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A Domaine Roses Camille (AKA DRC) tasting in Paris with Christophe Bardeau – January 2025
This is the continuation of my tastings on my trip to Paris in January 2025 with Avi Davidowitz from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog. This post focuses on wines we enjoyed from Domaine Roses Camille. I have often posted about wines from DRC, including a recent post on a large vertical of Domaine Roses Camille wines. My post here tells the story of DRC, and this one speaks of a lovely gathering I was invited to with DRC wines.
The wines in this post were mainly repeats for me, as I had tasted them at Andrew Breskin’s home, the proprietor and founder of Liquid Kosher. The post with those wines can be found here.
Once we had tasted the wines at IDS, Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and I took a taxi to meet with Christophe Bardeau, the winemaker of Domaine Roses Camille, and Ben Sitruk, the DRC distributor in France, and the owner of the kosher wine website – WineSymphony.fr. A slight aside here, Wine Symphony is one of France’s best sites for kosher wine, but that is just my biased opinion. I really need to do a post, a relatively quick one, regarding the best places to get wines in Paris and Europe, look for that one soon.
We soon arrived at the meeting place, and Christophe, the mad scientist behind the hugely successful Domaine Roses Camille wines, was there. We spoke in English, and that was fine with Ben and Christophe, as they are pretty fluent.
At this point, Domaine Roses Camille is almost a 100% Kosher winery. That does not mean that the earlier vintages of many of the wines are kosher. What this means is that from 2018, all wines from Domaine Roses Camille have been kosher. The winery is still releasing older non-kosher wines, but that will soon come to an end. I think I will leave it at that. It is also releasing some of its lower wines in non-kosher, like the 2022 La Folie D’Elie and the 2023 et L’Attache. They seem to sell those in Rhone-style bottles, but in the end, one should always be sure to buy wine from a kosher wine merchant.
So, in the process of making the winery 100% kosher, one of the last plots to turn kosher was the Chateau Les Graves de Lavaud. It is in the Lalande de Pomerol, and if the 2020 vintage is any indication, that is one very nice vineyard!
We started with the 2016 Chateau Marquisat de Binet, and then we went on to the 2018 Echo de Roses Camille, one of the original QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) warriors!!
We then tasted the 2017 and 2018 vintages of Domaine Roses Camille Grand Vin de Bordeaux, Pomerol, and the 2018 Domaine de Roses Louise. I have tasted these wines a few times now, but this tasting gave me the best opportunity to taste them over a period of time longer than a few hours. The funny thing is those wines did not change at all. These wines are so far from being ready to drink that they remind me more and more of 2006 than any other vintage since that time. The only difference is that these wines are big, bold, and more like 2005, but also wines that I think will go longer. These wines, much like other wines I tasted on this trip, make me wonder if I will be alive to taste them at their prime. Either way, enjoy them!
The first time I tasted these wines, I was unsure if they had been “officially” released or let out of their dungeon. I posted them based on the theory that these were released wines. Later, I found out that the 2018 may not have been released—aka, it may have been from the barrel. So, we tasted them again at Andrew’s home, and they were not so different. The main difference was the 2017 Domaine Roses Camille; that wine terrifies me. It is the closest thing to a wine that DRC missed on. Still, it is a big, burly, ripe, and pushed wine that I think will be enjoyable much sooner than any of the other vintages. The other two wines are unchanged from the first tasting. These wines are massive and will be here long after we are gone! LOL!
Domaine Roses Camille wines are available from Ben Sitruk’s site winesymphony.fr and other online sites throughout Europe. In the USA, the wines are available from Andrew Breskin and his site – Liquid Kosher. For those in Miami and its surrounding area, Elchonon Hellinger, aka Elk, also has a stock of these and other Domaine Roses Camille wines, so reach out to him, as well. His contact info, like Andrew’s, is to the right on this blog.
My many thanks to both Christophe Bardeau and Ben Sitruk for hosting us so beautifully and sharing their beautiful wines with us. As always, thanks to Avi for the pictures. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here, and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2016 Chateau Marquisat de Binet, Montagne Saint-Emilion – Score: 92+ (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is lovely, blue and black, with intense dirt, mushrooms, a wet forest floor, gravel, and intense smoke. Lovely! The roasted herb, tarragon, rosemary, and funk are lovely.
The mouth of this full-bodied wine shows lovely dirt, black pepper, soy sauce, funk, and light notes of mushroom, not quite there yet, wrapped in mouth-draping tannin, smoke, blackberry, currant, smoke with rich minerality, rich dirt, and a dense, plush mouthfeel, lovely!
The finish is long, earthy, and smoky, with a plushness, showing saline, mineral, tobacco, roasted herb, and mushroom, bravo!! Lovely! Drink until 2031. (tasted January 2025) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14.5%)
2018 Echo de Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: 94+ (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is lovely, with a classic Echo nose of wax, lanolin, and yellow flowers, some espresso chocolate, sweet oak, garrigue, loam, minerality, and roasted herbs.
The mouth of this full-bodied wine has my attention, with intense acidity, gripping tannins, rich fruit, layers upon layers of concentrated and complex fruit, rich raspberry, plum, dark cherry, and strawberry, all wrapped in elegance, power, intense minerality, verve, and garrigue, wow! The minerality, tannin, acidity, and complex red fruit all work together to build a bombastic wine that is just impressive! It’s so remarkable to be doing with just red fruit.
The finish is long, tannic, bold, big, and rich, with more coffee chocolate, graphite, pencil shavings, iron shavings, lovely salinity, savory, with green olives, and rich smoke. Drink from 2030 until 2040. (tasted January 2025) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14.5%)
2017 Domaine Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: 93 (QPR: GOOD)
This is the 5th time I have tasted this wine, and it freaks me out.
The nose of this wine is ripe, showing far riper than when I had it in 2023, but the same as a few months ago, with rosehip, floral notes, lanolin, rich salinity, smoke, blue and red fruit, roasted animal, tar, and earth.
The mouth of this full-bodied wine is ripe but floral, with lovely red fruit, raspberry, currants, cherry, candied boysenberry, rich mouth-draping tannin, rich saline, elegant, smokey, dirty, earthy, and graphite. The finish is long, floral, and dirty, with smoke and rosehip, earth and scraping minerality, truly elegant, red fruit, menthol, smoke, roasted meat, and dirt linger long. Drink from 2027 until 2035. (tasted January 2025) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
2018 Domaine Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: 95 (QPR: GREAT)
WOW! This is incredible, rich, unctuous, ripe, earthy, smoky, mineral-laden, and just incredible, with intense graphite, loam, smoke, roasted animal, licorice, celery root, rich violet, rosehip, black, and brooding fruit, but so well balanced, elegant, and earthy! WOW!
The mouth of this dense, layered, rich, unctuous, and full-bodied wine is plush, rich, elegant, and spot-on. It has control, rich salinity, rich blackberry, cassis, black plum, and earth, which give way to mouth-draping and elegant tannin, oak, and scraping minerality.
The finish is long, ripe, earthy, loam, mushroom joy, with intense minerality, graphite, menthol, iron, and tobacco. Just wow!!! BRAVO!!! Drink from 2030 until 2042. (tasted January 2025) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
2018 Domaine Roses Louise, Pomerol – Score: 95+ (QPR: GREAT)
The nose of this wine is dense, ripe, and bold but perfectly balanced, with dark chocolate, toasted wood, smoke, roasted herbs, lanolin, red flowers, and garrigue, very intoxicating and elegant.
The mouth of this full-bodied wine is a more elegant take on the 2018 Domaine Roses Camille, with screaming acidity, rich fruit focus, intense mouth-draping, and extracted tannin, showing blackberry, raspberry, dark plum, dense, extracted, rich, layered, and impressively elegant, quite a feat.
The finish is long and dark, and the wooly/plush mouthfeel lingers forever, it is a feat of magic indeed, with dark chocolate, leather, green notes, roasted herbs, tar, lanolin, rich minerality, a tour de force!
The wines show power through the perfect balance of fruit, oak, minerality, and acidity, all working together to make a wine far greater than its parts. Drink from 2036 until 2045. (tasted January 2025) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14.5%)
A Domaine Roses Camille (AKA DRC) tasting in Paris with Christophe Bardeau – November 2021
I return to my tastings on my trip to Paris in November and this post focuses on wines we enjoyed from Domaine Roses Camille. I have posted often about wines from DRC, including my most recent post on DRC wines. My post here, tells of the story of DRC and this one tells of a lovely gathering I was invited to with DRC wines.
The day before the Royal wine tasting, in November, Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and I jumped in a cab and made our way to the center of Paris to meet with Christophe Bardeau, the winemaker of Domaine Roses Camille. To be 100% transparent, I had already tasted these wines, and as I will post in my notes, this will be the 3rd tasting of some of these, but I was waiting until I tasted them in Paris to post. I have been seeing a fair amount of travel issues with some wines from outside of the USA, recently, as such, I wanted to be sure of my notes before I posted them. In this case, there was no change in score or notes, which made me very happy indeed.
We arrived at a nondescript address in Paris on a cold but clear blue sky day and made our way through a few doors to meet with Christophe. We were meant to meet with Ben Sitruk as well, but he was not feeling well that day. Since Mr. Sitruk was unavailable, his location was also not an option, and as such, Christophe, who lives in Pomerol, was kind enough to find us a host, who turns out to be the owner of Chateau Marquisat de Binet. It was his home that we entered into on that lovely Parisian day. The home was just about being finished, in regards to some renovations, and the first thing I noticed was the paint smell. There was no way I could stay indoors and smell those wonderful DRC wines. Thankfully, both Christophe and Avi were down with an outdoor tasting, and the clear sky was truly inviting, with the sunlight starting to warm the cool November morning.
We started with the La Folie D’Elie, a wine I had earlier with Yossie and Andrew, in my driveway, in October, and I like this wine. No, this is not a wine for the ages, it has a short window, but it is fun, simple, and a wine I hope will be available at a reasonable price, soon enough, in the USA. The name La Folie D’Elie – is an ode to the child of the owners of Chateau Marquisat de Binet, who shall we say, is slightly rambunctious!
Then we enjoyed the 2015 Chateau Marquisat de Binet, Cuvee Abel, a wine I have now had 3 or so times, and it continues to impress each time. The 2014 vintage is in the drink-now stage – so please do not hold on to those any longer than you have to. Abel is another child of the owners of Chateau Marquisat de Binet, who I can surmise, is slightly less unruly! Though I must say I love the colors and the peacock on the La Folie D’Elie label, just a fun, and joyous expression.
The weather cooperated with us and as the morning sun grew closer we got to tasting the 2015 Echo. This is a wine I have tasted three times and one that still feels closed at the start. It is not as absurd a baby like the 2014 Domaine Roses Camille but it needs time to shine. The conversation with Christophe was mostly in English and it revolved around the winery, the kosher restaurant that Christophe wants to open during the summer months, and the vision of growing the winery, within reason, as they are still constrained by the number of vines that they have in their vineyards.
We then got to taste the 2015 vintage of Domaine Roses Camille Grand Vin de Bordeaux, Pomerol, which I tasted in May alongside its older brother, the 2014 vintage. The 2014 vintage is so closed, so young, it does not even have clothing on yet, a true baby that would be horrible to open at this time. The 2015 vintage is also very closed, a fact I stated in my notes when tasting it again in Paris. Still, it is a drop less closed than 2014 and a riper wine overall, which makes sense given the vintage. I like the 2014 vintage more than 2015, by a drop, but time will tell, if 2015 loses its baby fat and becomes more elegant, like the 2011 and 2012 vintages.
Domaine Roses Camille wines are available from Ben Sitruk’s site and other online sites throughout Europe, while the wines are available in the USA from Andrew Breskin and his site – Liquid Kosher.
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