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The start of 2020 roses and whites and six QPR WINNERS
I am going to keep this post real short. I am catching up on some wines that I have tasted over the past month or more. Sadly, most of these are a mess or just good enough. Thankfully, there were six QPR (Quality to Price) Winners. That included the 2017 Carmel Riesling, Kayoumi Vineyards. I have said this a few times, Rieslings need time! 2017 is no different. It needed time to come around and now it is a solid QPR WINNER.
Roses are slowly trickling in and on kosher wine sites, you can see as many as 20 2020 roses. Sadly, it takes time for them to get to me, so I will start my usual procession of rose wines in a subsequent post, as they get to me here in California. So far, like 2019, they are a mess, and they feel like a total waste of my money.
In the end, the QPR WINNERS are no surprise! The 2020 Covenant Sauvignon Blanc is a solid wine and one that has lovely control and acidity. Having a wine like this with all that mother nature threw at California in 2020, I say Bravo to Covenant Winery! There are two Netofa Latour QPR WINNERS and OMG they are absolute ROCK stars. Please do me a favor and GET THEM! They will move fast! The 2016 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Riserva is another absolute Rock Star! Finally, the last QPR WINNER was the new vintage of the Flechas Gran Malbec a lovely wine that is not ready yet but will be nice when it is.
There were a few wines that were not winners:
- The much-ballyhooed 2018 Capcanes Peraj Ha’abib. I had it and it was a mess to mess. It was ripe from the start and while that ripeness did calm a bit it never really came around and for the most part, it was just OK.
- I was not a fan of any of the Carmel Mediterranean Vats wines. The 2019 Mediterranean 2 Vats white wine was ok, but it felt to me like it has RS (Residual Sugar) and that does not fly with me at all.
- The 2017 Marciano Terra Gratia was shockingly ripe and is probably the most elegant Date-juice driven wine I have ever tasted. I could be convinced, at gunpoint, to enjoy that wine, based solely on its elegance.
- The 2018 Dalton Petite Sirah was nice enough, but for the price, and the overall quality, it was a miss for me.
- Sadly, the 2018 Koenig wines continue to not impress, other than the lovely Riesling
- I tasted a large number of Victor Wines and none of them were any good.
While these other wines were not WINNERS they were quite enjoyable:
- I got to taste the new 2018 Dampt Freres Bourgogne. It is a much better version than the 2017 vintage. Sadly, the wine will probably sell for a price that does not let it be a QPR WINNER. I hope future wines will be priced lower. The sad truth is that there are few good QPR WINNER wines in the simple red wine category. It is a very hard nut to crack both in regards to making good wine and keeping it at the QPR price for that category, which is 20 or so dollars, at this moment.
- There were two nice 2019 Vitkin Wines the 2019 Vitkin Pinot Noir and the 2019 Vitkin Israeli Journey. These wines are solid, both a 90 score, but the prices are still too high for such wines. They are both simple reds and they price above the 20 dollar price range for simple red wines. They punch MUCH higher in regards to quality. The median score for simple reds is 87, at this moment. Again, getting a red wine to score WINNER in the simple red wine category is really tough!
- The Twin Sun white and Rose wines have been doing a great job, which is no surprise, as the Weiss Brothers know how to make great white and Rose wines. The 2018 Twin Suns Chardonnay-Viognier is a nice wine and at a very good price! Nice!
- The famous Matar Sparkling wine was nice enough, but it is not nearly as good as the Yarden Sparkling wines and it is more expensive. The bottle is nice!
- I had the chance to taste the 2017 Chateau Leoville Poyferre again, under less than perfect conditions, NO NOT the KFWV bottle, and I have revised notes, but the score stays the same.
The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2020 Rose Wines
2020 Flam Rose – Score: 89+ (QPR: EVEN)
The nose on this wine is nice, with floral notes, with strawberry, flint, and red fruit. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, with good acid, nice mouthfeel, with a good fruit-focus, nice strawberry, currants, and good grapefruit. (tasted January 2021)
2020 1848 2nd Generation Rose – Score: 84 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose on this wine is nice enough with notes of rosehip, floral notes, citrus, and mineral The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, with good acidity, and not much else, with more citrus, grapefruit, currants, and strawberry. The finish is long, acidic, and more currants and flowers. (tasted January 2021)
2020 Herzog Lineage Rose (M) – Score: 80 (QPR: NA)
Sadly, this is off-dry, it has sweet notes and not my thing. The nose on this wine has a Muscat feel, with floral notes, pineapple, cooked cabbage, and red fruit. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has no acid, is sweet, ripe, guava, melon, and no citrus, no acid, tropical, and not much else. (tasted January 2021)
2020 Shiloh Rose (M) – Score: 73 (QPR: NA)
The nose on this wine is tropical and ripe, with hints of mineral, and citrus. The mouth on this wine is where it all goes bad, sweet, unbalanced, bitter, a mess. (tasted January 2021)
Wines ordered in score order
2016 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, Riserva – Score: 93+ (QPR: WINNER)
This is one of the most balanced versions of the Riserva in a very long time. The Riserva is normally undrinkable for a few years, this one is far more accessible than any previous version – WOW! The nose on this wine is incredible, with mushroom, truffle, soy sauce, tar, with floral notes of violets, and earth, smoke, and rich dark fruit, WOW! The mouth on this full-bodied wine is incredible, tannic, gripping, earthy, smoky, and fruity, with lovely tart cherry, currant, plum, and ripe blackberry, with rich earth, loam, mushroom, intense saline, black olives, with intense acid, and mouth-drying and draping aggressive tannin, wow! The finish is long, black, green, and earthy, with umami, soy sauce again, with incredible floral notes, leather, tobacco, tar, and richness, wow! Bravo!! Drink from 2025 until 2033. (tasted January 2021)
2017 Chateau Leoville Poyferre, Saint-Julien – Score: 93+ (QPR: EVEN)
The nose is beautiful and well-controlled with crazy pencil shavings, rich black, and blue fruit, followed by tar, earth, smoke, and licorice. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is closed to start with layers upon layers of currants, dark cherry, blackberry, with mouth draping tannin, crazy mineral, pencil shavings galore, with plush elegance that is plush, mouth-coating, yet the ripeness in the background is ripe and scary, but hedonistic and voluptuous, with layers of tar, earth, licorice, bell pepper, and loads of tannin galore, showing elegance and plushness, with clear hedonistic leanings and graphite/acid core that makes it all work. The finish is long, black, green, and tannic, with plush fruit and smoke, with tobacco, chocolate-covered coffee bean, and earth galore. Bravo!! Drink from 2028 until 2037 (tasted February 2021)
My top 25 kosher wines of 2020 including Wine of the Year, Winery of the Year, and the best Wine 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 categories I added last year, “Winery of the Year”, “Best White 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.
This past year, I think I am pretty sure about my state on kosher wine overall. In the past, I had not yet tasted the pape Clement or other such wines. However, over the past year, those have been covered, and they were a serious letdown. As stated in the article, I truly believe the entire kosher production of the Megrez wines, following the EPIC 2014 vintage of the Pape Clement and others, to be below quality and seriously overpriced, and without value in every category, which is a true shame. The 2015 reds are all poor quality and the whites are not much better, in 2015 and 2016. The 2016 Pape Clement, while better, is a total ripoff for what it is. 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.
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 then adding. We are blessed with a bounty of good wines – just not like a few years ago when that bounty included many 95 and 95+ scoring wines.
The supreme bounty comes from the fact that Royal released the 2018 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 2017 and 2018 Dampt Freres Chablis, both Grand Cru and Premier Cru, and the new 2019 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.
Finally, some of these wines are hard to find and they may have different siblings – but they are worth the effort. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
The 2020 kosher wine of the year – is a return to its greatness – the 2018 Elvi Wines EL26
Elvi EL26 is back! Back to the glory days and I have stocked up and sadly, it will sell out quickly, if it is not already sold out! Get a move on, there was not a huge production of this beauty!
So, why did EL26 win? Simple, it is a great wine, and then throw in its WINNER price, and this wine punches at two levels, at the same time! You can read more about this fantastic wine here, in my post about it. Enjoy!
2018 Elvi Wines EL26, Elite, Priorat – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is a blend of 80% Garnacha (Grenache) and 20% Carignan. This wine is pure heaven, dirt, smoke, roasted animal, saline, mineral, juicy tart red, and blue fruit, with incredible precision and fruit focus – Bravo!
The nose on this wine is pure fun, showing tart red fruit, incredible fresh loam, and dirt, hints of mushroom, licorice, roasted animal, a whiff of oak, sage, rosemary, with dirt, and green notes. This wine is currently far more Bordeaux in style than that of a Spanish Priorat! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is not overly extracted, but it is well extracted, with good mouth and fruit texture, with incredible acid, good fruit focus, showing dark cherry, plum, ripe and tart raspberry, strawberry, oak, vanilla, and garrigue, with green notes, and lovely mouth-draping tannin. The finish is long, green, yet ripe, with great control and precision, with lovely graphite, more roasted meat, scraping minerality, saline, rich smoking tobacco, and smoke, lots of char and smoke. Bravo! With time the wine opens more and shows its riper side, still very controlled, but the fun red and blue fruit become a bit fuller and richer in the mouth – quite an impressive wine! Drink from 2026 until 2036. (tasted December 2020)
Two new vintages from Chateau Cantenac and Elvi Wines EL26 that are near the top of the High-End red wines for 2020
I just posted my mid-tier wines ranked by score and QPR scoring as well. We are working our way through the QPR 2.1 and 2.0 wine categories and so far, outside of simple white wines, there has not been a lot of love or WINNERS to talk about. However, things changed for the better in the mid-tier red wine range.
The Mid-tier QPR (Quality to Price Range) wine category was vastly improved over the previous simple red wine category, where we found few gems, sadly. The Mid-tier is where, as I stated in that post, you can indeed find many gems, but also, the main purpose is to find wines you can enjoy now and in 5 years and to save your cellar from your raiding tendencies!
Well, these two wines are not going to help you AT ALL for at least 10 to 15 years, but who cares! These are great wines to buy now and enjoy in a decade. The 2018 Chateau Cantenac Brown, Margaux, is a wine I would not want to try for at least 15 years and then, just to see how it is doing.
The 2018 Chateau Cantenac Brown, Margaux is not cheap, it is at the same price, essentially, as the renowned, and elevated Chateau Leoville Poyferre! The ElviWines El26 is a wine that is far more reasonable, but still not “cheap” – though that word is different for each of us, which is why I made sure that QPR was NOT price-driven, but rather quality driven.
Elvi wines have been around for a long time, thankfully, and it is a family affair with Moises Cohen, his lovely wife Anne, and David their son (now in marketing), and their daughter is studying to become a winemaker! Wine and vines are truly a family affair with the Cohens! You can read about the origins of Elvi Wines here in my original post about Elvi Wines.
The 2018 Chateau Cantenac Brown, Margaux is the second kosher release by Pierre Miodownick (who also is the head winemaker of Netofa Wines) from this esteemed winery in Margaux. Pierre is the one doing the wines and thankfully, Royal Wines is importing them to the USA.
As I have stated in a previous post, the 2018 vintage in Bordeaux is ripe and may well be an issue with some wines, but this Cantenac Brown is not ripe at all, it is sup[er well balanced and will last for a very long time. The same can be said for the 2018 Elvi EL26, this wine is perfectly balanced and will also last a long time. Enjoy!
So, without too much more delay – let’s get to it! The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2018 Elvi Wines EL26, Elite, Priorat – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is a blend of 80% Garnacha (Grenache) and 20% Carignan. This wine is pure heaven, dirt, smoke, roasted animal, saline, mineral, juicy tart red, and blue fruit, with incredible precision and fruit focus – Bravo!
The nose on this wine is pure fun, showing tart red fruit, incredible fresh loam, and dirt, hints of mushroom, licorice, roasted animal, a whiff of oak, sage, rosemary, with dirt, and green notes. This wine is currently far more Bordeaux in style than that of a Spanish Priorat! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is not overly extracted, but it is well extracted, with good mouth and fruit texture, with incredible acid, good fruit focus, showing dark cherry, plum, ripe and tart raspberry, strawberry, oak, vanilla, and garrigue, with green notes, and lovely mouth-draping tannin. The finish is long, green, yet ripe, with great control and precision, with lovely graphite, more roasted meat, scraping minerality, saline, rich smoking tobacco, and smoke, lots of char and smoke. Bravo! With time the wine opens more and shows its riper side, still very controlled, but the fun red and blue fruit become a bit fuller and richer in the mouth – quite an impressive wine! Drink from 2026 until 2036.
2018 Chateau Cantenac Brown, Margaux – Score: 94+ (QPR: EVEN)
This wine is a classically built elegant lady of the night, but not for the first 24 hours upon opening. To start it is an oak and dill bomb, but with time, the wine shows its true inner beauty. This wine is absurdly young and I have no HONEST idea if I will even be alive to fully enjoy this wine when it reaches its peak and beyond. This is one of those wines that people ask me all the time about – is there a wine for my new born’s wedding? YES! THIS WINE!
I am not an ABV snob, I had loads of 2018 13% wines, and they all stunk, this is about terroir and control, but sure, it is a baby, it is NOT a fruity wine, but it has the power and elegance to go toe for toe with the other big kosher Margaux wines and beyond. This wine smells and tastes just like A Benyo wine in so many ways!
The nose on this wine is ripe, yet perfectly controlled, with crazy sweet dill, oak, red and darker fruit, with garrigue, roasted green herbs, lovely floral notes of rosehip, smoke, and sage. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is really elegant on the mouth, with ripe cherry, plum, hints of cassis, rich graphite, smoke, tar, all wrapped in a mouth-draping tannin and fruit structure, with ripe and juicy strawberry, sweet cranberry, sweet green herbs, roasted mushrooms, hints of truffle, with menthol, foliage, and loam. The finish is long, ripe, red, green, and smoky, with tar, earth, mushroom, juicy red fruit, cigar smoke, tobacco, and leather lingering long. WOW! This wine is a baby it needs loads of time. With time the oak recedes, the smoke comes out, even more, the red and black fruit emerges, but my main “issue” with the wine was the elegance was too elegant and that has stayed, meaning that wine is less aggressive and more laid back, not something I was expecting from a Margaux in 2018. It is a lovely wine, just thought 2018 was the vintage for heat and more fruit and this wine is all about elegance and less about power. Awesome! Drink from 2030 until 2040.
2018 Elvi Wines Invita – OOPS! I mean 2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White – the first white wine QPR WINNER of 2020
So, I just posted my amendment to the QPR methodology, by adding a new value called WINNER. The first deserving recipient of the WINNER QPR score is the 2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White (A.K.A. Invita of old).
I love the new label, and no that does not go into either score. I guess the new name is good for marketing, but to me, it will always be the Invita!
The wine is lovely, a bit less acidic at the attack than when I had it Feb 2019 when we tasted a vertical of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Invita wines on the party bus, but still a very lovely wine indeed! Also, this wine does age well, but it is right on the line of ageable and non-ageable white wines, with a 2025 drinking window. Either way, it gets the score of WINNER by 10 dollars or by 25 or so dollars (I have not calculated the ageable wine median price yet).
Bravo to Elvi Wines for making lovely wines that are really great and that are reasonably priced! This is what we need much more of! Bravo, my friends! There are truly very few new wines that will get the QPR score of WINNER in the white wine category, this year. Last year we had many more white wines that both received a 91 score and were below the median price. Bravo!!
You guys are so well deserving of the WINNER QPR score! To be 100% fair, the FIRST WINNER of 2020 was the 2018 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico wine that I reviewed here, but I did not amend the WINNER value until after I posted it. Still, both are well deserving! Also, the Chianti is red wine and this Herenza white is the first white wine with the WINNER QPR score. I have warned you, buy it now, do not blame me when it sells out.
The wine note follows below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
2018 Elvi Wines Herenza White, Alella – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is well below the median price line, so this wine SHOULD get a score of GREAT for QPR. However, it is ALSO one of the few white wines that score at least a 91, and that has a price that is below the median price line, so this wine gets the coveted score of WINNER for QPR. Bravo!!!
The wine is a blend of something like 60% Pansa Blanca and 40% Sauvignon Blanc. The nose on this wine is closed, with time it opens to show beautiful tart fruit, really nice mineral, with mango galore, lovely impressive funk, white peach, with loads of hay and mineral, with citrus and mad orange blossom. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is oily and richer in mouthfeel, but sadly, not as acidic as I remember it from last year, still nice and balanced, with tart pink grapefruit, followed by orange fruit, yellow plum, and beautiful orange blossom. The finish is super long, tart, and juicy, super well balanced, showing more acidity on the finish than on the front of the wine, with fun mineral, more funk lingering long, along with flint, and pith. WOW! Drink from 2020 until 2025.