balanced and tart, elegant and layered, with lovely raspberry, plum, dark currants, hints of blue fruit, with ripe cassis, scraping mineral, dirt, loam, roasted herbs, menthol, with sweet vanilla, and lovely licorice.
The finish is long, with draping tannin, scraping mineral, and lovely tar, loam, nice leather, and rich garrigue, really lovely! Drink from 2031 until 2042. (tasted November 2021) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 12.5%)
Paris tasting of Royal’s 2019 and other French wines – November 2021
So, in June I made my way to Paris and I posted the Royal wines I tasted, they were mostly white, rose, and a few red wines as well. For the past many years I have been tasting the new releases from Royal wines with Menahem Israelievitch. Sadly, last year, because of COVID I tasted the 2018 vintage in my house. Thankfully, Paris was open in November, and I returned to taste more wines.
The 2014 vintage to me, was crazy fun because it is less ripe than the 2015 or 2016 vintages. They were also FAR cheaper. Then you had the 2015 wines which were more expensive and far riper than the 2014 vintage. This 2016 vintage is the best of both worlds, but it comes at a crazy high price. I warned you at that time, during the epic post of my visit to Bordeaux with Mr. Israelievitch, that you better start saving your money, sadly nothing has changed about that. The REAL shocker price-wise of the 2016 vintage was Chateau Malartic, which rose to almost 150 or more a bottle! That was close to double the 2014 vintage.
In a previous post about the most recent French wines (at that time in 2017) that were arriving on the market – I already spoke about pricing and supply, so there is no need to talk that over again in this post.
While the 2015 and 2016 vintages were ripe, the 2017 vintage was not ripe at all, with the 2018 vintage making the 2015 ripeness look tame! Well, I am happy to say that the 2019 vintage is far more in control, less heat is obvious, though it showed up in a few wines below. Now that is a very broad-stroke statement that cannot be used uniformly, for the most part, go with it! Thankfully, the 2019 vintage will be priced slightly lower than 2018, overall, more on that below.
The Mevushal push, from Royal wines, is continuing for the USA labels. More wines are being made Mevushal and while I wonder if this is good overall for myself, it makes sense for Royal wines, which in the end, I guess is what matters to them. Will this be an issue? In the past, I have found that the mevushal work of Mr. Israelievitch is top-notch, and just ages the wine rather than ruining it.
The Mevushal wines from France for the 2018/2019/2020 vintages will be the
- 2020 Les Marrionniers Chablis, Chablis
- 2020 Chateau Les Riganes, Bordeaux
- 2020 Chateau Genlaire, Bordeaux Superieur
- 2018 Des Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild Les Lauriers, Montagne Saint-Emilion
- 2019 Des Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild Les Lauriers, Montagne Saint-Emilion
- 2018 Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild, Haut-Medoc
- 2019 Chateau Greysac, Medoc
- 2019 Chevalier de Lascombes, Margaux – YES this is new for 2019 – OH! How exciting (note by sarcasm!!!)
- 2019 Chateau Le Crock, Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux
- 2018/2019 Chateau de Parsac
- 2019 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt, Blanc, Grand Vin – YES this is new for 2019 – OH! How exciting (note by sarcasm!!!)
- 2019 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt, Red, Grand Vin – YES this is new for 2019 – OH! How exciting (note by sarcasm!!!)
- 2018/2020 Chateau Les Riganes, Blanc
- 2017/2019 Chateau Mayne Guyon
Now does mevushal impede the long-term viability of aging in regards to the wine? Well, that too is not something that we have scientific proof on. I have tasted a mevushal 1999 Herzog Special Edition and it was aging beautifully! Same with the Chateau Le Crock, over the past few years. So, would I buy the mevushal versions of the wines I tasted below! The answer is yes! Would I age them? Yes, I would hold them for slightly fewer years. To me personally, it is very clear, if Royal had their way they would make the Pontet Canet Mevushal! Nothing to Royal is sacred and this will not stop with the list above, it will grow, proof is Chevalier and Gazin!
Other than the mevushal aspect, there are no differences between the European version of the wines and the USA version of the wines. While that sounds obvious, I am just stating it here. The wines will be shipped now and the temperature issues that affected Israel’s wines of old, have not been a factor here.
The 2019 Pricing and access
When the 2019 wines were released “En primeur” the date was late May 2020. The world, at that time, knew nothing about COVID other than it was killing thousands and questions were all we had. Still, wineries in Bordeaux decided to plow on and the first of the virtual tastings took place on May 28th, 2020 – from Chateau Pontet Canet! This was the non-kosher tasting but at that moment when wines were shipped the world over, wineries decided to lower prices! Remember, we had been raising prices year over year, 2014 to 2015, to 2016, to 2018, it was time to reset. The pandemic allowed for that. Thankfully, and sadly, the world has slowly come back from the brink of death, and now, the 2020 vintage, which has the “En primeur“, in Bordeaux, June 2021, raised prices – so yeah, the 2020 Chateau Pontet Canet is more expensive than the 2019 vintage.
On top of that, the 2019 Chateau Pontet Canet is going to be impossible to buy. I have asked why certain wines in the past were not made more often or the such? Like why do we have Leoville every 2 or more years? Why can it not be more like Giscours? The answer I have received, from many at Royal is that folks still fear what happened during the last recession of 2007/2008. They had made too much of Leoville and Pontet Canet, in a short period, and well, sadly it sat. I get it, who wants to stare at walls of wine they cannot sell?
My issue with that is – well that was more than 15 years ago guys! Maybe a better way to say it is to channel Dorthy – Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Do we believe that another 100 cases would not sell?? The Malartic white is almost sold out! Malartic white! A wine no one thought they could sell 10 years ago. The world of the kosher wine consumer has moved in leaps and bounds – to continue to think like it is still 2008 is to belittle us and deny many what they want – more Pontet Canet! I will get off my soapbox, but it is truly time to stop with the kneejerk mindset. Like no 2019 Chateau Leoville Poyferre, why? Look at the famous 2014 Chateau Montviel story! It sold out in a week. Why? Because there was so little made. Again, the kosher consumer has moved past the days of old – I think it is time for Royal to do the same.
I understand that when Pontet Canet started up, again, with a new run of kosher wine, they created a separate sub-winery for the production. Further, they replicated the process, the varietal blend, and overall physical impact. The physical impact does define the total potential output, but it is time to start to grow the market. The market can and should support large output, especially in the trophy wine space, you can always control the output by skipping a vintage, in the end, Giscours and Leoville have proven it is doable, and I hope that Royal will continue to feel comfortable and grow Pontet and Leoville as we progress down the road.
Still, as always, we are indebted to the work of Menahem Israelievitch and Royal Wines for producing so many wonderful wines, even if they are in low supply. The 2019 Chateau Pontet Canet is a very different wine than the 2003 or the 2004 Chateau Pontet Canet. First of all, the system used to make those wines, back then, have changed drastically in the past 10 years, at the Chateau. Everything is now over the top, in regards to everything there. All production is done by hand and that adds to the cost. To me, the wine is also very different, stylistically, gone is the powerhouse, what we have now is a refined masterpiece. It may shock some people, and that is good, but to me, it is a classically styled and built wine for the future, and the best wines I have tasted this year, so far anyway.
Tasting in Paris
I landed in Paris, the day before this tasting and I met up with Avi Davidowitz from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog. It was a true joy to hang out with Mr. Davidowitz for a few days. It was so nice of him to fly from Israel to join me in the tastings. We also tasted over 70 wines – outside of the planned tastings. We thankfully had a great hotel room and it gave us loads of space to hang out and taste through those wines.
We had the chance to taste both the Mevushal and the non-Mevushal versions of two wines, side-by-side. Those were the 2019 Chevalier de Lascombes and the 2019 Chateau Le Crock. I missed the Chevalier de Lascombes but I got the Chateau La Crock. In my defense, both of the Chevalier de Lascombes are ripe, and differentiating the ripe from the riper was not obvious, but hey, I missed it!
My many thanks to Menahem Israelievitch for going out of his way to help me to taste all the current French wines from Royal Wines before they were publicly released. The labels on the pictures may not all have a kosher symbol, but that was because they rushed some of the bottles to Mr. Israelievitch before they were properly labeled with supervision symbols attached. My many thanks to Mr. Israelievitch, Royal Europe, and Royal Wines for making this tasting possible in the first place, and secondly, for taking the time to taste the wines with me.
The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2019 Domaine Ternynck Bourgogne, Les Truffieres, Burgundy (M) – Score: 87 (QPR: BAD)
The nose on this wine is ripe apple, pear, melon, a bit of citrus, and spice. The mouth on this wine is nice but lacks the acidity to make it come together well, with melon, pear, mineral, and spice. The finish is a bit short with hints of nectarine, orange, mango, and sweet mint. Drink now. (tasted November 2021) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 13%)
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