Blog Archives
A Royal Wine tasting in NYC featuring some serious QPR WINNERS!
Last week, I found myself in the JFK/Queens area for the first time in my life for longer than a few hours. I was there for the wonderful Bar Mitzvah of my Nephew, and it was a great time to meet up with my family and friends. Most of the time, JFK is a way in or a way OUT of NYC. This time, it was the gateway for my entire trip, and I would not be surprised if that continues in some proportion going forward.
Anyway, while I was there, I took it upon myself to buy my own wines because the timing was too tight and I could not get to NJ and get back. I was in NY for essentially three days, and I worked two of them. So, yeah, it was fun and hectic, and YES, the best part was Shabbat and the Bar Mitzvah, but I made sure to taste some wines.
Wine Tasting
Zev Steinberg was kind enough to pick up the phone and call me – we seem to have issues when typing over WhatsApp – a story for another time! After a short conversation, I worked the phones, WhatsApp, and many other communication tools, and thankfully, I was able to corral the wines I thought were possible. The shocker would be a bit later in the evening!
My job was to get all the new wines that Royal had brought in from France and from South Africa. So, I got:
- 2025 ESSA Altira
- 2024 Baron de Mamour Chenin Blanc
- 2024 Baron de Mamour Pouilly-Fume
- 2024 Baron de Mamour Pinot Noir
- 2022 Marchesi Fumeanelli Terso Vento Bianco
- 2021 Cascina Minot Langhe Nebbiolo
- 2023 Le Comte de Malartic Blanc
- 2023 Chateau Malartic Blanc
I tried to get the Gazin Blanc, but it slipped through my fingers. In the end, I was able to get what I could from Midwood Wine Merchants. I am not promoting things here for the sake of a dollar. It was very challenging to obtain the Baron de Mamour wines, which had just been released, along with the rest of the Malartic white wines (there are three), and the two Italian wines. My tight schedule and insane timing meant I had to PUSH people/stores to try to get the wines from Royal, and thankfully, the Midwood guys came through! Midwood also sent me a bottle of 2023 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Aera, North Coast.
Zev brought the 2023 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt Blanc, and ALL the Arnaud Burgundies, more on that in a bit, and a VERY special wine – the 2021 L’interdit de Valandraud! Just a crazy wine indeed! Very unique, and while many think it is a 100% Cabernet Franc wine, in reality, it is a blend. It shares the distinction of being my highest-scoring 2021 Bordeaux wine, along with the 2021 Chateau Marquis d’Alesme Becker and the 2021 Chateau La Gaffeliere.
Finally, MS brought a lovely bottle of the 2019 Domaine Roses Louise, Pomerol. Then Zev brought out a bottle of the 2020 Echo de Roses Camille, Pomerol! It was quite the evening!
Arnaud Baillot Burgundies
Arnaud Baillot has been making wines since 2017, when he bought his first vineyard. That soon expanded when he bought even more plots, and slowly he expanded to many more regions with Burgundy. He is one of those up-and-coming, rising stars within the region, and it is great that we are getting more Kosher Burgundy options.
In the first Kosher vintage from Arnaud Baillot, Royal made five red Burgundies: Bourgogne Hautes-Cotes-de-Beaune, Monthelie, Savigny-les-Beaune, Beaune Premier Cru, and Volnay. What was very interesting was the opportunity to taste a red Monthelie; we have already tasted a kosher White Monthelie. The Savigny-les-Beaune is also new in Kosher. The other sub-regions have existing and successful iterations of those grapes.
I really need to shout out Zev and Royal for making these wines available to us! Thanks!
Tasting
I have kept names out of this post, other than Zev, because he works in the business, and that is fair game. The others are regular folks like me. That being said, the host for the event was terrific – and I thank him for the wonderful home, atmosphere, and good nature. Anyone who hosts me for a tasting understands that things need to be orderly and professional, to whatever extent it can be. This host went beyond, and I really appreciate that! That being said, good lord was it a long tasting, but it was a TON OF FUN!
Well, with that, I will let the wine notes talk for themselves. We did retaste the wines twice, but it is not the same as tasting the wine over a day. For example, the Chateau Malartic Blanc really came into its own after a few hours. In some ways, other wines moved in the wrong direction after a few hours as well. All of this is compiled, and the final scores reflect the final state of the wines we tasted.
The wine notes are listed below in the order in which they were tasted. The explanation of my “scores” can be found here , and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2025 ESSA Altira, Elgin – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is lovely, bright, effusive, with white peach, grapefruit, saline, smoke, and lovely brightness. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is lovely; the acidity is off the charts, the complexity is not as pronounced as in previous vintages, and the notes of peach, grapefruit, and melon are on point, with lovely tension and a deeply refreshing finish. The finish is long, tart, refreshing, and fruity, with lovely saline and a lovely bite. Drink by 2027. (tasted August 2025) (in New York, NY) (ABV = 13.5%)
2024 Baron de Mamour Chenin Blanc, IGP Val de Loire (M) – Score: 91+ (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is classic with Chenin notes of smoke, grass, straw, hay, and yellow peach, very nice, but a bit simple. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine has excellent acidity, great attack, good fruit, nice hay, smoke, and lovely gooseberry, grapefruit, honeysuckle, and honeyed peach – lovely! The finish is long, dry, with ripe fruit, smoke, and hay, lovely! Drink by 2027. (tasted August 2025) (in New York, NY) (ABV = 11.5%)
2024 Baron de Mamour Pouilly-Fume, Pouilly-Fume (M) – Score: 92+ (QPR: WINNER)
The nose of this wine is lovely, classic Pouilly Fume, crazy good, with rich smoke, flint, intense minerality, ripe fruit, intense citrus notes, good nectarines, honeysuckle, orange, and funk. The mouth of this medium-bodied wine is smoky, tart, and acidic, with incredible honeysuckle, grapefruit, orange, nectarines, great smoke, funk, and crazy acidity. Bravo! The finish is long, tart, smoky, with intense minerality, flint, and rock. Bravo! Drink by 2028. (tasted August 2025) (in New York, NY) (ABV = 13%)
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!
Read the rest of this entry
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%)
Wine Musings Blog 