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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%)
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%)
Another round of QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) Hits and Misses, Nineteen QPR WINNERS – May 2023
First off, this is not the largest roundup I have written – there is a larger one from October 2021. Sadly, that one only had 6 QPR WINNER. This post has 19! Also, we have a shockingly high number/percentage of EVEN QPR score wines, 26 to be exact. Either the price or the quality pushed them to this level. So, without further ado, the 62 wines I tasted over the past few months.
QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) Wines
It has been four months since my last QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) post and many people have been emailing me about some unique wines I have tasted and some lovely wines that are worth writing about.
Thankfully, no matter how much garbage and pain I subject myself to, we are still blessed with quite a few wonderful QPR wines out there. This post differs though, this is the first time I have seen so few N.A. or POOR/BAD QPR scores! This is not because things are getting better as much as I am selectively picking wines to taste recently. Still, many of these notes are from KFWE in Los Angeles, so it does represent a proper distribution, IMHO. We have 19 WINNER scores and a few GOOD/GREAT scores. A shockingly large number of EVEN scores, which could have snuck into POOR/BAD, and only 8 POOR/BAD.
Thoughts on the wines
Harkham is back!!!
My interest and love for all things Harkham is well known. I loved discovering the Aziza in Australia, some 13 years ago! I missed Richie that day, but I made up for that many times afterward. I thought the two Shiraz, imported by Kosherwine.com, were solid entries into the Kosher US market. The 2021 vintage was tough in Australia and these wines show Richie’s drive and passion! Looking forward to even more stuff!!
Missed Bordeaux Wines
Between my Royal Wine tasting and the rest of the wines that Avi and I tasted, we covered most of the 2020 vintage in Paris, in Nov 2022. However, we missed the 2020 Chateau Fayat and the 2020 Chateau Meyney. That has now been rectified. The Fayat is an AWESOME WINNER, while the Meyney may come around, otherwise, it is still a solid wine.
Invei Wines
Michael Kaye continues to strive to make wines that are unique while also interesting. Some are hits and some are close but either way, he continues to impress. Hopefully, as he scales up production, the cool and refreshing wines will continue to roll! His website is up and running – Invei WInes.
ESSA Wines
My dear friend Josh Rynderman continues to pump out great wines. The rose and Emunah are prime examples. I liked the rose, it is refreshing and puts a smile on my face. The Emunah is nice, not as balanced as in the past, but a solid next play. I hear more fun stuff is coming soon. Looking forward!
Hajdu Wines
A couple of weeks ago, I was at Covenant Winery to taste the Hajdu wines with my friend Elk. Elk eventually showed up, but either way, it was great hanging out with Jonathan Hajdu and seeing Elk, eventually! The wines that I tasted were all balanced, refreshing, and enjoyable. The rose and Pinot Blanc were lovely wines. The reds were balanced as well.
Herzog Wines
I tasted these wines at the KFWE in Los Angeles and also some were sent to my home to taste. Overall, I was shocked by how good the 2021 Baron Herzog Pinot Grigio and Gewurztraminer were. Balanced, tart, and refreshing, and for the price! WOW! The 2020 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley is a hit as always, on even vintages. 2019 was not bad, but not this good!
Roundup
Overall another nice list of QPR WINNERS. I can always look at these kinds of lists and say there are only 19 wines I would want to buy from this entire list, but that would be a defeatist attitude. The correct way to classify this list is we have 19 more wines available to us and in the end, as I have stated many times now, I cannot buy all the WINNER wines even if I wanted to. There are just too many good wines out there and that is what we should be focused on!
The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here and the explanation for QPR scores can be found here:
We have a nice list of QPR WINNERS:
- 2020 Chateau Fayat, Pomerol – Stunning wine! Enough said
- 2020 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley, Special Reserve – Great wine!
- 2021 Hajdu Proprietary Red, Napa Valley, CA – Big and bold wine, but balanced
- 2020 Chateau Meyney, Saint-Estephe – This wine scares me but it may eventually come around
- 2020 Terra Di Seta Guiduccio, Toscana – Same with this one, it scares me but should come around
- 2020 Elvi Wines El26, Priorat – Big, bold, but far more balanced than others here
- 2021 Hajdu Menagarie, California – Nice wine
- 2021 Harkham Hark Angel Shiraz – Harkham is back in the States! Lovely wine!
- 2021 Hajdu Barbera, Sierra Foothills – Nice, tart, and balanced wine
- 2020 Hagafen Rose, Brut, Napa Valley, CA – Nice bubbles!
- 2022 Invei Gewurztraminer, Dry, Clarksburg, CA – Huge ABV but you do not feel it – loved it!
- 2020 Chateau D’Arveyers, Bordeaux Superieur – Great Mevushal Winner!
- 2022 ESSA Liv & Luv Rose, Durbanville – Not bracing with acidity, but balanced and refreshing.
- 2021 Dalton Sauvignon Blanc, Reserve, Galilee – A nice Sauv Blanc – enjoy!
- 2021 Baron Herzog Gewurztraminer, California (M) – Impressed by this wine, refreshing
- 2022 Hajdu Pinot Blanc, Anderson Valley, CA – Floral and joyous
- 2022 Hajdu Rose, California – Nice, and refreshing
- 2021 Baron Herzog Pinot Grigio, California (M) – Another impressive Herzog Baron that is tart and refreshing
- 2022 Goose Bay Pinot Grigio, South Island (M) – One of their best Pinot Grigio, tart and refreshing
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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Finishing my tasting of Royal Wine’s 2018 French wines in California
I know some of you are hoping for posts from my trip to France. However, I need to clean-up some missing posts, I have a lot of wine that needed to be posted and now I will do those quickly. After that I will start posting the wines I tasted in France.
So, back in November 2020, I did a tasting at my home to taste the 2018 wines from Royal, at least the ones that were here in the USA at that time. I will skip much of the text that I wrote then, but I will repost all the 2018 notes, to make it complete. Remember, all my notes have tasting dates on them.
In a previous post about the most recent French wines (at that time in 2017) that were arriving on the market – I already spoke about pricing and supply, so there is no need to talk that over again in this post.
While the 2015 and 2016 vintages were ripe, and the 2017 vintage was not ripe at all, the 2018 vintage makes the 2015 ripeness look tame! Now that is a very broad-stroke statement that cannot be used uniformly, but for the most part, go with it!
I see no reason to repeat what Decanter did – so please read this and I will repeat a few highlights below.
For a start, the drought came later in 2018,’ says Marchal, pointing out that early July saw less rain in 2016. ‘But when it came in 2018, it was more abrupt, with the green growth stopping across the whole region at pretty much the same time’. He sees it closer to 2009, but with more density to the fruit. … and high alcohols!
Alcohols will be highest on cooler soils that needed a long time to ripen, so the Côtes, the Satellites, and the cooler parts of St-Emilion have alcohols at 14.5-15%abv and more. I heard of one Cabernet Franc coming in at 16.5%abv, but that is an exception. In earlier-ripening areas, such as Pessac-Léognan and Pomerol, alcohols are likely to be more balanced at 13.5% or 14%abv, as they will have reached full phenolic ripeness earlier.
‘Pessac-Léognan did the best perhaps because it’s an early ripening site,’ said Marie-Laurence Porte of Enosens, ‘so they were able to get grapes in before over-concentration. If you had to wait for phenolic ripeness, that is where things could get difficult’.
The final averages per grape, according to Fabien Faget of Enosens, are Sauvignon Blanc 13.5%abv, Sémillon 12.5%abv, Merlot 14.5%abv, and Cabernet Sauvignon 14%abv’.
Final comments, disclaimer, and warnings
These wines are widely available in the USA, so support your local wine stores folks – they need your help! If you live in a wine-drinking desert, like California, support the online/shipping folks on the side of this blog. They are folks I buy from (as always – I NEVER get a bonus/kickback for your purchases)!
Again, I am just posting the 2018 reds and a couple of other wines that have changed in a good and bad way. My many thanks to Royal Wine for their help in procuring some of these wines. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2018 Les Marronniers Chablis (M) – Score: 88 (QPR: EVEN)
Sadly, as I continue to watch this wine evolve I feel it is not a wine that I will stock up on. This and the 1er Cru, sadly. The reason is that the wine keeps losing acidity as it ages. We opened the wine on Friday afternoon, and even then it had turned, and by Shabbat morning the acidity was far removed from where it was on Friday and that feels further removed from my notes and memories.
This wine is made with native yeasts and as little manipulation as possible. The nose on this wine is beautiful with orange blossom, yellow apple, and rosehip, with lemon curd, and yeasty and creamy notes. The mouth was lovely in the past, at this point, it has moved even further. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is not as acidic as in the past and it is time to drink, sweet Meyer lemon, quince, pie crust, with Anjou pear, and nice peach. The finish is a bit short, with baked pear and apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, some mineral, and now the fruit is showing sweeter. Drink now. (tasted March 2021)
2018 Les Marronniers Chablis, Premier Cru, Cote de Jouan – Score: 88 (QPR: POOR)
Sadly, as I continue to watch this wine evolve I feel it is not a wine that I will stock up on. This and the 1er Cru, sadly. The reason is that the wine keeps losing acidity as it ages. We opened the wine on Friday afternoon, and even then it had turned, and by Shabbat morning the acidity was far removed from where it was on Friday and that feels further removed from my notes and memories.
The nose on this wine still shows floral notes, starting with rosehip and yellow flowers, followed by some minerals, slate, blossom water, apple, and smoke. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is where things have gone wrong, with a bit of weight at this time, yellow apple, some citrus, Asian Pear, nice peach/apricot, Orange pith, hints of nectarines and orange. Sadly, as I state above the acidity slows early and leaves in a few hours, so while I loved the wine at release, it is not for long holding. Drink now. (tasted March 2021)
Red Wines ordered by Vintage and QPR
2018 Chateau Le Crock, Saint-Estephe (M) – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
The nose on this wine, is deep dark beautiful notes of black and red fruit, with rich salinity, mineral galore, with lovely tar, smoke, and what I crave from French wine – DIRT, DIRT, and more dirt! The nose is lovely, with green notes lurking in the background, and lovely licorice.
So, while I have been unhappy with the 2018 vintage so far, this wine returns my hope for the vintage, this wine is better than 2016, and that IS SAYING a lot!
This wine is a blend of 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, and 6% Cabernet Franc. The 2018 vintage has more Cab in it and it smells blacker than 2016 in many more ways than just that. Lovely wine! The blueberry of the past is gone and all you get is this intense earth, dirt, smoke, along with some shockingly beautiful violet, black and red fruit bonanza, with ripples of minerality through it – bravo and this is the Mevushal version!
The mouth on this full-bodied beast is impressive, with rich extraction, like in 2016, deeply concentrated, yet with lovely finesse and elegance, showing a richness that belies its youth, with blackberry, dark, yet controlled, plum, dark raspberry, earth, cherry, smoke, and a mouth draping elegance in the tannin structure that is impressive for its youth, with a lovely plushness, with deep furrows of graphite, saline, and rock. The finish is long, not so green, there is a few green notes, more in the way of tobacco than in the way of foliage, but here the finish is about the dirt, loam, forest floor, smoke, and dark chocolate, with hints of oak, with crazy acidity, leather, all wrapped in roasted herbs that linger long and forever. Bravo!!! This is the best Chateau Le Crock, I have ever tasted, at least in regards to the Mevushal version! Drink from 2025 until 2037. Incredible! (tasted Nov 2020)
2018 Chateau Royaumont, Grand Vin Bordeaux – Score: 93 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is a blend of 70% Merlot & 30% Cabernet Franc. The nose on this wine is balanced, though a bit ripe, with bright fruit, ripe plum, dark cherry, anise, menthol, tobacco, with green notes from the Cabernet Franc, foliage, smoke, and slightly burnt oak. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is well-balanced, with loads of fruit to start, layered, concentrated, plush, with screaming acid, black raspberry, plum, smoke, oak, rich fruit, nice saline, good dirt, earth, black pepper, with ripe fruit, and loads of mouth draping tannin. The finish is long, ripe, with loads of sweet chewing tobacco, dark chocolate almost milky, with more earth, graphite, and smoke galore. Nice! Drink from 2028 until 2034. (tasted May 2021)
2018 Chateau Fourcas Dupre, Listrac-Medoc – Score: 92+ (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is a blend of 44% each Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, with 10% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. The nose on this wine is ripe, scary ripe, but under a blanket of dirt, earth, smoke, more ripe fruit, mushroom, forest floor, and earth, wow! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is lovely, rich, layered, elegant, but ripe, but the ripeness is balanced well by the acidity, with incredible dirt, along with floral notes, blackberry, currant, plum, and rich salinity, with dark chocolate, smoke, and rich loam, acid galore, and smoke. The finish is long, green, black, and mineral-driven, with loads of scrapping graphite, dirt, and foliage, wow! Bravo!! Drink from 2026 until 2033. (tasted January 2021)
2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Burgundies and new Domaine Roses Camille vintages
UPDATED: I added the 2016 Clos Lavaud wine note below. Great WINNER!
Last week I had the chance to taste through the new kosher 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand red and white Burgundies. Yes, you heard me correctly, white and red! There is a new white Burgundy from Meursault, we have not had one since 2004 and sadly, that wine is long dead. However, we did have a lovely Meursault, in 2014, with Pierre Miodownick, and that wine was really fun! There were Pinot Noir Burgundies from 2019, along with a few Bourdeaux wines as well, from both Taieb and Domaine Roses Camille.
I will keep this to a minimum, a simple post about the wines I tasted. If you want more on Taieb Wines – read the family history here. However, before I fast-forward to the notes please understand the enormity of what is going on here – kosher white wine has finally arrived, with this new 2019 Meursault, the 2018 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt Blanc, the 2019 Chateau Gazin Rocquencourt, Blanc (not yet released), and the 2019 Chateau Malartic, Blanc! We have finally hit the escape velocity from the kosher wine world’s sole fascination with Cabernet Sauvignon!
The 2019 Pinot Noirs were from Jean-Philippe Marchand. I loved the 2017 Jean-Philippe Pinot Noirs, wines I bought and purchased already. IMHO, the 2019 vintage is far more reminiscent of what is expected from a Burgundy. The 2019 wines are lither than the 2017s were. They show more floral characteristics than their 2017 brethren. Overall, I was highly impressed. Beware, sadly there is no Lescure for 2018, 2019, or 2020 – SO SAD!
The Bordeaux wines came from both Taieb and Domaine Roses Camille, and I think they all showed very well with a WINNER and some very solid options as well! Much to all of this should be soon available with Andrew Breskin and Liquid Kosher, so keep a lookout for these wines from him. They will, of course, also be available in France from Taieb’s website, and Domaine Roses Camille’s European distribution, which I do not know much about. Though, I am sure the usual websites and stores in Paris and Belgium will have the wines.NOTE: I need to taste the 2016 Clos Lavaud, Lalande de Pomerol again before I can post my final score on it. I added the Clos Lavaud below. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
The 2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Burgundies
2019 Jean-Philippe Marchand Meursault– Score: 93 (QPR: EVEN)
The nose on this wine is lovely, it is a closed to start, with lovely sweet oak, yellow apple, with lovely candied pear, cardamom, with hints of lemon, spice, and herbs, wow! The waxy and oily approach to this wine is unique. With time the wine opens and WOW, the nose explodes with sweet toasted oak, toasted almonds, hazelnuts, and more floral notes, honeysuckle, honey, lemon/lime, melon, and lovely herbaceous notes. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is lovely, layered, rich, with sweet oak, Meyer lemon, apple tart, sweet fig, creme brulee, honey, crazy acidity, lovely mouth-coating tannin, smoke, crazy minerality, and lovely flint, rock, and smoked duck, with brioche, lemon/lime, and sweet yellow plum. The finish is long, sweet, tart, ripe, and well-balanced, with flint and toast. PLEASE, many of you will be motivated to drink this up as it is an awesome wine, but control yourselves please, this wine needs time! Drink from 2023 until 2028, maybe longer. (tasted Jan 2021)
Kosher Mid-Range aging red wines may well be the sweet spot for the kosher wine market – lots of WINNERS.
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 start to change with the 2nd red wine category.
These wines are drinkable now but will improve a bit with time. They are not the undrinkable wine category, which will be next, but rather these wines are good now and may garner some of those tertiary notes we all love so much, with a bit of time in the bottle. These kinds of wines are normally more expensive, but this is where the QPR (Quality to Price ratio) sweet spot exists, IMHO.
As explained in my last post, the wine categorization is impacted by what I think the wine will last. Meaning that a poor wine will not be more enjoyable in 5 years if it is a painful date juice now. Nor will the wine be more ageable depending on the price of the wine. The length of time wine can live in the bottle is not scientific in any manner, it is subjective, much like the wine’s score, still, it is based upon this that the wines are judged for their QPR.
Mid-range aging Reds (4 to 11 years) – cellar saviors
As I have stated enough times now, the fact that a wine can “live” for 10 or so years, tells you that the wine is good to start with, or at least professionally made. Still, the next level up, High-end Red wines (11 and more years), come at a much higher price range. Yes, there are sweet spot wines there as well, but there are more here in the mid-range options. Also, these are the wines that will save your cellar. Look, I like wines like the 2019 Chateau Les Riganes, or the 2017 Chateau Mayne Guyon just fine! But when you want something with a bit more polish or elegance and you do not want to raid your high-end wines early, THIS IS the category to go to!
If you want that next level is quality but not the next level in price, per se, this is the category to hit. Here you will find wines like the 2017 Chateau Greysac, Medoc, the 2015 Louis Blanc Crozes-Hermitage, and the 2018 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico, which all scored 92 or higher and are all priced at 30 dollars or lower. While I would say these wines will improve with more time, they can at least be enjoyed now, without robbing the cradle of wine like 2015, 2017, or 2018 Chateau Fourcas Dupre.
On a Facebook post, I and many others were asked over and over about this wine or that wine, wines that were still far too young to be appreciated now. My response was the same over and over, stop opening bottles so early! I opened a bottle of 2007 Four Gates Cabernet Franc, 2 weeks ago, it was an absolute joy but also, a wine that was so young it was truly a crime! STOP opening wines early folks. Let the wines come to you! This wine category is where you will find the richer, more complex options, for a higher price than the Simple reds, but still at a lower price point overall than the higher-end reds. There are 20+ WINNERS here, between USA and France, BUY them and SAVE YOUR CELLAR!!!
Shirah Wines Post
If one takes even a cursory look at this post and the wine notes below, the predominant winery/producer you will find is Shirah Wines. I got all the current wines in May of this year. It took me a bit of time to finally post them. As I stated last year, in my year in review, California had indeed turned its direction towards riper fruit and wines. Shirah contacted me and I bought the current wines to make 100% sure that my notes were in line with my comments, you can make your mind up from the notes.
I will stress THREE points here AGAIN, as I have done over a long time already:
- I crave the 2010 (AKA NV) /2012/2013/2014 Bro.Deux and the 2013 Syrah, and I FONDLY remember the old days of the One-Two Punch. Those were and still are VERY different wines than what is being sold now. I have had all of them recently and still have some bottles. They are wonderful, but they are not what the 2016 or 2017 Bro.Deux is like today.
- I strongly believe in Shirah Wines, I think the wines they produce are professionally made and are perfect for the bigger/flashier/riper palate that is the cornerstone of today’s kosher wine-buying public. They are just not the wines I want.
- Finally, there has been a clear and very big shift in the palate of the wines being made in California, today. Even Four Gates wines are getting riper. The issue here is all about balance. If I feel fruit is overripe and sticking out, to a point where I do not enjoy the wine, but rather think about the ripe fruit, I will move on. I understand this is a subjective way of seeing wine. I get that, and that is what makes wine so fascinating. Like all of art, it is not what is true or false as much as it is what one likes or dislikes.
WINNERS and other demarcations
As stated above, some wines will be winners in France/Europe and others will be WINNERS in the USA. I do not know the pricing in Israel or the wines or really anything about Israel for the last year+. Maybe Avi Davidowitz of Kosher Wine Unfiltered can make a post or two on this subject! HINT HINT!
Also, there are strange prices, distributions, and edge cases throughout Europe, and as such what is a good price in Paris may not be in London. Worse is wine in Belgium may be a better price than in Paris or London. The idea of “Europe” being a single country for commerce is a MASSIVE sham in the kosher wine market, in Europe anyway. In the USA it is equally messy, in regards to pricing throughout the states, L.A.’s wine prices are either non-existent (because there is no wine) or it is sky-high. I have seen better prices for California wines in NYC than in California! Like what now??? So, yeah, pricing is not as crisp, all the time, as I make it out to be here with my QPR posts, but I do the very best I can.
So, WINNER means USA (sorry this is a USA dominant blog), WINNER (F) means a WINNER in France. I will denote as well, in the wine post if the wine is only available in France or Europe, which is the same for me here, as London is the main outlier and it is not part of Europe anymore – sorry London! Enjoy the train!!! On a total aside, I did love taking the train from London to Paris, a few days AFTER they left the union! Moving on now.
So, without too much more delay – let’s get to it! Here is the list of cellar saviors and mid-level red wines. There are many WINNERS for buyers here in the USA and those in France! The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
2018 Terra di Seta Chianti Classico – Score: 92 to 93 (QPR: WINNER)
This is a fantastic wine, and with my new QPR scoring it is still is not as expensive as the median and its score is also above the median, so it is a GREAT QPR. This is a no brainer GREAT QPR wine and will sell out quickly BUY NOW!
This wine is incredible, it is better than the 2016 vintage and much better than 2017. It is even a bit better than the massively epic 2015 vintage. Bravo Daniella and Maria!!!
The nose on this wine is ripe, but the balance on it is incredible, the fruitiness exists but it hides behind a redolent garden of fresh mushroom, grass, dirt, loam, and lovely earth, with hints of barnyard, forest floor, and dark fruit, with balsamic vinegar, and roasted herbs galore. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is incredible, layered, rich, extracted, and so balanced, with incredible acidity, intense saline, dark sour cherry, coffee, all balanced and plush, with rich blackberry, cherry, strawberry, salami, with lovely mouth draping tannin, with minerality, graphite galore, and a lovely tannin structure. The finish is long, green, and ripe but perfectly balanced, with lovely acidity, roasted coffee, graphite, scarping mineral, loads of smoke, and sweet tobacco on the long finish. Bravo!! Drink until 2027 maybe longer.
2017 Tassi Aqua Bona Toscana Rosso, Bettina Cuvee – Score: 92 (QPR: BAD)
This wine is meant to be bottled under the D.O.C.G. Rosso di Montepulciano, but because of some strange requirements that were not met to meet the body’s requirements it only has the I.G.T. Toscano Rosso moniker.
This wine producer/winery is quite famous in the non-kosher world. The wine is made from 100% Sangiovese.
The nose on this wine starts with a crazy cedar box, followed by a mound of fresh Cuban Cigar tobacco, followed by loads of anise, licorice, smoked meat, followed by black and red fruit, foliage, forest floor, and more sweet cedar/oak. The mouth on this medium-bodied to full-bodied wine is not as extracted as I expected though this wine is richly expressive with loads of smoke, earth, rich tannin, nice green notes from what I can imagine is what I would get from whole-cluster and stems fermentation, with loads of rich spice, heady roasted herbs, and lovely blackberry, dark cherry, rich umami notes of balsamic and mushroom, with loads of mineral, graphite, and rich fruit-structure and focus with lovely elegance and control. The finish is long, rich, layered, and smoky, with nice control, lovely acidity, and smoke, roasted herbs, smoked meats, and soy sauce followed by more cigar smoke, and freshly tilled earth. Nice!!! Drink from 2021 until 2026.
Tasting of Royal Wine’s 2018 and some 2019 French wines in California
Well, it is official, 2020 continues to take, and though my annoyances are minor in comparison to the pain others are feeling, it still has impacted my routine, which I guess is the story of 2020. For the past three years, I have been tasting Royal’s latest wines with the man in France for Royal, Menahem Israelievitch. Sadly, this year, no matter how much I planned and tried, it is a no go. So, for the first time, in a long time, the tasting will be here in Cali and it will only be a small part of the 2018 and 2019 wines, such is life.
So, no there will not be a picture with all the wines, and some of the wines from last year are still not here right now! But, I will post here what I did taste so far, and my overall feeling of the 2018 and 2019 vintages.
In a previous post about the most recent French wines (at that time in 2017) that were arriving on the market – I already spoke about pricing and supply, so there is no need to talk that over again in this post.
While the 2015 and 2016 vintages were ripe, and the 2017 vintage was not ripe at all, the 2018 vintage makes the 2015 ripeness look tame! Now that is a very broad-stroke statement that cannot be used uniformly, but for the most part, go with it!
I see no reason to repeat what Decanter did – so please read this and I will repeat a few highlights below.
For a start, the drought came later in 2018,’ says Marchal, pointing out that early July saw less rain in 2016. ‘But when it came in 2018, it was more abrupt, with the green growth stopping across the whole region at pretty much the same time’. He sees it closer to 2009, but with more density to the fruit. … and high alcohols!
Alcohols will be highest on cooler soils that needed a long time to ripen, so the Côtes, the Satellites, and the cooler parts of St-Emilion have alcohols at 14.5-15%abv and more. I heard of one Cabernet Franc coming in at 16.5%abv, but that is an exception. In earlier-ripening areas, such as Pessac-Léognan and Pomerol, alcohols are likely to be more balanced at 13.5% or 14%abv, as they will have reached full phenolic ripeness earlier.
‘Pessac-Léognan did the best perhaps because it’s an early ripening site,’ said Marie-Laurence Porte of Enosens, ‘so they were able to get grapes in before over-concentration. If you had to wait for phenolic ripeness, that is where things could get difficult’.
The final averages per grape, according to Fabien Faget of Enosens, are Sauvignon Blanc 13.5%abv, Sémillon 12.5%abv, Merlot 14.5%abv, and Cabernet Sauvignon 14%abv’.
The Mevushal push, from Royal wines, is continuing for the USA labels, a fact I wonder about more and more. Look, if you are going to force Mevushal wine down our throats, why not import BOTH? If you look at the numbers for wines like we will taste in the post, the majority of the buyers are not restaurants or caterers. Sorry! No matter how much Royal Wines wants to fool itself into thinking. Throw in COVID and FORGET about this INSANITY, please! I beg of you!
There is no denying that it affects the wine, it does. I have tasted the Chateau Le Crock side by side, the Mevushal, and non-Mevushal and while I feel that Royal does a good job with the boiling, it is still affected. If you want to have Mevushal wines in the USA, then bring them BOTH in! Royal does this for Capcanes Peraj Petita and the undrinkable Edom and others in Israel. So what Royal is saying is – that could not sell the Chateau Le Crock numbers that they import into the USA without boiling it? Why else would they feel forced to boil it and import it if not otherwise? To me, it makes me sad, and in a way, it disrespects what Royal is trying to do to its French wine portfolio, IMHO. They should, at minimum, import both! Allow for the caterers and restaurants (like anyone needs that nowadays – HUH???) to have the Mevushal version and sell the non-mevushal version to us, as you do with Edom and Petita. There I have stated my peace, I am 100% sure I will be ignored – but I have tried!
The Mevushal wines from France for the 2018/2019 vintage will be, the 2018 Barons Edmond et Benjamin de Rothschild, Haut-Medoc, 2018 Chateau Greysac, 2018 Chateau Chateau de Parsac, 2018 Les Lauriers, Des Domaines Edmond de Rothschild, 2018 Chateau Le Crock, 2019 Chateau Les Riganes, Red, 2018 Chateau Genlaire, along with the whites wines, the 2019 Bourgogne Les Truffieres, Chardonnay, the 2019 Les Marronniers, Chablis, and the 2019 Chateau Les Riganes, Blanc.
Now does mevushal impede the long-term viability of aging in regards to the wine? Well, that too is not something that we have scientific proof of. I have tasted a mevushal 1999 Herzog Special Edition and it was aging beautifully! So, would I buy the mevushal versions of the wines I tasted below – yes! Would I age them? Yes, I would hold them for slightly fewer years.
Other than the mevushal aspect, there are no differences between the European version of the wines and the USA version of the wines. While that sounds obvious, I am just stating it here. The wines will be shipped now and the temperature issues that affected Israel’s wines of old, have not been a factor here.
The “other” wines not here yet or I have not had
There is the just-released 2018 Château Cantenac Brown Margaux (will post that when I get it), along with these yet unreleased wines. The 2019 Chateau Gazin Blanc (2018 was/is INCREDIBLE), 2018 Chateau Fourcas Dupre, 2018 Château Meyney Saint Estèphe, 2018 Chateau Giscours, 2018 Chateau Lascombes, 2018 Chatyeau Tertre, and 2018 Chateau Royaumont.
I understand this is a sub-optimal situation and blog post. It does not cover Royal’s 2018/2019 European wine portfolio. Still, it covers what has been released (or very close to it), here in the USA, and hopefully, it will help you. One day soon, I hope and pray, things will return to some semblance of normalcy, and we will all travel around again. Until then, this is the best I can do. Stay safe!
Final comments, disclaimer, and warnings
First, there are a TON of QPR winners but there are also a LOT of good wines that I will be buying. Please NOTE vintages. The 20016 Haut Condissas is a disaster while the 2017 vintage is fantastic! So, please be careful!
These wines are widely available in the USA, so support your local wine stores folks – they need your help! If you live in a wine-drinking desert, like California, support the online/shipping folks on the side of this blog. They are folks I buy from (as always – I NEVER get a bonus/kickback for your purchases – NOT MY STYLE)!
Sadly, there was no plane trip, no hotels, no restaurants, nothing. So, no trip to talk about – just the wines and my lovely home! Stay safe all and here are the wines I have had so far. I have also posted many scores of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 wines which are still for sale here in the USA. My many thanks to Royal Wine for their help in procuring some of these wines. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:
Les Vins IDS continues to truly impress, with the new 2017 Chateau Lafon Rochet and more
The day after the Bokobsa tasting, and following the tasting of the Corcos wines, Ari, Eli, and I went to lunch, to pick up wines and eat lunch. The lunch was uninspiring, but the store/restaurant gave us a chance to pick up many wines I have been dying to taste, as they are extremely hard to find almost anywhere in the world, but that will have to wait till after this IDS post.
Following lunch, we made our way to IDS’ offices and Ben Uzan was there with his wines, minus the current Burgundies from Jean Luc & Paul Aegerter, that I had already tasted with Ralph.
Les Vins IDS
IDS, as we know it is officially called Les Vins IDS and IDS, stands for International Distribution Service. IDS does not control a large number of wineries, but the amount that they do control, are some of the most vaunted kosher French wines around! The granddaddy would be the epic, Smith Haut Lafitte! I have tasted almost all of the kosher vintages, 1995 and 2000 were brought in by Royal, with the 1995 vintage being made by Bokobsa. 2002 and 2009 – was never quite clear to me (wink wink) who officially imported those wines to the USA. The 2014 vintage is now being imported to the USA by M & M Importers. The only one of that list I have yet to taste is the 1995 vintage. I actually did “taste” it, but sadly it was corked.
IDS also makes the kosher runs at the fantastic Chateau Lafon Rochet, which has been made kosher so far in 2001, 2003, and 2010, and again in 2017. I have, thankfully, tasted them all, besides the 2017 vintage until this tasting, and to me, the 2010 vintage is in a league of its own.
IDS also controls the relationship with Chateau Valandraud, to me maybe the most vaunted Grand Cru in the Saint-Émilion appellation. No, it is not Angelus or Cheval Blanc, but it is a very big win for the kosher wine drinking public. As an example, here were the top 10 wineries for the 2014 vintage, of the Grand Vin from the Saint Emilion wineries, scored by Decanter.
Sadly, the last kosher Grand Vin made from Valandraud was in 2005, and what a wine it is! Since then, they have made the second label of Chateau Valandraud kosher, the Virginie de Valandraud ( a 2nd label for the vaunted winery, that was started in non-kosher in 1992). This wine has been made kosher in 2004, 2011, and 2015. I have not tasted the 2004 Virginie, but I have tasted the 2011 and 2015, and it is a consistently impressive wine, but a bit richly priced, which is what you get when you talk about Valandraud.
Finally, there is Chateau Labegorce, a wine that used to be a killer QPR wine when it was first released. Now, the price here in the USA is a bit elevated, but the 2015 vintage is quite the winner, IMHO! There have been two wines from this winery, the Labegorce ‘Zede’ and the Labegorce Margaux, both are Margaux wines, with the Zede winery closing in 2008. Its fruit was merged into the Labegorce Margaux in 2008.
IDS has made other wines, but they have not produced more vintages, like the Chateau Matras (2002 and 2004) and Chateau L’Hermitage (which both closed down), and Chateau Rauzan – Gassies (which was too small to continue with). Chateau Haut Condissas, and the rest of the Rollan de By wines, was originally made by IDS, but after 2005, it went under the control of Rollan de By, which also was made by IDS until 2003.
Essentially, after the 2005 vintages, IDS now fully controls six wineries, La Tour de By, Leydet-Valentin, Valandraud, Labegorce, Smith Haut Lafitte, and Lafon Rochet.
On top of those six wineries IDS has started making some rose and sparkling wines. They made sparkling wine in the past, from Lilian Renoir, I never tasted it. But now they have made a new Brut and Rose Champagne from Janisson & Fils. Also, they make a lovely rose, Chateau Sainte Marguerite Rose, the best rose of the year for me, last year, though it is steeply-priced.
There are also two new Bordeaux wines coming that will be announced later this year.
The Tasting
After lunch, we found our way to Ben Uzan’s offices, and we were ready to taste the lineup. Mr. Uzan was very kind to share all of the current wines in Les Vins IDS’ portfolio, other than the two Champagne and the 2018 Jean Luc & Paul Aegerter Burgundies.
I was really looking forward to tasting the lower level IDS wines that never make it to the USA, as the pricing would not work there, but wines that work beautifully in France, price-wise. The rose was still showing its minerality, though sadly the acidity that I loved so much had fallen off. I also wanted to taste a few of the higher-end wines that had not yet made it to the USA, like the new 2017 Chateau Lafon Rochet. It was a joy and honor to taste the epic 2014 Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte again, it is so young and yet so wonderful!
We also, hijacked the offices to taste other wines, which I will NOT post here, but ones I will post in a subsequent post after this one. Mr. Uzan was beyond kind and his hospitality and openness with our questions showed the grace that I love from his wines. I was again joined by a few of the French forum members, including Ari Cohen, Ben Sitruk, and Elie Dayan. Read the rest of this entry
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