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A tasting of Domaine Roses Camille’s latest releases and Taieb wines
After the tasting and the Herzog KFWE LA VIP Experience, I drove down to San Diego. When GG drives down it is easy to sit in the passenger seat, but doing the driving myself, with all that traffic, UGH! Still, once I was down in San Diego I made my way to Parisien Gourmandises, where I picked up a great lunch sandwich, some lovely Croissant, and a nice pear tarte. I enjoyed the Croissant with some Starbucks coffee (I hear you sneering Elk, be quiet, I have no time for your foo-foo coffee predilections). With all that said, if you are in the San Diego area, I would happily recommend Parisien Gourmandises. After my coffee fuel, I made my way to the home of Kosher Liquids, Andrew Breskin in sunny San Diego! Andrew and Shauna Breskin are the best hosts out there and I always feel at home in their surroundings. Mind you that is Dr. Shauna Breskin, or very soon, to be a Doctor, when at that point she will start taking over universities in desperate need of management and a conscience.
After a quick look around and a chance to enjoy my lunch sandwich, it was time to get to work, tasting through all the new wines.
Wines in the tasting
I continue to question the validity of the love and hype being heaped upon the 2022 Bordeaux vintage, at least among the kosher options, so far. Of what I have tasted it has not reached anywhere near 2019, 2016, or 2014, and even 2015. So, time will tell. At this tasting, we had a couple of 2022 Bordeaux from Taeib Wines, but the stars of the show and the stars of any wines I have tasted so far this year were the 2018 releases from Domaine Roses Camille. Still, there were some very nice 2022 options from Bordeaux.
My last post regarding the incredible Domaine Roses Camille highlighted some of the wines I tasted at this event, which, again, can be found here, those were the 2020 Chateau Les Graves de Lavaud, Lalande de Pomerol, and the 2020 Clos Lavaud, Lalande de Pomerol. These two wines continue to show the power of Pomerol, the right bank, and how we can get great wines for a reasonable price.
Next was the best QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) wine I have tasted so far this year, the 2018 Echo de Roses Camille, WOW, that is a wine that would have been the best wine of the year in 2022, when things were a bit slow. The 2019 Echo de Roses Camille was too closed for me to get a real sense of the wine and sadly, I could not return to taste it again, in the morning because of circumstances beyond my control. I hope to taste it again soon, so the score below is a temporary one and is not official. Andrew threw in a 2012 Echo, a wine I have not had in some time and that wine is in the window, for sure, but has loads of gas in the tank, no rush on that one!
The best wine of the evening was the 2018 Domaine Roses Louise, the grapes for which are sourced from a different vineyard than those for the Camille. This wine is not new, it has been produced and sold non-Kosher for many years. This is the first vintage of a kosher Domaine de Roses Louise. We also tasted the 2017 Domaine Roses Camille, and while that wine was nice, it showed far riper than when we had it in January 2023. Still, it is a nice wine, though, at this point, from this tasting, I wonder about its longevity.
Next came the Taieb wines, and a couple of them I had already tasted in Paris, you can see those notes here and they tasted the same, which makes sense as it has only been a few months since late May. Those would be the two new wines from Chateau Tour Perey, the 2022 Chateau Tour Perey, and the 2022 Chateau La Fleur Perey. By the way, they are two QPR WINNER, so yeah, enjoy!!
After those two, we enjoyed four wines from the 2022 vintage, three of them are well-known producers from the Taieb wine portfolio and one is a new winery. The new wine is the 2022 Chateau de Come, a very nice wine indeed, and another option from Saint-Estephe, a region that has not been hitting it on all cylinders, in regards to Kosher wine production, but this one will help! The other three are the 2022 Chateau Castelbruck, the 2022 Chateau Haut-Breton Larigaudiere, and the 2022 Château Roquettes. These wines showed control and pop and are a good sign for the rest of the 2022 kosher wines from Bordeaux that are yet to be released.
After tasting the wines, the kids arrived from school, and then Elk and Alex Rubin made their entrance. It was fun tasting with Alex at Herzog Winery and it was interesting tasting with him again that night. Everyone has the things they like in wine but Alex has a very different approach to wine tasting and I enjoy tasting with him.
The evening continued with the appearance of the queen of the house, Doctor-to-be Shauna, and then Andrew cooked dinner. It was a truly enjoyable evening. After that more folks swung by and we moved outside. It was a lovely evening and a lovely day for all.
My thanks to Andrew and Shauna Breskin for hosting the tasting and for putting up with me and everyone else who crashed their home for an entire day! The notes speak for themselves.
The wine notes follow below in the order that they were tasted. The explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2020 Clos Lavaud, Lalnde de Pomerol – Score: 92 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is crazy closed but lovely with rich cherry, raspberry, loam, dense violet, rich clay, rock, and gravel, lovely! The mouth of this full-bodied wine is dense, rich, layered, scraping, and refreshing but so astringent at this point that it is inhuman to taste, with rich loam, dirt, clay, minerality, intense acidity, black and red fruit, black plum, raspberry, cherry, and scraping graphite. The finish is long, dark, brooding, smoky, and earthy, with minerality, acidity, and fruit interplaying at all times. Fun! Drink from 2025 until 2030. (tasted September 2024) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 14%)
2020 Chateau Les Graves de Lavaud, Lalande de Pomerol – Score: 92 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is deeply floral, with rosehip, violet, dense minerality, dense clay, rich gravel, and tart red fruit, really lovely. The mouth of this medium-plus bodied wine is lovely, tart, precise, floral, deeply acidic, fresh, and refreshing, with vibrant sour red cherry, raspberry, and rhubarb, with intense minerality, rich dense tannin, intense clay, gravel, and rich rock, lovely! The finish is long, tart, refreshing, grippy, gripping tannin, slate, rock, and graphite, Fun! Drink from 2025 to 2029. (tasted September 2024) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 14%)
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! So impressive to be doing with just red fruit. The finish is long, tannin, bold, big, and rich, with more coffee chocolate, graphite, pencil shavings, iron shavings, lovely salinity, green olives, and rich smoke. Drink from 2030 until 2040. (tasted September 2024) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 14.5%)
Paris tasting of Moise Taieb wines – November 2021
As stated in my previous post, I was in Paris in November, with Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and while it took forever to post these notes, I am happy to finally be getting to them at this point. I must start by thanking Yoni Taieb and the rest of Taieb wines for sending the wines to us to taste. In the past, I have made my way to Taieb’s office, once by myself and once with Avi Davidowitz from Kosher Wine Unfiltered.
As stated, in my previous post, we kept to my hotel room for much of the trip. Even vaccinated, I was worried, and am still worried, as such we kept to ourselves, where possible. Still, we were ready to take the train down to the offices, but things could not line up and so Mr. Taieb was very kind, to once again, send the wines to our hotel. We then stayed in the hotel room and tasted through them.
As always, you can get these wines and much more from Taieb’s online website. They ship within Europe and to London. Sadly, they are all sold out of the incredible 2019 Burgundies that I enjoyed tasting at Andrew Breskin’s house. Andrew has some of them still for sale, like the lovely 2017 Domaine Chantal Lescure and the 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand wines – lovely!! Get them while they last!
Tasting in the hotel room
The most hilarious part of our trip was life in the hotel. Everything in Paris is masked and distanced. We had cases, upon cases of wines coming to us at the hotel, differently than last time, as this time, they all came to the hotel. Still, we thankfully had loads of room as we had the top floor suite and the space was ridiculous.
In the end, it was a wonderful outcome, short of not seeing the Taiebs, again. We had time to taste the wines at our pace, room for all the wines to sit and breathe. As stated, we missed hanging out with Mr. Taieb, and I hope he and his lovely family are doing well!
NOTE: A few of the wines seemed to be a bit off, the 2019 Pavillon du Vieux Chantre, 2019 Domaine de Grava, and 2019 Château De L’Anglais. I will not post my notes here as I need to taste them again when I go back to France or if I can get them here in the USA. There were a few Champagne as well, but none of them stood out enough for me to post them here. Finally, we have very few photos of these, apologies.
QPR WINNING Wine Distributor
Since the first time I was lucky to sit down and taste through the Taieb Wine portfolio, I kept commenting to Yoni, how there were so many good QPR wines, for those that live within Europe and London, and even a few for the USA as well! Now, how does this happen? Well, let us talk about Taieb’s wine portfolio. They have an exclusive relationship with Laurent Perrier for producing kosher Champagne, and that is great. While they do not make wines like Chateau Smith Haut Lafite, Chateau Malartic, or Chateau Leoville Poyferre, they do produce and distribute wines, within Europe that are of very high quality at reasonable prices, AKA, QPR WINNERS.
Let us continue with the fact that Taieb makes some of the very best Burgundy wines on the market and has been doing so for more than 10 years now! However, those wines, while wonderful, are not as much QPR as they quality/score stars! In Bordeaux, Taieb has gone a different route by consistently producing wines, within Bordeaux, that punch well above their weight and many that shock you for the price they are selling at. They may not top out at 95 in scores, like Domaine Chantal Lescure, Domaine D’Ardhuy (almost), or J.P. Marchand, but they do choose the wineries they work with inside of Bordeaux, incredibly well, to create QPR WINNERS at a very impressive rate!
In the end, that is what differentiates Taieb from the other Kosher wine producers. Sure, Royal Wines does a great job with QPR while also having the quality superstars that are hard to fit in the QPR bucket. In my last tasting with Bokobsa, they showed high quality and good prices, in France, for a fair number of wines. Still, when I think of QPR options, within Europe, I think of Taieb’s portfolio! I am consistently shocked at why the folks in London do not buy Taieb wines by the cases – given the wonderful prices, the easy shipping, and the favorable exchange rate. The real Achilles Heel of Taieb Wines, IMHO, is the lack of great distribution and equally solid pricing in the USA.
Until then, you can follow what I wrote up in this post, and try to piece together some of these wines in the USA, if you can! Thankfully, we have Andrew, at Liquid Kosher, helping to drive Burgundy excellence in the USA, and most recently bringing in some of the better Bordeaux wines, as well. Further, three of these wines, posted below, are QPR WINNER, even in the USA. We need more of this!!!
In Closing
Again, the theme of very solid Taieb wines being very hard to find in the USA is a consistent issue to me. Thankfully, some of these wines are being brought in by Andrew, at Liquid Kosher, so I hope to taste at least some of these again in the USA soon.
My many thanks to Yoni Taieb and all at Moise Taieb Wines & Spirits for taking the time to send me the wines to my hotel. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2020 Baron David, Bordeaux (M) – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER (France))
The nose on this wine shows very much like previous vintages, with good clean lines, green notes, red fruit, herb, forest floor, foliage, and loam. The mouth of this medium-plus wine is tannic, balanced, acidic, and green, with herbal notes, foliage, bell pepper, raspberry, dark cherry, roasted mint, basil, and tarragon, with a backbone that is based in fruit and acid and nice minerality. The finish is long, green, tannic, with scraping minerality, graphite, clay, and nice loam. Nice!! Drink until 2024. (tasted November 2021) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
Taieb Wine Tasting in France, after four trains, two planes, and two automobiles
The night of the KFWE London tasting, right after I left the tasting, I took the tube to the airport. I slept there overnight and at 7 AM I took a plane to Lyon France to start my journey to meet up with the Taieb wines and to taste through their current offerings.
If you remember the story, I had gone from California to Paris, on to London, for the Blue smoke dinner and then the KFWE London tasting. It was after the tasting that I took the train to the airport. I had heard many things about the Taieb wines and it was time to actually taste through the wines myself.
I had to take a plane to Lyon, two trains, and then a car ride to get there, but I think it was worth it, as I had the chance to taste through wines that are rarely seen or tasted here in the USA. It was the same for the way back, so yeah I could have starred in two movies!
Let me get one thing aside right now. Not all the wines are easy to find here in the USA, other than the Burgundy wines, because of the horrible wine distribution of Victor Wines and Touton wines, here in the USA. As you will see Taieb makes some very solid QPR (for France pricing) wines. You can find some of the wines here but most of them are just in France. With that said, Saratoga Wine Exchange, out of NY, seems to stock almost all of the wines, I have no idea why as they are not a kosher wine or near a large Jewish community.
Taieb Wines
Taieb started making kosher spirits 50 years ago and since then he has added kosher wine to the company. many of the Bordeaux wines that he now makes have been in production for decades. Taieb is famous for the Phenix Anisette, a liquor made from Anis.
Recently, I have been loving the wines coming from Taieb, because they are making some really great Burgundy wines, including maybe the best Burgs to be made kosher in quite some time, the epic Domaine Lescure and the 2012 Domaine d’Ardhuy Gevrey-Chambertin, which may well be the best Burgundy in some time, though I find the 2014 Domaine Lescure to be as good.
Taieb has been spoiling us with great Burgundy wines and the only reason why we know about them is because of Nathan Grandjean and Andrew Breskin. Sadly, distribution of these and many of the lovely Bordeaux wines from Taieb have no distribution here in the USA, without Breskin. Victor Wines officially imports Taieb Wines, but the wines rarely show on shelves, I really hope this will be fixed soon, as the Taieb wines I had in France were wonderful.
Sadly, Domaine d’Ardhuy stopped doing kosher wines with Taieb, after the 2015 vintage, and while Domaine Lescure was epic in 2014 and 2015, the 2016 vintage had some issues. The bottle I had at home showed aspects of Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S), while the bottle I had at the winery had no issues. Others have said they had off bottles as well, though when the wine is good it is great, so I am torn.
The line of kosher wines includes entry level wines for restaurants and weddings. It then has a myriad of wines at the next level, from lovely a Sancerre wine to Brouilly wines. The next level includes some very solid Bordeaux wines and Burgundy wines as well.
Overall, I was very impressed with the lineup of wines and I really dream of being able to have these wines more accessible here in the USA. For now, Liquid Kosher has the wonderful 2015 Domaine Lescure and the very nice 2015 Domaine d’Ardhuy Aloxe Corton.
Jean-Philippe Marchand
In 2017 there was a new wine line from Burgundy, the Jean-Pierre Marchand wines. With the loss of Domaine d’Ardhuy from the kosher ranks, following the 2015 vintage, the Taieb’s went out and made the Jean-Philippe Marchand wines. The baseline Bourgogne is really solid for the price, while the upper line wines are nice as well, but as with all things Burgundy they come at a price. Truly Burgundy’s Achilles heel, especially in kosher, is the price. Also, the upper-level wines from Volnay, Gevrey-Chambertin, and Nuits-Saint-Georges are not available here in the USA. Read the rest of this entry
A few new and old wines this past Shabbat. 2017 Petit Guiraud, Sauternes, 2010 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Reserva, and 2007 Tzora Vineyards Misty Hills were the winners
This past Shabbat we had some friends over and I opened many a wine, 13 to be exact. There were a few new wines, including the new 2017 Petit Giuraud, the 2nd of three wines that will be released from Chateau Giuraud. The first one was the G of Guiraud, which is a lovely dry wine. The second was the Petit Guigaurd, a Sauternes which has recently been released, and IMHO is better than the 2016 Chateau Piada. The third will be the 2016 Chateau Guiraud, which will be the first release since the 2001 vintage was released many years ago.
Besides, the Petit Guiraud, there was a 2nd tasting of the 2016 Matar Cabernet Sauvignon. We last tasted it in Israel, and it did not show well. Here it did not show well, but it showed better. It was less fruit-forward and absurdly ripe than at the tasting in Jerusalem.
The real winner of the evening, IMHO, was the 2010 Terra di Seta along with the 2007 Tzora Vineyards Misty Hills. It was a lovely wine and shows what Israel can produce when it wants to build wines for the future and not wines for the present alone.
My many thanks to all the folks who shared the dinner with me, and may we all be blessed to enjoy more meals together!
The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2014 Roc des Moulins – Score: 88
Classic nose of the cheap Bordeaux Superieur wines, mushroom, dark cherry, rose, earth, and simple notes. At open this wine is very simple, not much complexity, but has solid acid, and nice fruit. With time, it opens nicely, to show a more complex mouth, still clunky and simple, with more cherry fruit, dark currant, and herb galore, along with saline, and mounds of bitter herbs, with tobacco, and forest floor. Nice. Drink by 2021.
2014 Chateau Roquettes, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru – Score: NA
We opened this wine before Shabbat, and it tasted like the notes below. We then tasted it at the Shabbat table, and it was oxidized. The cork is fine. I am not sure if this is an issue of bottle variation or just a bad bottle.
The nose on this wine is super closed and tight to start, with mounds of tobacco, smoke, herb, red fruit, and nice mushroom, showing lovely dark and red ripe fruit. The mouth on this full bodied wine is lovely, with lovely and rich extraction, with still ripping tannin, that is rich and layered, with concentrated fruit, dark plum, forest berry, with dark raspberry, and rich earth, mushroom, and lovely terroir, and nice sweet oak. The finish is long and rich, and layered, with rich minerality, lovely saline, forest floor, foliage, with graphite, tobacco, and saline. Bravo!!
2010 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Reserva – Score: 92
Wow, the nose on this wine is coffee, toffee, and heavy smoke, with crazy oak, and red fruit galore, hidden in the background, is dark red fruit, and lovely brightness. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and layered, and really alive, with tart fruit, showing raspberry, cherry, and lovely herb, showing rich tobacco, herb, with mint, oregano, with lovely mouth draping tannin and rich mushroom, with wet forest floor, and great chocolate. The finish is long, and green, and herbaceous, with lovely dirt, and green notes. Drink by 2022. Read the rest of this entry
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