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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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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 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%)
The Best and Top 25 Kosher Wines of 2023, 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 that I tasted it in a reliable environment, not just at a tasting, and that it scored a 93+ or higher.
We are returning with the “Wine of the Year”, “Best Wine of the Year” “Winery of the Year”, and “Best White Wine of the Year”, along with a last year’s new addition 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 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 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 we do it once again!
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 my spending my money on. Still, I did taste a large number of Israeli wines both in my home and at KFWE events. 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 who like the Israeli wine style – other writers/bloggers can point you in some direction. This past year, was a return to below-average because of the massive failure in Bordeaux and all over Europe in the 2021 vintage.
We were spoiled with the 2019 wines from Bordeaux and all over Europe, even the 2020 vintage had OK options. This year, there are FOUR wines from Royal Wine’s portfolio (really three) they are the 2017 and 2018 Elvi Herenza, Reserva, the 2021 Domaine Raymond Usseglio & Fils Chateauneuf du Pape, and the 2021 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley. Overall, 2021 from California is what I am buying from the 2021 vintage, worldwide, outside of a few wines, for vertical interests, and the CDP.
The vast majority of wines on this list are from M&M Importers and a couple from Andrew Breskin’s Liquid Kosher portfolio. This is a FIRST for me and these lists and I am truly happy to see Italy and other regions rising to the top of the lists. There are a couple of Four Gates wines as well.
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, none were close to this star-studded group. This year we had a crazy large number of WINNER wines, 152 in total, but the top-shelf wines were smaller with fewer.
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 awesome entries, from the incredible 2021 Gustave Lorentz Riesling, Grand Cru, 2020 Domaine de Chevalier, Blanc, 2020 Domaine de Montille Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru Les Chalumeaux, 2021 Chateau Olivier Blanc, Grand Cru Classe, and the 2021 Domaine Vacheron Sancerre, Grand Champs. This will be the largest number of white wines in the top wine list for any given year – I hope we have NOT hit peak White Wine! We need more options. Thankfully, there are also many good lower-priced white wine options as well in the kosher market a large shift is underway!
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 2023 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 4 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). Along with this year’s winner, Domaine Roses Camille. Officially, Domaine Roses Camille only became 100% kosher in 2020, but for all intent and purpose, they have 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.
This year the award goes to Covenant Winery. I have been pounding the table about the good wines coming out of there over the past two years. Yes, there are a couple of wines I do not love, but given the vast swath of wines they make, the vast majority scored a 91 or higher.
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A Domaine Roses Camille (AKA DRC) tasting in Paris with Christophe Bardeau – November 2023
I continue 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.
As Avi posted in his first post about this trip to Paris, we wanted to get him to see a bit of Paris on this trip, it was time! So, after the tasting at IDS, we were going to get him to the Musée de l’Orangerie, to see the gorgeous Monet tableau of the lilies, but Ben, God bless him, had other plans when he opened the world to taste! God bless you Ben we will get Avi to see them soon, B”H!
Once we had tasted the wines at IDS, Avi Davidowitz, from the Kosher Wine Unfiltered blog, and I walked not too far 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 the best sites for kosher wine in France, but hey that is just my biased opinion. I really need to do a post, a rather quick one, regarding the best places to get wines in Paris and Europe, look for that one soon.
Avi and I arrived to a quiet street in Paris, turned left, and then it was the game of – which door is the address? It took us longer than it should have, I think, these office buildings in Paris are not easy to find! We got to the office in time and there was Christophe, the mad scientist behind the hugely successful Domaine Roses Camille wines. We spoke in English and that was fine with Ben and Christophe, as they are pretty fluent.
There was a lot of food and wine at this event. The food came from Chef Nerwin Guzman’s restaurant Etnikahn. The wine was brought in by Christophe, it included some barrel samples, which I will not be talking about. Mostly because they are just babies, but as I told Christophe at the tasting, they were quite enjoyable. I will just say this, look forward to some really special things, the rest will be revealed, I am sure in due time, by either Christophe, Ben, or Andrew of Liquid Kosher.
I will say that at this point, Domaine Roses Camille is a 100% Kosher winery. That does not mean that the earlier vintages of many of the wines are kosher. What it means is that from 2020 all wines from Domaine Roses Camille are 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.
So, in the process of turning 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 of any indication – that is one very nice vineyard!
We started with the 2020 Chateau Les Graves de Lavaud and then we went on to the 2019 & 2020 Clos Lavaud, the original QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) warrior!!
We then got to taste the 2016 vintage of Domaine Roses Camille Grand Vin de Bordeaux, Pomerol, which I tasted in January alongside many of its older brothers. The 2014 vintage was finally starting to open and in the vertical we had, in San Diego, it was the one I liked the most, at that moment, anyway. These wines are still babies, but hopefully, one day I will finally get a chance to pop one in their window! The 2011 was so deeply mineral that it was shocking, but you can read more about the wines there.
There was another wine poured at the tasting along with some rather uninteresting food items shared with us. The wine will appear in the next post, while for the food item, I will say this, my deep lack of happiness eating it/them, will probably revoke my Tunisian membership. I apologize to my ancestors, but seriously, what were you guys thinking??? I have no idea! Enough said! Thanks so much, Ben for caring and wanting to make me more Tunisian, but once again, I embarrass my family, that is my black spot to bear!
Domaine Roses Camille wines are available from Ben Sitruk’s site and other online sites throughout Europe, while the wines are available, or will be very soon, in the USA from Andrew Breskin and his site – Liquid Kosher. For those in Miami and its surrounds, Elchonon Hellinger, aka Elk, also has a stock of these wines 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 and food with us. 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 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 November 2023) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
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 November 2023) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
2019 Clos Lavaud, Lalande de Pomerol – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is a beast showing pure minerality, dark fruit, smoke, and rich herbs. The nose of tar, mineral, graphite, rock, loam, and rich smoke, covers and wraps the rich fruit. Bravo!
The mouth of this full-bodied wine is intense, layered, rich, dense, and rich tannin, with incredible acidity, and crazy precision, showing blackberry, plum, dark cherry, rich smoke, and incredible extraction showing an expression that is just insane.
The finish is long, and extracted, with scraping graphite, rich loam, roasted herb, loam, clay, and rich green/black fruit. Wow, this cannot happen without a deep balance between the fruit, acidity, and minerality. Drink from 2025 until 2032. (tasted November 2023) (in Paris, France) (ABV = 14%)
A tasting of Taieb JP Marchand Burgundies, a massive Domaine Roses Camille vertical, two Taieb Bordeaux verticals, and more!
I am sorry for the long title, I really could not succinctly summarize the tasting I had last week with Neal and Andrew Breskin in not-so-sunny San Diego. Neal and I flew in from different parts of the country on a no so warm Monday morning, I picked up Neal at the airport, and we made our way to Andrew Breskin’s home, the proprietor and founder of Liquid Kosher.
I had been bugging Andrew that it was time to meet again for a tasting of the new 2021 Jean-Philippe Marchand Burgundies. I had tasted them with Avi Davidowitz in Paris, but as I said in that post, I was hoping to taste them again with the opportunity to see if they evolve with a bit of time, after opening. While I liked them in Paris, I was wondering if they would evolve with a bit more time. As stated in that post, we both flew home the next day and we did not have the chance to see them evolve over a day or so.
Thankfully, my calendar worked out, and we arrived on the day of Rosh Chodesh Shevat. The morning started with me picking up some breakfast at this lovely, but expensive bakery in La Jolla called Parisien Gourmandises. Before I continue with the story, please visit this place, when/if you are in the San Diego area. I do not like to say I am a picky eater, however, my opinions of food/food establishments, when traveling can be a bit coarse. I have recently been in Florida and Paris for different wine tastings and this bakery had better croissants and flaky dough pastries than either the bakeries in Paris or the wonderful bakery in Fort Lauderdale called Moran Patisserie Bakery. The people, food, and overall ambiance are really impressive, and aside from the actual location (a small room inside a potpourri store – you have to be there to understand), the food is worth the price of admission. Now on to the rest of the story!
I then picked up Neal at the airport, as stated above, and 20 minutes later we were ensconced under the shade of lemon trees and tasting wonderful wines.
The schedule was open-ended and after a lovely cup of coffee and Parisien Gourmandises pastries, we were ready to settle down for a day of wine tasting.
Pre-Dinner tasting
We started the tasting with two Champagne, one of them was simple enough and lacking in bubbles while the other one was nice and very accessible. The first one was N.V. Louis de Vignezac, Cuvee Special, Brut and the second was N.V. Champagne Charles de Ponthieu.
After those two aperitifs, it was time for some Burgundy! We started with the 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Meursault followed by the 2021 Jean-Philippe Marchand Meursault. Having the opportunity to taste the two of them side-by-side was quite a treat! I had not tasted the 2019 Meursault in 2 years. I had it with Andrew and Gabriel Geller later in 2021 as well, but I have less of a memory of that time.
We then started in on all of the 2021 Jean-Philippe Marchand red Burgundies and they were an exact match to the wines I had in Paris in late November 2022. They are all lovely wines with a floral approach. Even the 2017 and 2019 Gevrey Chambertin that we had later that night followed that approach. The Gevrey has more weight but overall their approach is more for the ethereal Pinot Noir than the full-bodied one.
Once we had tasted the Pinot Noir we had the opportunity to taste some soon-to-be-released Domaine Roses Camille wines, including 2016, 2017, and 2018 vintages. To be fair, I am never a fan, interested in tasting unreleased wines as they may change before being bottled. Thankfully, the 2016 and 2017 vintages are already bottled, while 2018 was a tank sample.
All the Domaine Roses Camille wines were exceptional but as I stated before I wanted the opportunity to taste them again the following day. So after our initial tasting of the wines, Andrew got some plastic Ziplock bags and bagged me some 30 ml of each wine and labeled each bag to boot! This assured me two things, I will have wine to taste the next day, as the wines were open for the dinner that was fast approaching, and I knew what each wine was, the following day!
The bags worked like a charm, Andrew placed them in a box and moved them to the garage where they stayed until the following morning – bravo my man!
Dinner – AKA SoCal RCC Jan 2023
After all the wines were tasted and bagged it was time to focus on dinner. Andrew had already started on the beautiful ribs and was getting the rib roast prepared. It was about that time that I looked at the rib fat/sauce and I started skimming off the obvious fat and then worked on cooking it down a bit and thickening it with some simple starch slurry.
After that, Andrew started cooking some nice Gnocchi and then pan-seared them. I helped a bit with this and the potatoes. I laugh because there is this Italian chef who lives in Australia (Vincenzo Prosperi of Vincenzos Plate) that loves to rant about other chefs who do things that are not exactly Italian! LOL, he tore apart some chefs for doing this very thing, but honestly, I found them very enjoyable!
Soon after Neal and I finished helping here and there the guests started to arrive. The first was Elan Adivi, who works with Jeff’s Sausage and he came armed with a basket full of sausage, charcuterie, and rectangle pie crusts. He made some pretty good pizzas and he topped them with the only green things that graced any of our plates, some arugula, though to be honest, no one went hungry that night!
The evening started with some lovely sushi and the Champagnes we tasted earlier along with some 2019 La Chablisienne, which was a nice enough Mevushal Chablis.
After the Sushi, it was red meat and wine all the way, which is the only way an RCC should be! The Ribs and the Rib Roast were just awesome, and my sauce reduction was not bad either! The Pizzas turned out quite nicely, as well. There was also some very interesting beef jerky, but I did not catch where they were sourced from, I think Andrew had them flown in from Holy Jerky in Five Towns, the stuff was solid!
First I tried the Burgundies again, as well I wanted to see if they had evolved over a few hours, but nothing had changed much. Next, I enjoyed tasting the three Gevrey Chambertin from Jean-Philippe Marchand. Much like the 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Meursault I had not tasted the 2017 or 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Gevrey Chambertin for many a year.
Of the three, at their current place, I would still go for the new 2021 Gevrey, which is quite surprising to me but also makes me happy to see that there were some good wines from the 2021 vintage.
I then tasted the two mini-verticals of Chateau Castelbruck, Margaux, and Chateau Haut-Breton Larigaudiere. We had 2018, 2019, and 2020 vintages of the Chateau Castelbruck, and Chateau Haut-Breton Larigaudiere. The two wine verticals had not evolved very far from what I had over the past three years. Some wines evolve over a short period, and while these did change slightly from previous tastings, the evolution was more about which fruit emerged ahead of another rather than moving into a drinking window or showing tertiary notes.
Domaine Roses Camille Vertical
Unlike the smaller Chateau Castelbruck, and Chateau Haut-Breton Larigaudiere verticals the Domaine Roses Camille was larger and therefore one that showed a more obvious effect in the years past.
Each of 2011, 2012, and 2014 vintages had clearly evolved with the 2011 vintage almost entering a drinking window. The younger wine (2015) followed the same script as the Taieb Bordeaux and did not change much, if anything, at this point. The even younger wines were all new to me so they may have evolved since being bottled but I would not know.
It was great getting to taste these wines all side by side and seeing the impact of a season on the same vineyard. AKA, Horizontal tasting 101!
After the DRC work, I tried the famous 1997 Chateau de Fesles Bonnezeaux, it had clearly passed its prime but it was nice enough indeed! If you have any still, drink NOW!! I also tried some Montelobos Mezcal Pechuga – it was smoked with kosher Turkey Breast!!! LOL!! Yeah, it was fun! There were some 1999 and 2001 Chateau Guiraud passed around but I missed them and that is fine, I know them well.
It was great hanging out with Shimon Weiss from Shirah Winery and Alex Rubin (a winemaker helping the guys), and I first met Alex on my way to Josh’s wedding in the plane jetway! Life is such a small world! If any of this sounds familiar, in some manner, you have a great memory! Indeed, in August of 2012 found me, along with the aforementioned Shimon Weiss, and Jonathan Hajdu with the same awesome hosts getting together for an awesome event! It was a lunch to truly remember!
Second Tasting
Noon, the next day, I crashed at Andrew’s place, once again, and I tasted through the Burgundies from the plastic bags some had indeed evolved and improved, but none took a step backward.
Once I was done tasting through the wines I bid my adieu and made my way to the airport! The sad fact is that if you have no status you get what you pay for! I was done a few hours before my flight home, but I flew down using Southwest and I have no status with them, so changing a ticket the day of, would have cost me an arm and leg, so I sat in the terminal and waited for my plane. Of course, the plane was eventually delayed, but my plane was so empty they had to distribute us across the plane – so yeah, I was fine! It is all about perspective – right?
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 more than 24 hours! Also, I used many of Andrew’s lovely pictures – thank you, sir!!! The notes speak for themselves.
The wine notes follow below, in the order, they were tasted – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
N.V. Louis de Vignezac Cuvee Special, Brut, Champagne – Score: 89 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose of this wine is very yeasty, with baked goods, lemon/lime, and green apple. The mouth o this medium-bodied wine is ok but uni-dimensional, with nice minerals, green/yellow apple, and lime, but not much more than the acid and the fruit to grab you. The mousse is ok, not bracing and not attacking, but the acidity is great. The finish is long, and tart, with pear, apple, and lime. Drink now. (tasted January 2023) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 12.5%)
N.V. Champagne Charles de Ponthieu, Champagne – Score: 91 (QPR: GREAT)
The nose of this wine is screaming with bright fruit, rich minerality, slate, rock, baked goods, pear, and apple. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is fresh, with great fruit focus, a lovely small bubble mousse, pear, apple, lime, baked apple pie, and lovely yeast, with floral notes. The finish is long, fruity, balanced, tart, lovely, refreshing, and focused. Nice! Drink now! (tasted January 2023) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 12.5%)
2019 La Chablisienne Chablis, Cuvee Casher, Chablis (M) – Score: 90 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose of this wine is nice enough with nice minerality, smoke, and saline, pear, and apple. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is ok, a bit cooked, funky, and fruity, with apple, pear, and lemon/lime. The finish is long, cooked, and flinty, nice! Drink UP! (tasted January 2023) (in San Diego, CA) (ABV = 12.5%)
My top 25 kosher wines of 2022, 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 scored a 93 or higher.
We are returning with the “wine of the year”, “best wine of the year” “Winery of the Year”, and “Best White wine of the year”, along with a last year’s new addition 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 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 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 we do it once again!
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 my spending my money on. Still, I did taste a large number of Israeli wines both in my home and at KFWE events. 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. This past year, was a return to an above-average year but not as good as last year’s list because last year’s 2019 wines were incredible and precise.
Last year’s list was star-studded and was driven by the incredible 2019 vintage. This year’s list is solid and will highlight a few top 2020 wines, but the clear winner will highlight a 2019 wine that missed making last year’s list because it was released later.
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. Last year’s list was stronger with some 123 WINNER wines, this year we had 95. Still, another overall solid year.
Royal Wines continues to impress with the wines they make or import. However, slowly, more lovely wines are being made from other sources though they are harder to find in the USA or outside of Europe.
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 entries, from the incredible 2020 Chateau Malartic Blanc to the lovely 2021 Covenant Solomon Blanc, to the beautiful 2021 Jean-Philippe Marchand Meursault.
Finally, this year is the year of the Clos! Between the awesome Wine of the Year – the 2018 Clos Mesorah and the Clos Lavaud from Domaine Roses Camille, the Winery of the year, long live the Clos!!!
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 2022 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 4 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). Along with this year’s winner, Domaine Roses Camille. Officially, Domaine Roses Camille only became 100% kosher in 2020, but for all intent and purpose, they have 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.
Domaine Roses Camille was one of those cult-like wineries at the start when they produced a stunning 2005 Pomerol. It hit that cult status when the late Daniel Rogov called it the best kosher wine he had ever had, at that point, anyway.
As always, my disclaimers. The U.S. importer of Domaine Roses Camille is Andrew Breskin, of Liquid Kosher, and a person I call a friend. This past week I spent two days with him tasting many a wine, that post will follow my year-in-review posts, along with the Four Gates Winery new releases post.
Domaine Roses Camille’s winemaker is Christophe Bardeau. I have had the honor of meeting him a few times and he always comes across as a kind and professional person. While the main two wines, Domaine Roses Camille and the Echo Roses Camille come from Pomerol, he also makes wines from other regions in Bordeaux, like the Clos Lavaud (Lalande de Pomerol), Chateau Moulin de la Clide (a wine that took on its cult-like status as it was sadly a one and done run), Chateau Marquisat de Binet, and others.
Now, to be clear, the Domaine Roses Camille, Echo Roses Camille, and Clos Lavaud – which are all in Pomerol are made in Domaine Roses Camille winery, the 2022 Winery of the year. The one-off Moulin de la Clide and the lovely Chateau Marquisat de Binet were/are made in those Chateaus. Christophe Bardeau made/makes all the other wines but I named them here for completeness.
Pomerol is a lovely location and the wines of Domaine Roses Camille continue to impress. The Clos Lavaud is a year-in-year-out QPR WINNER along with the Echo Roses Camille. They are both perennially great wines and wines we all are very lucky to have in the kosher wine market! The flagship wine, Domaine Roses Camille has never had a bad year, it is the model of consistency, and the only years it was not made kosher was during the lean years of the kosher wine market in France, 2007 – 2010 (inclusively). It does come in at a higher cost than other kosher Pomerol wines but the high-end quality of Domaine Roses Camille matches the prices and longevity potential of other high-end quality kosher wines that cost much more than the DRC does. Yeah, there, I slipped, we all call the Domaine Roses Camille, our kosher DRC, but yeah, we all know what the real DRC is and that is a different wine region and price, all together!
So, with mad props and great happiness, and hope for even more success, I say Bravo to Christophe Bardeau and Andrew Breskin for all the hard work and lovely wines. The quality of the wines that are here and will be coming, in the future (I tasted many of them over this past week), are impressive and I wish them only continued success!
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New wines from Chateau Serilhan, Bakus, Domaine Roses Camille, Cantina Giuliano, and TDS Toscana tasted at IDS’ offices – May 2022
As stated I was in Paris in May, and the first tasting I had on the trip was at the offices of Les Vin IDS. I know I said I was done with asides but this one is about wine. Remember that my QPR standard means Quality to Price Ratio! Well, the price fluctuates with currency. Most of us do not think about it but it does! We are all feeling it now with inflation but a very nice aside, at least if you are using US Dollars in Europe is that the US Dollar has almost reached parity with the Euro, and that made for a wonderful trip!
All my purchases were discounted by the Euro and that made the QPR scores a bit better but overall I stayed with either the Euro or the US dollar prices (AKA US prices). More on that below.
So, with that aside, let us get to the second part of the IDS tasting.
Tasting
The tasting was a two-part wine event. The first part featured IDS wines while the second part featured wines that Ben Sitruk of Wine Symphony brought to taste. This included wines from Ari Cohen’s new wine business Bakus, wines from Chateau Serilhan (M. Marcelis), wines from Domaine Roses Camille, some wines from Cantina Giuliano, and the Toscana from Terra di Seta. The first post focused on the Le Vins IDS and this post will cover the rest of those wines. I will start talking about the wines in the order they were tasted.
Bakus Wines
When I heard that Ari Cohen started to make some kosher wines I looked forward to the moment I got to taste them. They are from Spain and while I adore Elvi Wines, my last post was on their new wines, most of what we get from Spain has not been enjoyable. The wines tend to be overly oaked or overly ripe and not as balanced as I desire. They do work for folks who like that style but for me, they were too unbalanced to work.
They had potential, the wines were made from the Montsant region and one was from the Toro region. The varietals were varied blends, including Tempranillo, Carignan, Grenache, Macabeo, and Grenache Blanc. In the end, the wines were a bit too oak driven and too ripe for my taste.
I was having this conversation over Whatsapp with a few folks and it is truly bewildering how Spain continues to give us fewer kosher options that are enjoyable, while Italy is just blowing the doors off. An interesting thought to think about, thankfully, we still have Elvi Wines.
Cantina Giuliano
Whenever you sell Chianti you are going to be putting yourself under a microscope, as eventually, you will be compared to the original winery of the year, Terra di Seta. Cantina Giuliano has come a long way from the first time I tasted them many years ago. They are still not getting QPR WINNER scores, for their red wines, but they are getting closer.
The white and rose wines were OK, this year they were not as good as previous vintages, but still nice enough. The red wines were a OK as well, just not great, IMHO.
Chateau Serilhan
I loved the 2012 vintage of these wines and I was looking forward to tasting the 2014 and 2015 vintages. Thankfully, they are now released and they are equally enjoyable, though the 2015 Cru Ducasse does not live up to the lofty expectations I had for it after the incredible 2012 vintage blew me away. These wines are not officially here in the USA, but I hear they may make an entrance soon. The 2014 vintage was not available when I was there but I hope to taste it soon.
Domaine Roses Camille
I got the chance to taste the two new DRC wines both in San Jose and in Paris, a few weeks apart and they were absolutely the same, which is good! DRC continues to be one of the true stalwarts of Pomerol and shows the power of the right bank! The 2016 Echo de Roses Camille and the 2018 Clos Lavaud both showed very well and they both are QPR superstars!
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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%)
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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