This is the tenth article I am writing on wineries from the Judean Hills wine region of Israel. No matter where you look around the landscape of Israeli wines and wineries you will find story after story of rebirth, renewal, and a fair amount of plain old new! Carmel, Binyamina, Barkan, were all producing mass consumption/bulk wine up until 1o to 15 years ago. Since then, they have seen serious rebirth, still selling almost undrinkable swill for the masses, and also selling high-end, and very respectable wines for us wine aficionados.

Personally, I think it is the correct business structure to have for a growing winery. You need simple bulk wines that have high margins and can be sold anywhere and everywhere. Wines that people buy in the millions, literally. Then you need wines that bolster the lineup, entry-level wine-drinker wines, that can be the bridge to take you from swill to paradise. Think white zinfandel from Herzog Wine Cellars, they sell those bottles by the millions and they are the perfect gateway drug to get you to Chenin Blanc and then maybe to Chardonnay or Black Muscat, and finally to some real dry red wines.

Today the winery we are looking at is the Teperberg winery which was founded in 1870 by the Teperberg family (from where the name of the winery is derived) in the Old City of Jerusalem. Actually, to be accurate it was located in an alleyway of the old city of Jerusalem, and may well have been the first winery in the modern era of Israel. Later in 1964, the winery moved outside of Jerusalem, to the then quiet suburb of Motza (now a thriving community), and took on the name Efrat. The winery, ignoring its many name changes, continues to mostly produce sacramental sweet wines, as that is what its main clientele are looking for. However, in the 1990s Efrat started to create dry red wines, and to be honest they were a disaster. I remember always passing up on them, even when in school, and buying Carmel dry or semi-sweet wines instead.

Starting in 2002, under the supervision of California-trained senior winemaker Shiki Rauchberger the winery began producing wines destined to appeal to a more sophisticated audience. They rebuilt the winery, from the ground up, to just outside of Kibbutz Tzora, with massive investment into its future, and it once again changed its name to Teperberg. It also added to the winemaking team, French-born, and trained Olivier Fratty. The new winery boasts all new modern equipment, a massive barrel room, and a lovely visitor center where people can come and see the facility and enjoy their wines.

Of the four million bottles sold, much of it is still sacramental in nature, however, more and more the very target audience for the winery is shifting beneath them. Life in Israel is improving, and so are the taste buds of its inhabitants. They are looking for more sophistication, and as such the winery is looking to expand its portfolio of wines and clientele.

At the Gotham event I had a chance to talk with Shiki and understand what his team is doing differently now and where it wants to be in the future. The winery now is sourcing its grapes from the Judean Hills, the Shiloh sub region, and the Shomron region. Ignoring the Efrat label, which has basically been relegated to the sacramental wines and dry wines that are not noteworthy, the winery still has many labels but the only ones of note are the; Reserve, Terra and Silver series. All wines are made mevushal, except for the Reserve and Terra. Soon more expansive and better quality vineyards will be coming on-line with even more varieties and with far better yield and quality control.

For the most part, the reserve series of wines are oak aged for 18 months, the terra series are oak aged for 12 months, and the Silver series (which is also mevushal) is oak aged for 6 months. Clearly not all the wines that we tasted at the Gotham Event, where Shiki was leading the initial part of the VIP tasting, or the wines I tasted at Sommelier, last year, are top-notch. Still the wines are clearly improving and they are making a clear and steady climb upwards, towards consistency and higher quality.

The wine notes here are from wines I tasted at Sommelier and the Gotham wine tasting:

2010 Teperberg Brut – Score: B+
This is the first sparkling wine from Teperberg, and their first attempt is quite passable. The sparkler is made up of 90% Chardonnay and the other 10% is made from French Colombard. The Chardonnay adds the body, while the Colombard adds in the acidity that is natural to the varietal. The wine starts off effervescent in the glass, with fig notes, nice sweet floral attitude, along with light hints of yeast and toast. The mouth opens to small bubble mousse that is controlled and bright, along with peach and tart lemon acidity. The finish has a light hint of oak and more toast.

2009 Teperberg Malbec, Terra – Score: A-
This is the third year for this wine and it continues to get better, with the 2009 vintage being the best to date. The varietal has received much praise in Argentina and Chile, and makes sense to thrive in Israel, given the extreme heat that the area can receive at times. I have tasted and drunk this wine a few times now, and each time I continue to be impressed by it. The wine starts off with a blast of clear animal notes, followed by good mineral, bramble, plum, and raspberry. The mouth is round and full with medium+ weight, nice integrating tannin, blackberry, and controlled toasty oak that is now harmonious. The finish is long with good concentration of fruit, crushed herb, leafy tobacco, espresso coffee, and vanilla. A lovely wine that will be around till 2015 and maybe a bit later.

2010 Teperberg Cabernet Franc, Reserve – Score: A-
I do have a soft spot for Cabernet Franc, and I have tasted through quite a many of them, and this is a fine example of what the varietal is capable of. The wine is still in barrel, and was transported from Israel in a bottle of course, so the wine was decanted to allow it to show its best, and because of its obvious youth. The wine will continue to age in oak for a few more months, until it reaches its 18 month birthday, after that it will be bottled and let rest for a few more months till it goes on sale. The grapes for this wine are sourced from vineyards near Shiloh. The wine starts off with classic Cabernet Franc green notes of asparagus and broccoli, followed by nice violet, and plum. The mouth is controlled with clear restraint applied to both the oak and the body, allowing for a true expression of the varietal, instead of having Cabernet Franc in Cabernet Sauvignon’s clothing. The mouth continues with nice round mouth showing from controlled oak influence, along with nice mouth coating tannin, and sweet cedar whose components have yet to all settle down, but are well on their way. The finish is long with lovely chocolate, good mineral notes and tobacco.

2009 Teperberg Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: B+ to A-
This was another wine that Shiki decanted and was still tight at the tasting. The wine is lovely and shows ability but one for now that clearly needs time. The wine aged in oak for 18 months opens slowly to show almost classic Cabernet characteristics, with ripe plum, graphite, bell pepper, and blackberry. The mouth is full and round with a heavy body of cassis, mouth coating tannin, and clear oak influence that is still far from all coming together. The finish is long and spicy, with nice cedar, mineral, tobacco, and chocolate. Give this one some time and it will show in a more pleasing manner.

2007 Teperberg Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A-
This is a lovely wine and may well be the best wine, in bottle, from Teperberg to date. The nose is rich and redolent with ripe blackberry, cassis, black plum, graphite, and lovely green notes. The mouth on this broad-shouldered and full bodied wine, is far richer and more concentrated than the 2009 vintage, with good fruit focus, nice toasty cedar, and mouth coating tannin that are all coming together nicely and showing extremely well. The finish is long and spicy, with vanilla, chocolate, and tobacco. This is a wine that is beautiful right now and one that can be enjoyed till 2015 or a bit more.

2009 Teperberg Blend, Reserve – Score: B+ to A-
Of the two unique blends from the 2009 vintage this one is a level below the premium blend. This blend is only sold in magnum bottles and is a lovely blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Shiraz, and 10% Petite Verdot. This is another example of Israel’s new theme of making blends that do not exist anywhere else in the world. These blends are not French, Italian, or American in any manner. Rather this blend is very Israeli in nature and in practice. It takes a unique growing climate to be able to have both the Cabernet and the Shiraz ripen at the same time and quality to create a blend like this. This wine is not yet available in store, in bottle, or even in name, as the final name has not yet been officially announced, for now it was called at the tasting – reserve blend. Its final name and label will be announced at a later date.

The nose starts off with lovely black plum, blackberry, raspberry, cherry, and mineral. The mouth on this wine is soft and plush with lovely mouth coating tannin, good cedar, and ripe fruit that fill out the mouth nicely. The finish has hints of animal, chocolate, tobacco, cedar, and citrus zest.

2009 Teperberg Blend, Premium – Score: A-
Of the two unique blends from the 2009 vintage this one is a notch above the reserve blend. Also, this blend is not an Israeli blend but rather a classic Bordeaux style blend. The blend is made up of only 6 barrels total, making for a very limited and assuredly expensive wine. The blend is a selection of only the very best barrels from the 2009 vintage. Three barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon, two barrels of Merlot, and one barrel of Petite Verdot, making for a rough blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 33% Merlot, and 17% Petite Verdot (rounding up for simplicity). This wine is not yet available in store, in bottle, or even in name, as the final name has not yet been officially announced, for now it was called at the tasting – premium blend. Its final name and label will be announced at a later date.

The nose starts off with a classic Bordeaux style attack of black plum, lovely green notes, graphite, mineral, blackberry, and raspberry. The mouth medium in body, round and full with mouth coating tannin, nice mineral, lovely sweet cedar, and good focused fruit that seems to be in the front forever, all coming together into a layered and almost concentrated attack. The finish is long and lingers well with vanilla, chocolate, more sweet cedar, black pepper, spice, and herbs. This is a wine that is sure to please everyone and one that will be hard to find, but may well be worthy of the effort.

Teperberg Nevel Port Style – Score: B+
I must admit that sweet red wines are not my favorite thing, though when done correctly the are magical. This is NOT a port or a port style wine. This is a semi-sweet red wine that is oxidized and OK. Sorry, it is not even in the same league as the kosher Port from Royal. So what is this wine, it is a nice red dessert wine, though even with the oxidation and body, many a sweet food will run this over, and forget about a rich creamy mousse. This wine is made from Merlot grapes and aged outdoors using the angel’s technique. Interestingly enough, Tepperberg makes three sweet wines using a musical instrument theme. One is the nevel (harp) port, another is the kinnor (violin) which is a fortified dessert wine, and the third one is called Chalil (flute), which is a semi-sweet Cabernet Sauvignon. Thanks Yossi for the missing info!

The nose starts with heavy oxidation, ripe plum, candied fruit, dark cherry, chocolate, and pepper. The mouth is full with candied fruit that melds nicely with good tannin and nice vanilla. The finish lingers long with much the same.

2008 Teperberg Merlot, Terra (shmitta wine) – Score: B+
This is a shmitta wine, so please beware. The nose starts with crushed herb, date, black cherry, raspberry, along with an almost perfumed nose of cedar and plum. The mouth is almost full with mouth coating tannin, good spicy wood, and red fruit that brings the entire package together nicely. The finish is long with good minerality, vanilla, espresso coffee, and tobacco.

2009 Teperberg Meritage, Reserve – Score: B+ to A-
This is another classic Bordeaux blend with 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, and the rest filled out with Petite Verdot, and Cabernet Franc. The nose starts with crushed herb, plum, and black olive, followed by smokey aromas, blackberry, and cassis. The mouth is rich and spicy, with layered and concentrated black fruit, along with not yet integrated tannin, and blackcurrant that come together into a mouthfeel that is slowly coming together. The finish is long and spicy with a distinct salty feel of black olives, light leather, and tobacco.

2009 Teperberg Shiraz, Reserve – Score: A-
This is Teperberg’s first Shiraz in the reserve series label and the outcome is quite lovely and rich. The nose is massive and almost assaulting with mounds of black pepper, blueberry, blackberry, smokey wood, and plum. The mouth is full with mouth coating tannin, ripe but not over the top fruit, and good wood that creates a lovely mouthfeel. The finish is long and spicy with bramble, tobacco, leather, garrigue, and vanilla. Quite a nice job and one that you can enjoy till 2016.

I hope you all are enjoying your Hanukkah holidays. This past weekend I enjoyed meals with my family and friends that were lovely and quite Sefardic in nature. The flavors were deep and filling and the tones were rounded with good herb and spice. These are flavors I try to hit in my dishes from time to time, but have been missing for sometime, partially because I do not have all the spices and partially because I do not still know all the recipes – I am working on that.

Sorry about the short notes again, but since I did not cook, I really have nothing more to say about the dishes other than they were lovely and rich and ones I hope to enjoy with my family again soon. If the list of wines sound like wines you should avoid, please remember that I had to taste some of these – SAD!!! In the end, there are some nice ones in the list, but no clear and run away winners. They all have flaws, like we all do, and as such, no real winner.

Many thanks to my family and friends for hosting me and here are the wines enjoyed through the weekend and at sporadic other moments through the week:

2011 Ella Valley Sauvignon Blanc - Score: B+ to A-
This wine is one made totally by the new winemaker at Ella Valley Winery, Lin Gold. She studied her craft at the University of Adelaide, and cut her teeth in her (professionally speaking) at both Tabor Winery and Chateau Golan. This is her first real vintage and it was exciting to see where the winery will be going. The Sauvignon Blanc was oak free as was in the past, and it was also green or herbal free, though that may have been more of a seasonal factor than a winemaker’s factor – time will tell.

The nose on this wine is ripe and bright with nice litchi, cut grass, kiwi, melon, lemon, and nice peach. The medium bodied wine has a nice clean mouth, very New Zealand-ish, cut dry with good clean lines, nice balancing acid, and lime juice infused. The finish is long and bright, almost bracing, with good acidity, lemon curd, and a hint of zest at the finish. A nice wine with bright and ripe fruit and no bitterness, a lovely Sauvignon Blanc.

2010 Ventura Chardonnay – Score: B to B+
The nose on this wine is filled and aggressive with oak, with hints in the background of melon, grapefruit, butterscotch explodes with ripe lemon, and peach. The mouth is nice, though packed with far too much oak, along with yellow apple, pear, rich sweet oak that coats the mouth and forces the fruit and their concentration to the far corners of the wine’s reach. A shame as the wine is structured well and have nice lines, but the dominant feature in this wine, as of now, is the oak. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, more oak, butter, vanilla, a hint of herb, and nice lemon zest on the rise. Give this wine time and we will see if the oak fades a bit, allowing the nice fruit to show.

2011 Arfi Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: C-
The winery is not a well known name, because it is actually not a winery but rather a “winery” that resells Mony wines – that Mony does not want – that is what the rumor mill says anyway. From what I tasted a few times, please stay away! The winery is supposedly helped by the renowned “flying winemaker” Jacques Humeau the last student of the great Emile Peynaud. The nose was filled with a funky sense of sweet fruit that was lovingly fermented in what I can only call soiled socks,  and then carefully rolled in barnyard  along with ripe fruit, currant, herb, bramble, forest floor, and barnyard notes. The mouth is medium in weight with green notes, herb, searing unbalanced tannin, with blackcurrant, and mounds of black cherry. The finish is long and spicy with green notes and roasted herb.

2010 Or Haganuz Cabernet Sauvignon, Merom Shamai – Score: B+ to A-
This wine may well have been the clear winner of the set of wines I tried throughout the week and that is unfortunately the state of affairs for me – this past week. This is a fine wine, but not one that should be my defined wine for the week. That said, a fine wine with good balance, structure, and of course, highly Israeli in nature. That being aggressive, though sweet with ripe cedar in the center, and with clear need to be smoking and enjoying chocolate all the while.

The nose on this lovely purple colored wine has deep aromas of baked blackberry, blackcurrant spiced pie, and herb. The mouth on this full bodied wine is big and aggressive with ripe blackberry, layers of concentrated black plum, cassis, and lovely cedar that rolls into a mouth coating tannin rich experience, along with nice sweet raspberry. The finish is long and mouth coating with lingering tannin on the rise, vanilla, spice, chocolate covered leafy tobacco, and a hint of bitter herb.

2010 Teperberg Shiraz, Reserve – Score: B+ to B++
This wine blew us away from the starts, but also let us down a bit on the mid palate. The wine is redolent with lovely perfumed and intoxicating aromas of licorice, blackberry, spice, plum, black pepper, and sweet tobacco, what a nose! The mouth is tart and sweet but lacking concentration with nice mouth coating tannin, hints of blue fruit, mint chocolate, graphite, big tannin, and sweet cedar, but with a hole in the middle. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, allspice, nice mineral, leather, tart plum, chocolate covered tobacco, date and vanilla. This is a nice wine, aggressive and rich, not sure if it will all come together to be more than it is right now.

2009 Ventura Merons – Score: B+ to A-
The good news is that the body is lovely – the bad news is that the nose is riddled with oxidation, in a way that gets in your face. We tried many bottles and each had this oxidation in varying degrees, which is a shame as the mouth and finish are lovely. The nose starts with oxidation, along with lovely green notes, and black plum. The mouth is an entirely different story, with depth, structure, and concentration. This is a wine that is a blend of 65% Cabernet Franc and 35% Merlot, and it shows! The mouth is complex and deep with extracted flavors, blackberry, plum, all integrate lovingly with ripe green notes, a wine that is taken to the edge of ripeness, but not crossed. Sweet cedar, mouth coating and caressing tannin keep lingering long. The finish is long and spicy with cinnamon, cloves, more spice, bitter herb, orange zest, leafy tobacco, and chocolate. Dates do pop up ever so briefly on the luscious finish but who cares. Again a real shame about the nose. If you can get past it and the cost, this wine is worth finding and enjoying. This is a unique blend that few others make, another like it is from Gush Eztion.

2006 Falcon Eye International, Seire Emmanuel – Score: B
The only real redeeming quality here is the lovely light purple colored wine. The wine is a blend of The nose is filled with raspberry, cherry, licorice, and spice. The wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir aged in oak for 24 months. The mouth is empty and hollow with red fruit, with ripe and tart strawberry, blackcurrant, along with bell pepper and soft tannin that help rounds the mouth. The middle is missing and the finish is quick and shallow with little balance and herb. This is a wine on its way out, so drink up. Please note that this bottle has no hecsher, but it is made by the Kinor David Winery – a lovely man with a crazy good KPort. Kinor David also made another blend very reminiscent to this one and it has Shiraz in it as well, and is far better.

2010 Barkan Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: B+ to A- (QPR)
This was not a shock as much as it was a continued education in the world of Barkan Wines. Barkan continues to produce lovely wines and the take away here is that never ignore the wines if front of you while you yearn for bigger and greater things. This wine is quite solid, and one of the better wines I had throughout the past week or so.

The nose on this light garnet colored wine is filled with ripe blackberry, herb, blackcurrant, bramble, dark cherry, and green notes, almost perfumed. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is filled with nice mouth coating tannin, ripe red and black fruit, good structure and balance, with currants, cassis, and lovely sweet cedar coming from its 20 months in oak. The fruit is concentrated and the attack is ripe and rich. The finish is long and spicy with nice green notes, lovely leafy tobacco, nice black plum, and chocolate, and tannins that rise on the finish with a hint of tangy fruit and citrus zest. Solid wine and a clear QPR.

Wine Mill wine shop in the center of Jerusalem

The Wine Mill wine shop

Last week I posted that I was in Israel for three weeks over the month of December, and in that first post I wrote about the wineries I saw in the Galilee wine region (the north of Israel). What I failed to talk about was Gabriel Geller and his wine shop in the middle of Jerusalem. I spoke about the Wine Mill wine shop in a previous post, it is located smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem, close to the city center, and to many hotels and restaurants. The address for the Wine Mill wine shop is 8, Ramban Street, 92422 Jerusalem, Israel, it is a shop that I can say is stocked with wines that I would be happy to enjoy and is the main wine shop that I use when in Israel. Why? Because Geller knows his wines, sells only wines he or his customers like, and knows the wines he sells. His shop is filled with wines that are often only sold at the winery itself, like Midbar Winery wines (see below) or Herzberg Winery wines (see below). His shop is also filled with small winery wines, like Weitzman Petite Verdot, or Gat Shomron Winery, and many others. Please do not think that this is a paid advertisement or something – LOL! I do not take money from people. I bring up Gabriel Geller and the Wine Mill, because during my three week stay in Israel, I was either in Geller’s store, with Geller himself, or calling Geller everyday, including Friday day and Saturdays (Saturday night of course)!

As I ended the previous posting – I wrote about my take on the Israeli wine scene, and I would like to add some more thoughts to the thread:

1. If I had to give a color or fruit that best describes the 2010 vintage in Israel – it would blueberry! YES blueberry! No, I am not talking about malbec or Syrah or Petite Verdot. What I am talking about is all of those and more shockingly, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot! Try it out and see for yourself. When I asked the wine makers about it, they said that the growing conditions of 2010, hot and then cool led to the blue flavors.
2. 2010 and on can well be the year of the small wine maker. Wineries are coming and going – that is for sure, but it is also a fact that small production wineries, like Herzberg Winery and Gat Shomron winery are popping up and staying afloat – because they do not have that much wine to move. Time will tell.
3. Finally, more and more high level and high quality mevushal is occurring in Israel. Shiloh winery has been doing it for a few years now, as is Binyamina on its reserve series and cave, and others. It is not widespread or low quality. The process is being done at great cost and at great effort – bringing forth quality wine that happens to be mevushal, much like Herzog and Hagafen. While this is true of the few that I have listed above, Recanati has started doing it to some of their diamond label wines and the outcome is not that great. The 2010 Shiraz tasted cooked while the non-mevushal bottle in Israel did not have that taint – time will tell how these experiments will turn out.
4. If you must pick a single varietal that shines in the Shomron – it would be Merlot. All the Merlot wines we tasted from the Shomron (whether made from a winery in the Shomron or wineries that source their grapes from the Shomron – like Teperberg) – the winners were always the Merlot! If it is the cooler weather the higher acidity – who cares – it is great wine!
5. Wineries are getting the message – making more old-world wines with Israeli fruit. What that means to me is to make ripe and sweet wines that are controlled without the overripe date and raisin bombs that were so very prevalent some 5 years ago. In its place I find that Israeli wineries are producing wine with sweet and ripe fruit, while all the while showing clear control of both the sweetness of the fruit and the amount of oak used.
6. Israel residents are finally starting to understand that they live in a Mediterranean country (with one of their borders on the Med) with blazing hot summers and therefore need to start appreciating white wines! I know, Jews like to drink red wines, something to do with the whole kiddush and shabbos thing. Still, white wine is lovely and is a wine that can be done well in Israel. Take the Midbar winery as an example. A winery that was built on the premise of making GREAT white wines in Israel! It took a long time for the perfect storm to occur, the nexus point of Israeli residents wanting white wines and for wineries to excel at the production of good white wines. Maybe it was a chicken-egg thing between the wineries and the residents, or maybe it was the whole culture thing – but Israeli wineries are figuring it now. More and more every winery is making a Rose, a Chardonnay, and many are doing Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling wines, and many others. So keep a look out for very solid Israeli white wines – they may actually remove them from Israel’s endangered species list!
7. The main high end red wines being poured at wineries in Israel are shmitta wines, wines from the 2008 vintage. I say this simply as a warning and no more than that. If you care, than skip the wines. If you do not worry about it – than do what you wish. I simply state it here as an informational notice.

My first day in Israel I actually was in Jerusalem and met Elchonon Hellinger (the monster that we created) and his nice chef friend; the Mendelnik (who rumor has is even crazier of a driver than the rest of Israeli drivers). We enjoyed a bunch of wines from David Edri’s Kinor David Winery – a winery based in Hebron and one that Elchonon has been raving about for months. We had the chance to taste some of the reds, which were not very good, as they were older wines. We got to taste his mythical ports and sherry wines! Those wines were in indeed crazy good and quite enjoyable, while some of his newer red wines were OK (we tasted them later in the second week).

Another fact that I need to repeat, Yossie Horwitz’s Israel winery mash-up map was a lifesaver when needing to lookup addresses and contact info for each and every winery that I visited!

Hamasrek Winery

On the Friday that I returned from my trip up north, I visited Geller and we tasted the 2009 Niakanor Merlot, Reserve and the 2011 Ruth Dessert wine, which we spoke about in a previous post here. On the following Saturday night Geller and I went to Hamasrek winery, after lighting the Hanukkah candles and it was nice meeting with the winemaker; Nachum Greengrass and tasting a bottle of the winery’s flagship wine; 2006 Hamasrek The King’s Blend, Limited Edition, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Zinfandel. The wine was nice, though it is not a wine that Royal imports anymore, so if you want some, it is available at the winery in Israel.

Tzuba Winery

On Sunday I spent most of my day scheduling the week of wine tastings and I was able to swing by the Tzuba Winery, though I came too late to spend time with Paul Dubb, the winemaker, like in the past, but I did spend time with Eiton Green, the General Manager of Tzuba and the nice Mashgiach who put up with my late timing and was willing to stay around and pour me some really nice wines. The 2011 Tzuba Chard is really nice, along with the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, but the Metzuda wines (the flagship labels of Tzuba) were the WOW wines for sure. The 2009 Tzuba Metzuda (70% Cab, 15% Merlot, and 15% Cabernet Franc) was a very close WOW wine, and a wine that I liked more in New York last year than at the winery, but that may have been more about not letting the wine open up properly. The 2010 Tzuba Metzuda blend (44% Cab, 44% Merlot, and 12% Cabernet Franc) was a clear and present WOW Wine – very solid and well done wine with blue, green and black notes, big muscles, heavy spice, and great acid. Finally, the 2010 Tzuba Syrah Metzuda was the best wine there and one that is truly really nice and one that could be easily mistaken for a northern California Syrah – Bravo! Many thanks to the Tzuba winery, Paul, Eiton, and the Mashgiach, who put up with my late arrival and were still kind and happy to share their wonderful wines with me.

Ella Valley Winery

On Monday, I picked up Gabriel Geller and we started a very long day of wine tasting. The first winery we visited is Ella Valley Winery, where I had hoped we would meet Lin Gold, the new winemaker that took over for Doron Rav Hon, in 2011. I really wanted to meet her, but she was out of the country when we visited and we missed her by a few days – such is life. We did meet with Ilan Bezalel, VP of Ella Valley Vineyards, and we tasted through some of Gold’s new wines and some old wines from Doron. The 2011 Ella Valley Sauvignon Blanc and Rose are clear shift in Gold’s approach with sweeter and riper notes, gone is the lemon peel and herb. Instead the fruit is ripe, expressive, but fully controlled without overbearing ripe notes. It is a fine line to walk and one that will be harder to implement in the red wines. I look forward to trying Gold’s red wines to se if her approach is the same in red as it is in white and if it can be done with equal control. We enjoyed the 2011 Ella Valley Everred Rose’s salmon pink color and fruit. The 2007 Ella Valley Merlot was quite nice, but the star of the tasting was the 2009 Ella Valley Cabernet Franc. Yes, I like Cabernet Franc, get over it, but this wine was a solid A- to A wine and worthy of the WOW award! One of the saddest things I heard in Israel, was at Ella Valley Winery, when Ilan told me that there will be no more Pinot Noir after the 2008 vintage – I am not sure why – but that is what I was told. It is a real shame as the Ell Valley Pinot Noir was quite impressive. Many thanks to Ilan and I hope next time we visit we will have the opportunity to meet with Lin Gold.

Teperberg Winery

From there we went to one of the clear highlights of my trip – Teperberg Winery. The last time I wrote about Teperberg Winery was after a tasting at the 2012 Gotham Wine Extravaganza, where the Chief Winemaker Shiki Rauchberger of Teperberg Winery came to the tasting and poured many Teperberg wines, including a few barrel samples, and the still unreleased and unnamed premium label for the winery. At that time, I sad that the winery was on the correct course and was a winery that was clearly improving year over year. I was looking forward to visiting the Teperberg winery because I wanted to see if this path to improvement was continuing or not, and indeed the upper level labels have truly improved their trajectory towards being a top level wine producer. We arrived on time and were met by Olivier Fratty, Teperberg’s French oriented winemaker, who happens to also be Tunisian! The winery is massive to say the least, producing many not so interesting wines for the sugary drinking crowd and some very nice higher-end wines for the wine drinking crowd. They make 1 million bottles of wine a year and 35% of that is sold under the Teperberg label, and that percentage is slowly moving up. The winery is planting vineyards like they are going out of style. 120 dunam in the Galilee, and 1700 dunam in the Shomron, with 2500 dunam overall planted or being planted throughout Israel. After showing us around, Olivier took us to a trailer where we were blown away by the number of wines that littered a conference room sized table! Olivier told us that Teperberg was working on building a new visitor center and until than this was where he greeted and tasted wine with visitors and colleagues. When I entered all I could smell was fried chicken! I looked around and I asked – do you guys also make fried chicken? Olivier replied that the smell was wafting out of the box of fricassee sandwiches! Fricassee is a Tunisian sandwich, which is so Tunisian in so many ways! When I talk about Tunisian recipes, they start and end with oil – it is the framework for all Tunisian recipes – fried food covered with oil and tasting – OH so good! Well, these fricassee sandwiches are essentially stuffed doughnuts! The doughnuts are commonly stuffed with tuna fish, egg salad, and other such sandwich fare.

We enjoyed tasting some 17 wines at the winery and the take away I had was that many of the newer vintages were solid to very solid wines with a few WOW wines sprinkled in. The wine tasting started with a surprising pair of close to WOW and absolute WOW wines; the 2012 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc, Terra and the 2011 Teperberg Viognier, Terra. There is a person on the Israeli and Kosher Wine forum who craves acid and all I can say is that the 2012 Sauvignon Blanc is as close as you can get to biting into a ripe raw lemon and truly enjoying it! The Sauvignon Blanc is a shocking and screaming citrus explosion with crazy ripe and beautiful fruit – BRAVO. The 2011 Viognier is crazy nice and is equal in nature to the old Dalton Viognier and the new 2012 Dalton Viognier. However, both of them are not quite up to Midbar’s Viognier (more on that below) – but they are two of the best kosher Viognier wines out there. Many of the wines we enjoyed at the tasting were either recently bottled or not yet bottled, so not only do I not have many pictures, many of these bottles will not be available immediately. The 2009 Teperberg Malbec is a lovely and medium bodied Malbec with big beautiful blue and black fruit. The 2010 Malbec is as good as the 2009 vintage – but the 2011 is CRAZY FILTHY and WOW (by now I hope you know that is a compliment – right?), quite a lovely wine. Rich, layered, and in your face, but controlled and ripe. The Merlot Terra wines were nice, the 2009 was OK in a classic green and red way, while the 2010 Terra Merlot was unique and more rich, with blueberry, boysenberry, green and black fruit and floral notes – nice! The 2009 and 2010 Terra Cabernet were OK, with the 2010 showing elegantly, but the shocking QPR 2010 stole the pairing by far! The 2010 Terra Cabernet is massive freight train with power, muscle, and fruit to spare, a highly extracted and expressive wine.

The next wines were the reserve wines and the differences between the tasting at Gotham (of these wines a year ago) and the wines now are quite interesting. The next wines were the 2009 and 2010 Merlot reserve wines from the Shomron. At the Gotham tasting the 2009 Merlot reserve was tight as a drum and showed little expression. WOW! What a year makes! This wine is a clear WOW wine and a fantastic example of what a Merlot can be. The 2009 is a filthy, expressive, green, black, and red monster with huge shoulders, rich body, and ample fruit to spare. The 2010 Merlot reserve is also nice and rich and a solid showing for this winery! The Shiraz reserve from 2009 is a wine we liked more at the tasting in Gotham than in Israel. I tasted its brother (the 2010 vintage), at the Terravino dinner and the 2009 vintage at the winery. The 2010 vintage seemed hollow or short while the 2009 was nice but did not blow me away. Still nice wines and maybe they will fill out in the future. The Cabernet reserve is a wine that is a blend of fruit from the Shomron, Galilee, and Judean Hills. From what I saw of Shomron Cabernet Sauvignon – this is a really good idea. The Shomron Cabs, that we tasted, showed greener and redder than this lovely black and balanced wine. The 2009 Cab Reserve is anotehr wine that showed tight and closed at the Gotham wine tasting that at the winery a year later was KILLER! The 2009 Cab reserve is a massive, extracted, and rich Cabernet – rich and expressive, black, red, and full of vigor. The 2010 vintage is well – blue! Like I said in my trends for 2010, Cabernet fruit from Israel in 2010 shows blue fruit! It is unique, not expected and quite lovely. It helps to round out the wine. The wine is not as extracted as its older brother but is equally spicy with good richness and mouth cover, both are solid A- wines. The 2009 Merlot reserve and Cabernet reserve did not show well at the Gotham wine event – no matter how hard Shiki tried with decanters and god knows what else! But waiting a year and letting god take care of the aging – the wines now show beautifully! Another great example for why age rather than technology is the way to enjoy a wine!

The final dry red wine was the 2010 Cabernet Franc – and yes – I LOVED IT! It is still a solid A- wine and tasting very much like at the Gotham wine event! What a green, red, and tobacco monster it is! Rich, layered, and elegant all at the same time. At this point we were hurrying to get out and go to the next winery, but Olivier was not going to let us go before we had a taste of his new bubbly sweet moscato wine, which was OK, and the Teperberg Nevel Port Style wine – which though I know will get me in trouble with Adam M, is still an OK port to me. At this point I was starving and I helped myself to a few of the wonderful fricassee, but man by the time we were done the platter was gone and someone, who will go unnamed, left with some of them stuffed in his pocket – LOL!!!! It was a truly enjoyable tasting and one that shows how much this winery is growing and learning about its fruit. Thanks so much to Shiki and Olivier.

Flam Winery

From here we drove to Flam Winery – where Golan Flam affirmed for me what many have been saying for years – that Flam Winery is a European powerhouse in the Judean Hills. The winery, while producing awesome wines for years, only recently turned kosher in 2010, and so the reserve 2010 wines are finally bottled and are being shown in the winery for those in the know and they were quite lovely! The winery’s decor is styled in a comfortable yet stylish European family setting. The table upon which we did the tasting looks like it was pulled from a Italian home in Tuscany. The china cabinet that faces the other wall looks like it came out of a French villa in the 1900s. The styling is very reminiscent of what the family ants to project – a family run European winery in the middle of Israel. The wines and the winery follow this theme to a tee and it was a real joy to be ion the winery again.

We arrived a bit late but Israel Flam, the patriarch of the family, was more than kind to sit down with us and allow us to taste through the wines that are currently available, along with a few wines that are not yet available. Flam Winery recently received high praises from Mark Squires of the Wine Advocate, when he gave 90 to the 2011 Flam Blanc. We were graciously accepted even though we were late, with Israel Flam sitting down with us to start the tasting. As, I previously explained in my past post about Flam Winery, Israel Flam is one of the superstars in the Israeli wine scene. Mr. Flam was originally head wine maker at Carmel winery and never imagined his kids would get into the business. However, after Golan went to wine school and Gilad went to business school – things looked like Golan would be in the wine business sooner or later. However, the real shocker was when Gilad spoke with his father and asked him if the wine business is a good idea? Israel replied, that if you want to make money quickly – than go start a start-up or go into banking. If you want to lose money quickly or maybe make money very slowly – go into the wine business. With that kind of resounding reply – Israel was surprised to hear soon after that Golan and Gilad were going into the family business and they did both ideas! They started a winery – the family owned and operated Flam Winery, and they started a wine and liquor start-up, involved in the import and export of alcohol throughout Israel and abroad. Proof positive that it is always a good idea to listen to your elders!

Soon enough, after we started tasting the 2011 Flam Blanc, which was a nice A- wine, Golan Flam was very kind to come and join us, not withstanding are out of control tardiness. After the Flam Blanc we tasted the 2010 Flam Classico, and it reaffirmed for me that I did not love it as much as I did the first time I tasted it last year. You see, last month we did a tasting of many kosher blends and the 2010 Flam Classico was one of them, and it did not go over well on the table, a B++ wine, rather than the A- wine I tasted a year ago at the winery. So, I was looking forward to seeing if it was the wine or my storage/transportation. In the end, it is a nice wine, but not the same A- wine I remembered, even after tasting it again at the winery. However, all of this is irrelevant in comparison to what we tasted next. It was the reserve wines that we have been waiting for an entire year to taste, that fully explains the mad cult following that Flam reserve wines have in Israel, even before they were kosher.

After we tasted the Classico, we were given the opportunity to taste the recently released 2010 Flam Syrah, reserve. This is a wine that is a pure WOW wine in every way, with blueberry, blackberry, power and finesse coursing through its veins. This is a bull/powerhouse of a wine that can easily do a pirouette in a china store on one foot – finesse and elegance all wrapped in a blue, black, licorice and espresso coffee body – BRAVO! The mind melting thing here was that this was just the start, the next two wines were equally mind melting, with perfect balance and control, the fruit is Israeli in every way, sweet, bright, and ripe, yet the wine is controlled and kept in its European style – quite a hard thing to implement, and Golan Flam has done it with aplomb. The great news here is that this wine is available now in Israel and will be available for tasting at the Kosher Food and Wine Experience (KFWE) in NY and at the International Food and Wine Festival in LA, Golan told me he will be at both events!

The next wine was the 2010 Flam Merlot, reserve and it too was a WOW wine, deep and rich with a classic style, green notes, red and light black notes with many layers of deep extracted fruit, lovely tobacco and insane mouth coating tannin that is mineral based with graphite and loamy dirt. Quite a lovely wine that does not shy away from its searing tannin, concentrated fruit, and deep fruit extraction. Double WOW and BRAVO!

The final wine was the craziest wine of the bunch, the 2010 Flam Cabernet Sauvignon, reserve with you guessed it – blueberry fruit! The 2010 Flam Cabernet Sauvignon, reserve is crazy rich and layered with blue, black, and red fruit. The mouth is rich, layered, and insanely complex, with massive rich tannin, crazy black and blue fruit and deep rooted mineral. The finish is long, spicy, and luscious with crazy tannin, all while dressed in a long leather trench coat, holding a piping hot cup of espresso coffee, while taking a long pull on a fat stogie with a side of chocolate mocha java. Double WOW and BRAVO again!

The three reserve wines show the true potential of Israeli wines. Wines that are distinctly Israeli, with big ripe fruit, all while controlled with good mineral and dirt, nice cedar, and oak extraction. Anyone who has enjoyed these wines can see why Daniel Rogov continually gave them high scores and why Mark Squires also loves them a bunch. Thanks so much again to Israel Flam and Golan Flam for taking the time to met with us and to share their liquid gold with us as well – I am sure the wine will sell well whether we wrote about it or not – so again many thanks to everyone from the Flam Winery.

Herzberg Winery

Once we left the Flam Winery we made our way to Herzberg Winery a winery that is owned, run, and operated by a single man – Max Herzberg. It was pouring rain as we made our way to his lovely home – which doubles as his winery and vineyard. Yes, he reminds me of my good friend Benaymin Cantz (from four gates winery), another of those home bound Vignobles who live, breath, and eat winemaking in and around their very abode!

Max Herzberg is a world famous biotechnologist who has single-handedly created and sold more companies than many of us even know or can keep track of. Max immigrated to Israel from France and quickly became a world class biotechnologist and a leader in his field and in the corporate world!

Max Herzberg at his winery – Herzberg Winery

However, after getting his fill of running biotechnology departments at universities and running and starting companies, Max decided he would plant a vineyard. One day Max approached his clearly intelligent wife (who happens to be a Tunisian – so that helps a lot of course) and asked if she minded if he planted a few vines? His wife replied, you mean you want to plant the entire field – right? Sure enough, in 2005, by the time Max was done, the entire 3 acre field, right next to his home in Moshav Sitrya was planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec. It is not clear if this particular location within the Judean Hills is well situated for Malbec, but as Max puts it – time will tell. Max also makes use of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from a neighboring vineyard. The first true year for the winery was in 2008, though there was some 300 bottles from the 2007 vintage.

As usual, Geller knows everyone and him and Max hit it off really well. It helps that Geller speaks a perfect French (so jealous), the native tongue of the French born Max Herzberg. It was with this knowledge that we arrived at his home and he showed us around the winery – though by this time it was pitch dark and we were walking around very carefully. We soon made our way to the well lit tasting room, that is adjacent to the winery and that is where we tasted through the winery’s entire line. A few weeks after we visited, Max had a winery tasting at his winery to show off the new 2009/2010 red wines and from what I can see on his Facebook page – it was a smash! Max is one of those honest, down to earth, humble and talented wine makers that enjoy what he is doing and it shows in his wine and in his passion for his craft.

We started the tasting with the 2009 Herzberg malbec, the very wine that made Max and his winery famous. I was told by many that this was a must taste wine, and so I bought a bottle at the Wind Mill for Shabbos. The bottle I got was lacking in many ways, so I was hoping it was just a bad bottle and that I would be enjoying the true version of the malbec. Sure enough the 2009 Herzberg Malbec that we tasted was indeed quite lovely. The wine was not a OW wine, but to be fair I have yet to taste a WOW Malbec, with the possible exception of the 2009 Tishbi Malbec, but that is for another post. I would score the wine a B+ to A-. The malbec was not blue, but rather red and very spicy with a perfumed nose, a medium body with good tannin structure and good usage of oak. The 2009 Merlot is very much in the same ilk of the Malbec with plenty of red fruit, along with nice green notes, heaps of floral notes and a solid medium bodied structure. The mouth is well balanced with aggressive almost mouth drying tannin, near sweet cedar, and ripe red and black fruit. The finish is packed with mineral and charcoal – a unique and lovely Merlot. The next wine was the 2009 Reserve, a blend of 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 20% Malbec. The nose is unique with sugared and candied plum, mineral, green notes, and ripe fruit. The mouth is medium plus in weight with good tart fruit, more mouth drying tannin, and sweet cedar. The finish is long with more mineral and chocolate covered tobacco. The next wine was from the 2010 vintage – the 2010 Herzberg Asado Blend, which is a blend of 50% Malbec, and 25% each of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Asado was a dirtier more earthy wine than the 2009 wines, with deep rooted green notes, loamy dirt, mushroom, red and black fruit, more mouth drying tannin, good red and black fruit, and wonderful balance. The finish is long and spicy with green, vanilla, and crazy spices like cinnamon, cloves, and tobacco. The Asado name is a nod to Argentinians who have clearly made a name for themselves in the wine world with their version of the Malbec fruit.

Max was very kind to share with us his 2010 wines and those are a clear bump up from the 2009 crop. The 2010 Merlot and Reserve wines of course continue the 2010 theme with huge amounts of blue fruit, but they are also broader, deeper, and more concentrated wine with weight and fruit that can carry the strong handed use of oak. The fruit is dark, brooding, rich and truly complex – in a manner that makes you stop and take notice. Are they WOW wines? Not quite, but they are solid A- wines and ones that I would have bought if they were available.

The 2010 Herzberg Cab fruit is ripe and jammy, full, with crazy floral notes and blueberry, followed by black fruit, and currant. The mouth is medium to full bodied with tannin that goes forever, concentrated fruit, and deep layers of blackberry, cassis, sweet cedar, and mouth drying tannin. The 2010 Herzberg Reserve is a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% each of Malbec and Merlot. Once again the nose is ripe with ribbons of blueberry, blackberry, violet, licorice, and controlled spice. The mouth is rich and full bodied with softening yet aggressive mouth drying tannin, sweet ripe fruit, and a concentrated mouth that is coming together nicely. The finish is long, balanced, and sweet and spicy at the same time with chocolate covered tobacco, with vanilla and spice.

We had a few other wines and stuff that is undocumented and it will stay that way – but the entire tasting was a true joy and one that gave me the chance to see a man who has nothing to prove in this world. A man that has made his mark on it and yet a man that decided he wants to strike out in a different direction, one that he loves and cares about and is willing to spend his retirement years doing! I say bravo to you sir and best wishes for another successful vintage! Thanks so much for making time for the two of us!

Well, when one is on a winery hunt – a few wineries a day is really not enough – it is kind of like castle hunting for folks who visit Scotland. For me, in Israel, it is all about winery hunting. So, it was a brisk Tuesday morning that I realized that I was late to pick up my nephew who was joining me for my mad adventure – half way across the world! I soon parked at Lod Airport, in the pouring rain and parked the car in short term parking.  There waiting for me was my nephew and the start of a whirlwind adventure for him – I think more than he knew he was getting himself into! The day was young and after stopping for some coffee, sandwich, and pastries, it was off to the first of two wineries; the Yaffo Winery and the Gush Etzion Winery. They are both right next to each other, some 10 kilometers or less away from each other, and the Yaffo Winery is literally right next door to the Ella Valley Winery, a winery we visited two days earlier (see above :-) ).

Yaffo Winery

We rolled into the Yaffo Winery on time, but from the wrong direction and from a very soggy and wet dirt road. We took the wrong entrance and it was a miracle that we could get the car up the steep and short incline, but blessedly we succeeded and smartly decided not to try that on the way out!

As we rolled up to the winery, Moshe Celniker, the owner and original winemaker of Yaffo Winery, greeted us. Soon after his son Stephan the current winemaker at the winery joined us. The rain had passed and the crisp clean air and almost cloudless skies made for a quite picturesque setting in the winery surrounded by vineyards for as far as the eye could see.

Yaffo Winery sign from the street

Yaffo winery was started in 1998 by Moshe Celniker in his basement, when he made some 2000 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. From there, the winery has grown to 40,000 bottles in the most recent 2012 harvest. At the start Moshe was the winemaker, owner, and all around “guy” who ran the company. However, in time his son Stephan decided he wanted to join the family business and went to study agriculture at Hebrew University in Rechovot and then went on to study wine making in Bourgogne, France. He then worked in Bordeaux for a couple of years before rejoining his father and taking over wine making duties a few years ago.

Stephen Celniker (winemaker of Yaffo Winery) pouring a glass for the seated Moshe Celniker, owner of Yaffo Winery (from the winery’s Facebook page)

In 2007 the winery moved to its current location, at the edge of Ella Valley (Emek HaElla), not far at all from the Ella Valley Winery. It is also very close to the winery’s 40 dunam of grapes. The vineyards surround the winery and they are comprised of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay, along with a bit of Mourvedre, and Carignan. The winery takes in 40 tons of fruit and uses it to make 6 labels; Rose from Cabernet, a varietal Carignan, Chardonnay, Merlot/Syrah blend, varietal Cabernet, and their flagship Bordeaux blend called Heritage.

As we sat in the lovely winery, I could not help but wonder about this and the other small wineries I have visited, and smile at how far the industry has come here in Israel. Here was another small family run winery that worked hard to create solid wines in an appealing and old world style, while still letting the Israeli fruit shine through.

The tasting did not include the Chardonnay or Rose as they were sold out of both of them, but we did taste the other red wines and while the first two were not WOW wines, they were very solid B+ and B++ wines. The 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon was a solid wine with good old world characteristics in the nose, showing herb, red and black fruit. The mouth was medium weight with good balance, unique butter characteristics, sweet cedar, and dark fruit, all supported by nice mouth coating tannin and vanilla, with green notes, tobacco, and tannin lingering. The 2010 Syrah/Merlot blend is a 50/50 blend of the two grapes and showed lovely roasted animal notes, blueberry, mounds of black fruit, earth, and rich tilled dirt. The mouth is medium in weight but showing concentrated blue and black fruit, along with wonderful control of the sweetness along with good tannin structure that supports the wine through its long and spicy and mineral based finish. The wine was another solid B++ to maybe A- wine. The Heritage is as close to a WOW wine that you can come without being on. The 2009 Heritage is a blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 15% Syrah. The nose is big, rich, and perfumed with black and red fruit, all covered over by a lovely canopy of green foliage with a side of toffee and graphite. The mouth on this massive and full bodied wine is layered with concentrated black and red fruit, sweet cedar, and a mouth coating tannin structure that lingers long. The finish is classically balanced and so Israeli with tobacco, chocolate, mineral, graphite, along with unique butter coated tobacco, herb, and mineral. They also sell a Carignan and we did not have time to taste it so they were very nice to give me a bottle and I will taste it in the near future and write it up in a future blog posting.

After we drove off, I missed the chance to get a picture of the sign for the Yaffo Winery that is on the road. It is a small sign that points to a road that looks like you need a 4×4 to get through. But actually, the dirt road is very solid, even after raining for a few days straight and was easy to navigate, as long as you knew where to enter. We entered through the back way and we were very happy to make our way back to the main road, using the correct and easy entrance point. When visiting – keep your eye out for the small and hard to see sign – it points to a lovely winery and one that is on the road to solid growth.

Gush Etzion Winery

The next destination on our winery hunt was the Gush Etzion Winery, a short distance from the Yaffo Winery, once you join up on route 60. We have written before about the Gush Etzion Winery in this post, and one that we really like in many ways. The winery has been around for quite some time, some 18 years actually! The building we visited was built in 2005 and the restaurant where we enjoyed a few cups of coffee was built in 2007, along with the massive tasting room anchored by an S&P 500 corporate sized table in the middle of it! For more on the winery and its background please look at our in depth posting of the winery from last year.

The funny thing was that I did the write-up last year before I had ever visited the winery (I did note that in the posting). It was great to actually walk into the winery and take in the ambiance and see the cool steel decking that wraps around the massive tank room.

Once we had walked through the winery and waited for a large group to lave the tasting room, we were shown our way to the tasting bar which at the back of the tasting room. It was here where we started our assault on a long list of wines, 10 to be exact. There were more but many of the red wines are from the 2008 vintage, a shmitta year and I do not drink shmitta wines in Israel – not for this post.

The first thing you will realize is that Gush Etzion is one of those new up and coming wineries that is more than happy and proud to make solid to very solid white wines in Israel! Of the 10 wines we tasted, six of them were white wines. That is not to say that Gush Etzion does not have many red wines, it only means that the current crop of red wines at wineries today is the 2008 vintage – which causes me some consternation, but such is life. The nice man who was pouring for us, did go out of his way to go get us 2009 vintages for a couple of wines, so many thanks for that and many thanks to the entire Gush Etzion winery people for making us feel at home and showing us a great time!

The white wines were all B+ to B++ wines with the blessed white being a solid B+ to A- wine, along with special mentions to the Gewurztraminer and white Riesling, for their rich and good varietal flavors. The remaining red wines were really quite lovely, including the 2007 Nahal Hapirim (A-) a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot, 9% Petite Verdot, and 5% Cabernet Franc, and the 2007 Blessed Red Valley (A-) a blend of 77% Merlot and 23% Cabernet Franc. The WOW superstar wines in the tasting were the 2009 Gush Etzion Syrah, Lone Oak and the 2009 Gush Etzion Cabernet Franc, Reserve. The real adjective for the Cabernet Franc is filthy, in all the right ways, with the Syrah being WOW! The Cabernet Franc is one of those wines that is so true to its varietal roots that if you do not see it is a Cabernet Franc, just give up and walk away! The nose explodes with floral notes, rich and perfumed red fruit notes, all under a canopy of herb and green notes, with a hint of date. The mouth is wow, with massive, yet controlled mouth coating tannin, layers of ripe and concentrated black and red fruit all presented in an elegant box of cedar planks and integrated tannin. The finish is long, and mineral in its core with graphite, leather, crazy spice, and good oak influence- BRAVO!

The 2009 Gush Etzion Syrah, Lone Oak is another of those Northern California Syrah wines that happen to be popping up all over Israel. The wine is big, bold, Spicy, blue, red, and black all over – just the way a proper Syrah should be built (in my opinion). This was another Bravo wine for sure.

Visiting Yaffo and Gush Etzion winery was a great way to break in my nephew for the what faced him in the coming days, taking the winery hunt to a whole new torturous level!

Psagot Winery

The next day we started out early and were headed into the Shomron wine region of Israel. The Teperberg Winery sources much to most of its grapes from this region, and it is essentially defined as anything north of Jerusalem, meaning many of the wineries that I stated as being Judean Hills wineries, like Tanya Winery and Psagot Winery are actually Shomron wineries.

One of the clear things we saw at Teperberg and a theme that continued through the third week – was that Merlot rains supreme in the Shomron. Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz/Syrah works as well, but the best grape in the Shomron has shown to be the Merlot grape, after many tastings. The wineries we visited on Wednesday were only Shomron wineries, but we did visit more in the third week with Geller. I picked up my other nephew who was studying in Jerusalem and made our way to Psagot Winery. We have posted here a few times about the wonderful Psagot Winery in the lands of Binyamin, how it continues to improve its product and how I continue to find out how much I really appreciate the wine they make. We have posted a few times already about the Psagot Winery, so check here for more information on the winery. Josh once again was so very kind to share his wines with us, and we had the opportunity to taste through the entire line of 2010 wines along with a surprise 2011 glass of wine as well.

The winery has some 40 dunam of grapes, consisting of; Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Franc, (from Mata), Chardonnay, and Petite Verdot. The winery started in 2003 with 4000 bottles and in 2012 they made 200,000 bottles, so it has been quite a ride – to say the least! The grapes are sourced from Judean Hills, a bit from Ben Zimra vineyards, and the majority from the Shomron area. After Josh Hexter (the wine maker of Psagot Winery) showed us around the winery and then sat us down upstairs and brought over a plate of lovely cheeses and crackers and lineup of 7 wines to taste, the current lineup that is available in Israel and in the USA.

The 2011 Psagot Chardonnay was a nice B+ to A- wine with lovely tropical fruit, butterscotch, and slight burnt wood. The 2010 Cabernet Franc continues Josh’s success with this varietal! The A- wine showed great varietal characteristics, with dark red fruit, green notes, and a perfumed nose. The mouth is medium in body with red and black fruit, soft and caressing mouth coating tannins that meld together beautifully. The finish is long and tobacco based with lovely mineral and graphite influence, with a hint of leather and nice spice. The 2010 Merlot was not quite the hit that the 2009 was, with slight oxidation that blows off or slides to the back with ripe candied fruit, graphite, and green notes. The mouth and finish show black fruit soft caressing tannin, sweet cedar, with good acid, vanilla, chocolate, and butter. The 2010 Psagot Cabernet Sauvignon is a lovely perfumed wine big black fruit, with green notes, and light date. The mouth is ripe, rich, and mouth coating with big black concentrated fruit, with sweet fruit. The mineral based finish is long and leathery with hints of chocolate and flint (A-). From here, the next wines were all WOW or very close to them, starting with the 2010 Psagot Edom, a blend of 58% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc, 15% Petite Verdot, and 12% Merlot. This is a wow mouth wine with great sweet but controlled wine, rich, concentrated, layered and dark with black and red fruit, sweet cedar, and rich mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and spicy with green notes and good oak influence, with crazy tobacco, and burnished toast notes.

The next big winner was the 2010 Psagot Shiraz, though it showed light oxidation it also was lovely with big black and blue fruit, crazy spice, and lovely licorice. The mouth is rich and in your face, ripe and powerful, with big black, blue, and red fruit, that are supported by mouth coating tannin, that is surrounded by a candied fruit orchard with nice cedar layered, rich, and concentrated. The finish is long and crazy with rich mineral, spiced fruit finish, that lingers with sweet fruit, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and white pepper, with hard core black licorice and butter finish.

The final crazy winner was the 2010 Psagot Cabernet Sauvignon, Single vineyard wine. It is a big and aggressive wine with massive broad shoulders, with tons of dense fruit, layers of concentrated flavors and aromas, while holding back on date and raisin notes – BRAVO! This is a beast of a wine that will be appreciated by hardcore fans and a wine that I absolutely rave about – WOW and Bravo!

I asked Josh if her could share the 2011 Cabernet Franc with us and he was very kind to grab some of it from a barrel and let us taste it. The wine is a bit sweeter and shows more strawberry than the 2010 raspberry. The wine also shows lovely notes of cut green grass, currant, and green foliage. The wine is green and red and lovely all over. A clear A- wine that will evolve a bit more in oak and be ready for the bottle soon.

Thanks so much to Josh Hexter and the entire Psagot Winery for making time for us and making our trip a true joy.

Beit El Winery and the Lewis Pasco Winery

The next winery on the hunt was the Beit El Winery, in Beit El, a 20 minute drive from Psagot. I have had the chance and opportunity to taste Beit El wines in the past, and I was not so impressed. However, with the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon, a very solid B++ wine, I was intrigued to see more about the man. I met Hillel Manne in the bay area, of all places, when he came to see his mother! This is a man who grew up in my backyard and though the meeting was short, it planted another seed that made me think I need to get more information about this winery and the man behind it. However, if that was not enough, Lewis Pasco, the head winemaker of Recanati Winery through the 2006 vintage, contacted me and told me that he was making wine again in Israel at Beit El winery! That was it – I had to see Hillel Manne and Lewis Pasco side by side (enough said)!

Beit El winery was started by Hillel Manne in 1998 in his house and has grown bit by bit. It started by Hillel selling the grapes he grew in his vineyards and then slowly moving from a vineyard manager and grower to a winemaker. His vineyard that is right next to his newly created winery is planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Hillel recently planted a new vineyard of Carignan – that is built on a rocky mountain slope and one that is breath taking given its surroundings, and one that made crazy good wine in 2012!

In 2010 the winery produced some 10,000 bottles and with more of the Carignan coming on line and getting better, expect that or a bit more going forward. We met Hillel and his wife Nina at their house, where Lewis Pasco hangs out when he is in Israel, and after a lovely lunch, they drove us to the winery.

In 2012, Hillel Manne reached out to Lewis Pasco and asked him to help him, in a hands on manner, with Beit El’s 2012 vintage. The 2012 wines we tasted were a clear evolution from the 2010 wine we tasted to a classic Lewis Pasco wine – big, broad, aggressive, but maybe a bit more tempered than the old Lewis Pasco. Who knows, maybe experience or maybe the environment created these 2012 wines that almost perfectly mimic the Lewis Pasco of old, but with a bit more herb and control on the insane fruit forward wines of the past. In no way, am I in any way criticizing Lewis Pasco – I have no right, knowledge, or ability to do so! It is more what I sense from the wines he made in the past to the wines he has created in 2012 – they are lovely and with Hillel Manne’s fruit and fruit that Lewis has gathered from the Har Bracha area – they are lovely!

We had the chance to taste through the 2012 barrels and I do not score barrels as they evolve and though I can clearly get a sense for where the wine is and where it is going, I cannot score them like Rogov has done in the past. That said, the two wines that Lewis made for his winery; 2012 Lewis Pasco Merlot from Har Bracha, follows the my strong belief that the Shomron and especially Har Bracha’s merlot is some of the finest Merlot in all of Israel. This particular wine is the perfect combination of Lewis Pasco and Har Bracha Merlot, great acid, fantastic fruit, and sure a hint of date and prune in the background, from sweeter fruit. Still, the wine is full bodied, controlled, broad, sweet, and deep with concentrated fruit and bracing acid – so prevalent in Har Bracha fruit. Time will tell where this wine will go, with leather and more fruit showing over time, and butter, marzipan going to the background.

The next wine is a blend 64% Cabernet Sauvignon from Gvaot, 31% Merlot from Har Bracha, and 7% Cabernet Sauvignon from Shiloh – clearly Shomron grapes, and it shows in the mouth with less black and dirty fruit and more clean and dark red fruit. The wine is huge and unctuous and deep and ready to brawl, but also controlled with ripe fruit and good balance.

The next wine was the 2012 Beit El Cabernet Sauvignon, but before we could taste it, Hillel had to take off masser and terumah, tithing of fruit from Israel produce. Once that process was complete we enjoyed two wines that Lewis was part of making with Hillel, the 2012 Beit El Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2012 Beit El Carignan. The 2012 Beit El Cabernet Sauvignon showed from Lewis Pasco’s touch. Where the 2010 was very old world and herb driven, the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon is new world with dark red and black sweet and candied fruit, along with some nice green notes, but all supported by nice body lines, acid, and great structure. The wine shows long and spicy finish with her, rosemary, and spice showing. As this wine gets oak age on it (not in oak yet), it will round out and show with nice chocolate, quite nice!

Still, the killer wine of the tasting was the 2012 Beit El Carignan! WOW! What a crazy and insane wine! We had the chance to taste the 2011 Beit El Carignan and the 2012 Carignan. Sure the 2011 vintage was VERY different than the 2012 vintage, but you could still see the new 2012 Lewis Pasco all over this wine. It was sweet, ripe, but controlled and WOW, did I say WOW yet? This wine was dense, rich, layered, blue/black/red and crazy all over. This wine is a MUST buy when it comes out. If I could buy the wine now I would! It tastes awesome now, and I am sure it will only get better with a year of oak – BRAVO!!! The wine is filled with blueberry, boysenberry, and blackberry, along with crazy root beer, dried sweet ginger, and lovely dead animal doing a backstroke in my glass! The mouth is full bodied with deep unctuous crazy mouth coating tannin, huge body and great fruit. The finish is filled with cloves, cinnamon, heavy spice, and ripe balanced fruit – BRAVO!

We left the winery and went to see the beautiful Carignan rocky vineyard with Lewis Pasco, Hillel Manne, and his wife Nina Manne. Hillel planted this vineyard by hand on the slope of a lovely and rocky hillside. Hillel being an agriculturalist by profession pointed out many lovely plants that were popping up in rock walls and on the path, all over the place. MANY thanks to Hillel and his lovely wife for taking us in and sharing their story and wines and food with us, it was a joy and treat! Also many thanks to Lewis Pasco for being back in the game – the wine world missed you man- we need good wine makers to continue to push the envelope in Israel and evolve the country to the next level – thanks again.

Tanya Winery

Once we jumped back into our cars we went on the road to the last Shomron winery for the day- Tanya Winery. We have spoken about Tanya winery twice on this blog here and here as well. What can I say; Yoram Cohen is one unique individual winemaker, to say the least! He makes some great wines, wines that are richly oaked, with crazy mouth drying tannins, but one that has more lore about him than he even lets people know about. As I have written about before, Yoram is always the life of the party, and he is also makes some awesome wines. So we were super happy to hear that though Yoram would not be there to greet us, his nephew would be there to show us the visitor’s center and let us taste some of the wines.

I was really happy that we got the chance to do this because it has been a year since we have tasted through some of the Tanya’s wines and we were very interested in seeing what the winery was doing with the 2010 and 2011 vintages. We met Yoram’s nephew, who is the winery’s mashgiach, at the winery and from there we made our way to the visitor’s center. When we got there we were graciously served many wines, and at the very end of the tasting – we had a surprise visit from Yoram and as usual it was a true treat.

Tanya winery has been around since 2001 by Yoram Cohen as a family owned and run winery. In 2007 one of Chaim Feder’s friends tasted Yoram’s wines and was sure that Yoram was the next big thing in wine. Chaim and his partners met Yoram and the rest is history. They upgraded the winery’s future productivity by purchasing new equipment, plantings new vineyards, and leasing more space for the winery. The Winery is named after Yoram’s daughter Tanya, and the labels are named after his other children. The winery currently has 60 dunam of vineyards in and around Ofra, the city where Tanya winery has its winery.

Once we came to the visitors center, we seated ourselves in the tasting room and we started to enjoy a bunch of wines. The first wine we tasted was a barrel sample of the 2010 Tanya Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine was clearly out of the barrel for sometime, but the wine as still quite lovely.

We had a chance to re-taste the 2009 Tanya Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve, Halel, the sad thing is that we did not like the wine as much as we did the last time we had it, but it is still a solid red and black wine, dropping to a B+ to A- with rich tannin and obvious oak influence. The next wine was a new label for the winery, the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Shiraz, Reserve, Ivri, a blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and 15% Shiraz. The wine is unique and lovely, though it is a bit lower level than the Halel, it is still a very solid wine. The wine is filled with dried and candied red and black fruit, kirsch cherry, mouth coating tannin, lovely acid and great balance with leather, cinnamon, and insane spice bringing up the end on the rise.

Indeed the labels for Tanya are now, Ivri, Halel, Eliya, and Enosh. The next wine was the 2009 Tanya Shiraz, Reserve, Eliya. The wine is crazy good, blue, red, black, and animal all over. It is a classic Shiraz with blue and black fruit, with great spice and licorice. The Mouth is full and aggressive, with blue and black fruit, blackcurrant, earth, and dead animal, with cedar, and mouth coating tannin that is concentrated and attacking. The finish is long and with light hints of bitterness, chocolate, leather, tobacco, and licorice. A lovely wine but not a WOW wine.

The final wine is not a wine as much as it is a dessert port style wine that I thought was OK, but the real joy of this part of the tasting was the sighting of Yoram Cohen who joined us at the end of the tasting. It was great seeing the man who continues to seem to produce solid to great wines and to get a chance to better understand what makes the man tick and how he integrates his two passions into a single quest – his family and his wine.

Let me say thanks to Mr. Feder and his family and to Yoram and his family for letting us come so late in the day, during his Hanukkah vacation. The visit and tasting were a true kick as usual.

Well that wrapped up Wednesday but I cannot close this day off without reminding people about the mad drivers that hog the roads in Israel and make driving feel like a game of bumper cars or far worse. On our way back from the wineries we were literally forced off the road and into oncoming traffic by non other than an EGGED BUS! The public transportation company that takes Israeli from here to there. Well in this case they took us from here to the other side of oncoming traffic and did not even blink an eye. I have never been so horrified while driving in my life and was another example of how many times I was freaked out for my life while driving the roads of Israel. Of course this was one crazed driver and in no way am I trying to throw the entire Egged bus driver union under a bus (sorry I could not help myself – Doron you are rubbing off). Thank God I survived this and many other harrowing experiences that really should never had occurred, but who am I to dictate how people drive in Israel. This is more of a warning to Americans when driving in Israel, keep your distance and ignore the madness because it is something you cannot control. With that PSA completed, we now return to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.
The next and final day on this week, started off as a simple idea, go to two wineries and head back home, but it turned into a lot more than that rather quickly. The day started off pretty innocently, with me telling my nephew about this wonderful place on earth called Ein Gedi and the dead sea, which really had nothing to do with my agenda – again that being wineries and wine and more wineries. However, as I am oft to do, I fell for the – we can do it slogan, and we tried to slam a quick trek to the main water fall of Ein Gedi into our travels to the most southern section of the Jerusalem Hills – called Arad. We have often spoken about the sensational winery called Yatir! I do not normally drink their wines given their price and all, however, as we spoke at the winery with the head wine maker of Yatir, Eran Goldwasser, Yatir is one of those wineries whose kosher product can stand on its own in the worldwide wine community, without the needing to bow to conventional wisdom and limit themselves to solely selling to the kosher community. More on that in a moment. Anyway, as is the case often, man plans and god laughs, I was hoping to get in and out and sure enough we got in – but it took forever to get OUT!!! I blame my nephew 100% on this one! First of all, it was not on the plans. Second of all, we went the wrong way! Yeah the walk actually has a direction to manage the human foot flow! Either way, we were doomed the second we stepped out of the car. With the number of humans going through there at the same time – it was inevitable that we would run into a Pkak Tnu’a in the middle of a national park – bad idea!!

Once the detour was completed and we returned to the car we knew we were going to be late no matter how fast we drove. Of course, I forgot that the last 10 miles of this drive were up and down a mountain side, from negative sea level (the dead sea is one of the lowest places on earth) to thousands of feet above sea water and than back to sea level – yeay!!! By the time we arrived at our first destination we had to be a good 20+ minutes late and that meant we skipped wines later on – more on that soon.

Midbar Winery

So, I have teased about this winery long enough, and because it was way too long I posted it in a separate thread on all things Midbar Winery and Yaacov Oryah. Of course I cannot help but state that the entire time we spent there I was in awe of the man and his abilities. Still, I hope my wine notes are unbiased as much as possible. Also, I have too great a picture of my nephew in front of the Midbar Winery to not post it! Also, the fact that there are no red wines in the post is not a reflection in any way on Yaacov, but rather a reflection of our tardiness – hint, hint? Enough said?

My many thanks to Yaacov and to the Midbar winery for taking his time to share his knowledge with us and sharing his hard work with us as well.

Yatir Winery

From there we drove the 3 kilometers that separate the Midbar Winery (in the outskirts of Arad) from Yatir Winery (in Tel Arad). You can find out more about our Yatir antics in my other posting here. They truly are one of the most consistent wineries in Israel and one whose product does not ail from the lack of high-end product. All their wines are solid and impressive and can match up well against non-kosher wineries – the world around. Proof was the collection of guy-trip wine lovers from Finland! They love Yatir wines and had to visit the winery. We felt so honored to have the entire tour and then the full tasting of the current Yatir line of wines with the winery’s head winemaker Eran Goldwasser. He was the consummate gentleman and such a humble man – what a breath of fresh air, when compared to some other egomaniac winemakers that incorrectly think they are close to his equal.

It was a grand time and many thanks to Eti, Eran Goldwasser, and Adam Montefiore.

It was at this point that my phone rings – I am not lying, which was constant in Israel, either it rang or buzzed (text message). Gabriel Geller was calling to tell me that there was a wine event in Ashdod! Hey! That is along the way home, unless we wanted to go to Livni, which was not an option, as he was not in the country at that time. So, Ashdod it was! We had a heck of a time finding the event hall, which was actually the gymnasium of a college – there in Ashdod. However, once we found the place we were hooked! There was nothing but kosher wines and it was lovely! I really cannot go through all the wines I had there – that would be another 1000 or more words, as if this is not long enough already! The highlights were:

• 2009 Assemblage wines – the 2009 Orange rind riddled Tzafit was indeed nice, but its 2009 brethren, the Eitan and Reichan we so-so.
• 2011 Recanati Rose – I felt tannin, toast, and animal on this wine. Gil Shatsberg (the head winemaker at Recanati) was shocked and said it was a bad bottle. Personally, I liked it that way and more complex and real Rose – wonder what others have thought of this wine?
• 2004 Ben Haim Merlot, Heritage – best Ben Haim I have ever had, A- score, and really the only real drinkable wine I have ever tasted from this winery. Maybe I have tasted over the hill vintages or bad bottles, but this old vintage was perfect, alive, and lovely. Very tannic, but losing steam in the fruit category – so drink now!!
• The Ugav wines and the Nikanor reserve wines from Jerusalem Gold Winery. All of these are VERY SOLID B+ or B+ to A- wines that all rate for both QPR and quality – Bravo! A small winery showing that good wine can be made at a reasonable price. These are not Yatir wines, but they do not cost that much either. Solid wines for a great price!
• Kinor David wines – this requires a more involved posting. David Edri is one unique individual! His 8 year port (really sweet wine not a port) was lovely! The dry red wines were OK.

There you have it! My second week in Israel – whew! I will expand on some of these wineries in follow up posts with more tasting notes (that is not a threat do not worry).

As I stated in my previous post, my heart was in the Shabbos but my mind was on my trip that I was taking to New York. All the thinking did not help make the trip any less miserable. Once again I have proven to myself that flying to New York is hard enough, doing a stop in between is miserable and downright idiotic. Lets take a step back here and explain the situation. The Jewish Week holds a wine tasting every year, showing of the top kosher wines they thought made an impression to the wine judges. This past year, they tasted through some 400+ wines and came up with a long list of wines, many of which I like and some I did not like. Anyway, the tasting was this past Sunday, the 3rd of March, 2013, at 1 PM. To get there from the west coast, it would mean either sleeping in NY for Shabbos (not an option), or flying out Saturday Night.

I LOVE Jet Blue, but they canceled flying out Saturday night from San Jose airport, and now only fly out Saturday night from SFO – AHHH!!! So, the only other option was Delta, which I should never have done, because it meant a stopover in Atlanta. The idea was to fly out by 10:45 PM, have an hour in Atlanta and hop on the 9 AM flight to NY. That all sounded OK, no storms in the forecasts, no crazy storm trackers or watcher on the news – so it looked like I was in the clear! Not so fat, turns out that there may not be Godly reasons to not fly – but Delta is more than capable of creating man-made disasters – all by itself!

I arrived to the airport with an hour to go, and by the time we took off, I was in the airport for some 3 and a half hours! AHH!! Yep, you guessed it Delta screwed up and lost a tire on landing so the plane could not take us to Atlanta. By the time they fixed the plane, the man fixing it broke another part and we had to deplane and get on another plane – a gate over. By the time that plane was fueled and had everyone’s bags repacked – we were two+ hours behind. I slept like a baby on the plane, but by the time we arrived in Atlanta – I knew I was cooked. The connecting flight was 5 terminals over and the “plane train” could not get me there in time to save my bacon. So here comes the best part – I arrive at the gate and the plane was not departed, but the man would not let me on – no matter how much I screamed and begged. However, he gave me a printed ticket (I have not sen one of those in years) and told me to run to the next terminal where the Laguardia flight was boarding. I ran like a mad man, and in the interim broke my hand luggage! One thing after another – I know! Anyway, as I get to the gate the lady tells me that there is no such flight, I say what – the man told me there was a plane boarding now! She says – oh sure – that is one gate over, the dude gave me the incorrect gate number! Anyway, she walks me over and I start talking to the gate agent who tells me – once again – sorry the gate is closed and the plane is leaving. This is when the other gate woman turns into SuperWoman! She says – OH NO – this poor man has been through enough. She swipes her card, opens the gate door, walks me down the jetway – and bangs on the plane door! Seriously! She screams – open this door!

Now – let me please recap, I have a ticket – printed ticket, for JFK. I am trying to board a plane for which I have NO TICKET – none whatsoever! Actually I have a ticket for a totally different airport! Think of me as one of those lost souls dropped on a plane. That was me! Of course, I have no checked luggage – for two days, but still, this is COOL! The unflappable stewardess, behind a massive closed door replies; the door is closed. The gate attendant is equally unflappable, and she fires back (sorry bad use of verbage) open the door, you forgot this guy! Will you believe – the stewardess blinked and opened the door! Heck these folks were half way through the security demonstration! I was told grab any seat – we need to move. I grabbed the first window seat I could find, and promptly went back to sleep! WOW!! By the time I land in Laguardia, I had two hours to go and once I finished davening, I hopped in a taxi and found my way to the City Winery.

So, what is the City Winery, to be honest I did not get into all that with the Michael Dorf, Chief Executive Officer or David Lecomte, Chief Wine Maker. However, the basic premise of the City Winery, in the words of Dorf; In summary, our brand is starting to represent the image of being the highest-end experience combining a culinary and cultural offering. We are paying attention to our image from the time the consumer connects digitally through their onsite visit to the reputation and memory which lives on.

The winery makes wine – every year, they import either juice or grapes and make the wines, 80% non-kosher and 20% kosher (and that number is growing). They make some crazy good kosher wines and they are available only at the winery. I did not get the chance to taste these wines before, other than a few barrel tastings with Yanky Drew two years ago. So, it was great to taste these wines at the wine tasting – more on that soon.

The winery is a crush winery – which makes wines for the wine lovers, allowing them to buy partial parts of a barrel or an entire barrel, and it allows them to be part of the wine-making experience. The entire effort is overseen by the head winemaker – David Lecomte, a Frenchmen in NY, with a love for wine and all things winemaking. Yanky is the associate wine maker and the cellar rat for the kosher wine barrels.

However, wine is not the only part of the City Winery, Dorf is also a famous music promoter and that is the second arm of the winery – music. The intimate setting allows for small, close knit interactions with musicians that come to the venue to rock out or jazz out and enjoy the crowds of music fans, drinking wine made at the winery and beer made at the winery. It is a dual armed business that makes for a great combination of good times and libations – what more could anyone ask for?

The Jewish Week is a magazine that has been part of Jewish New York scene for some many years, and reaches some 70,000 households, in the New York areas. This tasting is a bit more pedestrian than the Gotham Wine Tasting, but Costas canceled the event this year, and that meant there was no other cross-importer wine tasting other than this one. When I say pedestrian, I mean that the wines showed here are not the top wines of the wineries and importers. Some brought the expensive and high-end wines and some brought middling wines, but in the end the wine event turned out well for the Jewish Week. There was no VIP like event that Costas throws before the Gotham wine tasting – but such is life.

I arrived to the winery and sure enough the room was abuzz with folks setting up wines and tables and I made a bee-line to Shai Ghermezian, the Vice President of Allied Importers. I did that because I wanted to say hello to him and ask him if I could dump my bag under his table, but before I could find him, I found Shlomo and Gary Landsman at the Royal Wines table and they were very kind to let me stash my bag under their wine table! Thanks guys!!!! After that I went on my rampage and being 40 minutes early, I had the time to take pictures of every bottle I was going to taste this afternoon. This time I did a very good job of using the wine list – that Yossie had on his website, and preset the wines I wanted to taste and took pictures of those wines and a few others I hoped to taste – if I had time, which I did. Three hours is not a lot of time to taste through a bunch of wines, but thankfully, I had tastes many of these wines in Israel, and I was focused here on the Israeli wines I missed in Israel (like Ramat Naftaly and Hebron Heights), and non-Israeli wines that were imported by others that do not have the name of Royal.

Once I was finished photographing all the bottles, I had some 15 minutes and I started tasting wines a bit early – at least at Shai’s table. That was where I got the chance to taste the highly controversial 2011 Gvaot Pinot Noir. I loved the 2010 Gvaot Pinot Noir and many in Israel were screaming that the wine was clearly closed and not ready for drinking – but having drunk it now two times – I think it is a bit closed, but if given time or if you drink it right after opening it, the wine’s abilities come through clearly. I think it is not as good as the 2010, but as good as the 2009 for sure.

I then tasted the second best white wine in the blind tasting that the Jewish Week judges scored; the 2012 Lanzur Sauvignon Blanc, and I found it to be OK, but there was a far better option in the 2011 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc – a nice Blanc indeed. It is not as good as the 2012 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc – but a nice wine anyway.

I moved on to best table in the event, really part of bar, the City Winery wines. There were six wines to taste, and all of them are nice, excpet for the 2011 Oregon Pinot Noir that was a bit too thin and not really exciting. One thing I will note about all the wines at the City Winery table/bar is that the wines all show certain characteristics – that though they are nice tells me a lot about how those wines are made. The wines, all the wines, show a clear expression of mineral, graphite, crazy buckets of acid, and lots of tannin. I am not sure what Lecomte is doing exactly, but to have every wine taste and act the same – means one of two things – either the vineyards are managing to his exacting specifications, or the wines are slightly managed instead. Either way, I could care less, the wines are lovely and clearly managed, but if that makes Lecomte happy, that works for me. These wines are not flabby, they are not overly ripe, they are managed well, they are bright, acidic, well balanced, and full of mineral and mouth coating tannins. So, if you are looking for a classic Cali Cab – move on, but if you are looking for a well built Cali Cab – this table may well be to your likening, it was to mine.

From there I made my way to the Happy Hearts table to taste through the Hevron Heights wines – wines that are hit or miss for me at times. A couple of time I taste them – they are awesome and sometimes they are all over the place. This time they were OK, but they too seem to be colluding with the rest of Israel on their 2009 sweet tooth. The biggest disappointment for me at the table was the 2011 Elone Mamre Chardonnay. I LOVED the 2010 Hevron Heights Elone Mamre Chardonnay, the 2011 is but a shadow of that great wine and one that is not worth the price, for me anyway. The best wine was the 2005 Hevron Heights Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Herman, Reserve. The 2010 Odem Cabernet Franc, Reserve was also a letdown, but such is life.

From there I made my way to the Israeli Wine Direct table. They are currently importing a few kosher wineries, including the wines from Agur winery, a winery I visited and loved, but there were many wines that I di not get a chance to taste with Shuki (the head wine maker and owner) in Israel – that visit requires an entire post on its own – soon I hope. One thing I can say about Agur winery – they make sure bet wines, that are controlled, exquisite, and unique – bravo!! Besides the Agur wines, I got the chance to taste some Ramot Naftaly wines, a winery that I missed when I was in the north on my last Israel trip. I liked them, and the wines being imported are clearly the classic wines, but many think his best wines are the more esoteric wines, the Malbec, Barbera, and Petite Verdot, wines that the winery is not exporting. I liked the classic French varietal wines and too bad if I feel differently than others – they were nice and controlled – and that is saying something. Clearly the IWD folks are climbing an uphill battle being yet another Israeli wine importer – but they have chosen great wineries and they have a very cool card in their hand – that will soon be one of the most talked about “secrets” in Israel – BRAVO!!

From there I went to the Victor table and I had a love hate relationship. The importer is doing smart things, they are bringing in wines I tasted in Isarel, including Ella Valley wines (of which I spoke about here), and Ugav wines from the Jerusalem Gold Hills winery – which is a crazy good QPR set of wines. They also sell some French wines, which I could care less about and then they bring in a great bottle of 2011 O’Dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc – which was awesome! They also bring in some so-so wines from Argentina and Italy – which do not really float my boat – but are fine enough entry level wines.

As usual, Recanati continues to create great wines that show control, finesse, and have a great QPR! The new 2012 Rose is nice, and though I have tasted all of the rest of these wines in Israel, I tasted the 2009 merlot reserve and the 2010 cab reserve and they are all showing quite nicely.

From there I made my way to the Red Garden table. This table has some great ideas, but not many great implementations. The Tanya wines bored me essentially with his free hand on the oak and the fruit – way too out there for me. Yoram needs to start applying some control on his wines, in my opinion. The Tel Arza wines will make newbies very happy. They have some clearly good ideas, but the execution on them is lacking. The real winners at the table were two wines, one from Livni and one from Tura. I got a chance to visit Tura on my trip (not yet written up) and missed Livni. The Livni Reed Pipe, is a very strange blend of Cab and Pinot Noir, and other than the mystery man of Kinor David, I have not seen this blend anywhere else.

From there, I found my way to the River table – and this was a real treat! I say this, not withstanding the fact that I had to taste yet another Kadesh Barnea wine. I must say that for a wine snob, like myself, Kadesh Barnea does not make a wine that I like – period. This tasting did nothing to change my mind, even though they made a Petite Verdot that many thought was OK. To me, I will pass thanks. Others think that the winery is the bomb, because they make wines that are so fruit forward, fruit bomb, new world, overly ripe, etc that it is easy to drink. It is like being served a platter of fruit – no finesse, no control, just overripe fruit in a bottle – not for me.

The real treat at the table were the three bottles of wine from the now famous Weiss Brothers! I first met them when Benyo introduced them to me at his now famous Shabbaton, where I got to taste the 1-2 punch and Syraph. Since then they have made the Shirah winery and are producing great wines. I was one of the first to buy two of the wines at the tasting, but having not tasted the two newest ones, I was excited to taste them at the event. The 2010 Shirah Brodeux is awesome! It is a classic Bordeaux blend (with a great name) and a bit of Syrah for styling. The next wine was the 2011 Shirah Coalition – which was SICK (that is good). Finally, there was the newly bottled 2010 Thompson Syrah/Mourvedre – which is a bit out of flux right now, but will soon come down to planet earth – do not open this one for a year.

From there the event was winding down and I ran around trying to get odds and ends to taste, including the newly minted 2009 Carmel Limited. That wine is over the top – for sure, but it is so well made that it covers up the overly ripe fruit. The 2009 Meron is not overripe and black and blue as they come. The 2009 Odem Limited (Odem Mountain Winery’s flagship wine), and it was not as well built as the Carmel limited – and it showed.

Well that is the story of all the wines, but I have yet to get to the story about the event. As I was getting ready to come to NY for this trip, I bought tickets to this event for 20 bucks. It was at this moment that I knew we were screwed. Why? Because they were selling them like hotcakes, and there was not going to be enough room. In the past few years, from what I hear, the event was calm, lightly attended and normal. For this reason many of the tables did not bring their best wines – because they thought it was going to be another snooze fest. WOW were they wrong on both accounts! They forgot to take into account that Gotham was not throwing their wine extravaganza – and therefore, this was it for cross importer wine tasting. Everyone I spoke to told me so and it was a madhouse! I mean that it was as close to a fire hazard as it gets. GOD Forbid, if anyone pulled a fire alarm at the height of the event, may would have been trampled. I could not move without shoving people, and that is not my style. So, I waited and waited and waited till I could move a few feet. It was as busy as the deck on the titanic – as it was going down. The event itself was OK, and well attended, and they even tried to give out prizes, but no one could hear each other over the din of the sheer mass of people. Insane!

Next year – they really must control the ticket count of move to a larger venue, I seriously wonder if the event was a fire code violation. In any event, the co-coordinators tried their best, but hat can you do when you sell so many tickets for half price? The good news for me was that I barely made it there, but I made it so far in advance that I could get started and then move through the madness at a normal pace. I knew exactly what I wanted to taste and where the bottles were, so I could move precisely to where I needed to go and not move all around. Still, for the rest of the crowd – all I can say is they had a great time and though they were crowded, the folks were happy. They were eating great cheese, drinking nice wines, and overall enjoying themselves.

So there you have it – the wine event was one that I hope to be part of again next year, if they let me in – LOL!! I also hope that Gotham has not given up on their own wine event – but hey either way we have a plan.

I tasted a few more wines from Allied – not at the tasting, but I put them down below, including a chance to taste again a 2010 Gvaot Pinot Noir and the newly released 2011 Gvaot Pinot Noir, along with a Borgo Reale Chianti, two of the recently released Saslove Cabernet Sauvignon, and a bottle of 2010 Gvaot – Vineyards dance Herodian. Thanks to Shai and his lovely wife for hosting me at their home for that tasting. It was great to just hangout and talk, something we could not pull off at the event as it was way too busy.

After the tasting – we had the unique opportunity to taste through some of the kosher barrels at the City Winery, with a few of the wine nuts from Rogov’s forum, along with Yanky Drew and David Lecomte. Many thanks to the winery! There is a nice Argentina Malbec coming soon and a few other winners, including a very nice new Alder Spring Cabernet Franc and an interesting Chalk Hill Petite Verdot. Thanks so much to the Jewish Week and the City Winery for putting on the event and the tastings. The wine notes are below in the order they were tasted.

2012 Lanzur Sauvignon Blanc – Score: B to B+ (mevushal) (QPR)
The nose on this wine is nice and grassy with straw, white fruit that is perfumed under a canopy of floral notes. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is nice and bright with good grapefruit, fun gooseberry, peach, with stone fruit, along with slate and mineral. The finish is long and herbal with more mineral, grassy green and herbaceous notes abound, with good acid, with bitter notes of pith that linger.

2011 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc, Terra – Score: B+ to A- (QPR)
The nose screams with stone fruit, peach, mineral, kiwi, and ripe fruit. The mouth is rich and ripe with big bright fruit, no herbaceous notes, no bitterness, nice crazy grapefruit, ripe gooseberry, and ripe Meyer lemon, all wrapped in a big lush and rich mouth. The finish is long and lingering and lovely with crazy acid, nice mineral, ripe fig, lovely tropical fruit, and pineapple. This is a great bottle for a crazy good price – BRAVO! This is not the crazy acid bomb of the 2012 – but it is a ripe and lovely wine that is nicely balanced and well worth getting it.

2009 City Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, Obsidian Ridge – Score: A-
This cabernet is classic in nature and rich and lovely, but a bit expensive. The nose explodes with graphite, mineral, blackberry, dark cherry, and nice ripe fruit. The mouth is big and aggressive, with concentrated and layered fruit that is tart, zesty, and ripe raspberry, cassis, black plum, all wrapped up in nice sweet cedar, and crazy mouth coating tannin. The finish is nice and long with chocolate, tobacco, crazy butterscotch, and an aggressive attack of fruit, nice ripe and controlled body, good balancing acid, and vanilla. This will be a broken record but this wine may show a fair amount of acid one that needs time to settle, so do not be shocked when you open this wine expecting a nice fat California Cabernet. This is a ripe and bright Cabernet that is nice and edgy now, but if you want a bit calmer of a wine – wait a year or two.

2010 City Winery Cabernet Franc, Alder Springs – Score: A-
This is a nice green and balanced Cabernet Franc, a good example of what a ripe and balanced Franc can be. The nose on this wine is ripe with green fruit, green notes, mounds of graphite and mineral, herb, and bell pepper. The mouth is lovely with crazy gripping tannin, rich and layered green notes, ripe raspberry, plum, mineral core, great balancing acid, all wrapped up in almost no oak influence, other than in the rounded mouth. The finish is long and earthy, with chocolate, slate, zesty fruit, zesty ripe strawberry, and cherry linger. This is a broken record already (and just wait), this wine has a fair amount of acid and edginess, and yes live with it. This is not a wine that I would expect to be around in four or five years, but in a year the tannins will calm and the acid will integrate better with the wine’s body. Bravo a nice lush green and red wine with a good acid and mineral core!

2011 City Winery Pinot Noir, Oregon Hyland Vineyard – Score: B+
This wine was the only of the six City Winery wines that I tastes that I was not so impressed with, though it is a nice wine all the same. The nose on this ruby colored wine is filled with coffee, toffee, forest floor, and dried currants. The mouth is weird with an attack of zesty fruit, soft tannin, and dirty and round mouth, with strawberry, Kirshe cherry, with almost peach flavors. The finish is long and mineral with controlled oak, bright and crazy acid, vanilla, light toast, and hints of tar linger. This wine shows crazy acid, but it is not a wine that I think will improve greatly, though it does need a bit of time to settle and integrate to hide its current lacking.

2009 City Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, Bettonelli Vineyards – Score: A- ++
This may well have been the best Cabernet at the Jewish Week tasting – without question (though for full disclosure, Royal was pouring a better Cabernet – by a touch; the 2010 Covenant Cab, but I did not taste it again). The wine’s nose is super rich in mineral, graphite, but showing great control, along with blackberry, raspberry, and blackcurrant. The mouth on this full bodied, layered, and ripe wine with concentrated fruit – but shockingly controlled and finessed, with ripe cassis, black plum, sweet cedar, and mounds of fine tannin that are mouth coating and caressing. The finish is long and perfectly balanced with nice mineral, tobacco, chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, cedar box, and crazy zesty and tart fruit. This wine made me stand up and take notice, for its insane finesse, mineral core, and balancing acid, that if I removed the first three characteristics, I would have sworn it was an Israeli Cabernet. Bravo and what a difference it is between flat/fat/flabby/overly ripe Israeli wines and this one. Also, this wine differs greatly from its younger brother (2010 vintage), which shows less finesse and more sledgehammer.

2010 City Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, Bettonelli Vineyards – Score: A- ++
This vintage is more comparable to a mad sledgehammer wielding man, which is so very different than its younger brother, which is more comparable to a professional ballerina to the nutcracker in a china shop. The nose on this wine shows more mineral than its 2009 vintage – which is hard to imagine; in and of itself. The mouth on this wine is rich, massive, and layered, and yet aggressive, but still showing finesse, with blackberry, black plum, without zesty fruit, that has massive mouth coating tannins, and all wrapped up in sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy, that is balanced with good acidity, with far less mineral on the finish, nice crazy black pepper, nice malted chocolate, tar, tobacco, and nice ripe black fruit. This wine is the one that I have tasted this whole year that tastes as controlled, finessed, yet massive and layered and concentrated as the 2010 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon – BRAVO! This wine is ready to go now and is integrated perfectly without burning acid that needs to settle.

2010 City Winery Syrah, Alder Springs Vineyard – Score: A- ++
WOW this wine is as close to the Shirah PTTP and the Brobdignagian Syrah as it gets, because the grapes used for these wines are sourced from the same area. The nose on this purple black wine is shocking – BLACK and as opaque as it gets. The nose is rich and ripe with roasted meat (AKA dead animal), graphite, charcoal, licorice, toast, and spice. The mouth on this full bodied wine is big, aggressive, black and blue and red wine with a layered and rich attack of good ripe boysenberry, blueberry, blackberry, cassis, pipe tobacco, all wrapped up in sweet ripe fruit, sweet cedar box, mouth coating tannin, and ripe chewy black plum. The finish is long and rich with tobacco, tar, chocolate, and mineral – BRAVO! This is a big, ripe, round, aggressive wine with black and blue fruit, with nice notes of tar and roasted animal – very similar to other Cali Syrahs – with good acid, though the only City Winery wine that showed obvious in your face acid.

2010 Odem Cabernet Franc, Reserve – Score: B+
This was a wine that I did not taste when I was in Israel, and it is the winery’s first release of a single Cabernet Franc varietal release. The wine’s nose shows tobacco, charcoal, and fruit. The medium bodied mouth is rich in mint, blackberry, black cherry, raspberry, wrapped in sweet cedar and mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and green with chocolate, good body, tobacco, and herbs.

2011 Hevron Heights Chardonnay, Elone Mamre – Score: B to B+
What a real let down for this wine, the 2010 was a lovely, rich, and luscious wine and this one is thin and boring. The nose on this wine is toasty, with peach, stone fruit, and apricot. The mouth on this light bodied wine is missing life, it is thin, not there and really a miss, with summer fruit, no tropical fruit, fig, and toady oak. The finish is medium long with nice mineral, tart fruit, and good acid.

2005 Hevron Heights Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Hevron, Reserve – Score: A-
This is a lovely rich and toasty nose with good mineral, earth, and ripe black fruit. The wine has a charcoal and tobacco core with more crazy mineral, medium body, good mouth coating and lingering tannin, along with sweet cedar, yet nicely controlled, with ripe blackberry, sweet on the edge fruit, with black plum, along with an attack of candied, liquor styled, ripe, and layered fruit. The finish is long and mineral with attacking fruit, chocolate, tobacco, and more dark fruit lingers.

2009 Hevron Heights Makhpelah – Score: B+
This wine is interesting with its massive charcoal bomb, along with black pepper, cloves, blackberry, and dark cherry. The mouth is medium in weight with an attacking body of concentrated fruit, black cherry, sweeter notes than the other Hevron Heights wines (nothing new for the 2009 vintage), but still a bit controlled with black plum, and sweet cedar box, and raspberry. The finish is long with nice chocolate, tobacco, and layers of fruit, all showing an interesting body with sweet fruit, fig, and spice.

2007 Hevron Heights Reserve – Score: B++
The rich nose on this wine shows blackberry, plum, along with liquor and candied fruit. The mouth is very Israeli and new world, AKA fruit bomb, with layers of concentrated fruit, rich mouth coating tannin, with overripe blackberry, black cherry, raspberry, blackcurrant, and sweet cedar, with good acid. The finish is long and spicy with good complexity, mineral, graphite, zesty fruit, black and red fruit lingers with chocolate, vanilla, spice, and tannin.

2011 Agur Kessem – Score: A-
This blend of 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Petite Verdot is a classic Bordeaux blend and one that came out quite nicely. The wine is controlled, not overly sweet, with good ripe fruit and spice. The nose is rich and expressive and perfumed with massive green notes, followed by a nice floral hit, and then forest fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and layered with nice blackberry, cherry, asparagus, crazy rich tannin, and mounds of leafy tobacco, all wrapped up with nice sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with good cloves and black pepper, cassis, raspberry, tar, and a hint of animal, licorice, and vanilla, and more crazy spice. I continue to be impressed by Shuki’s abilities and his great wines.

2010 Agur Special Reserve – Score: A-
This blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Petite Verdot is a classic Bordeaux blend and one that came out quite nicely. The nose starts out with big bold notes of charcoal, mineral, blackberry, and black cherry. The mouth on this full bodied blend is filled with concentrated fruit, raspberry, currant, mineral, and layers of sweet fruit, without herb and green notes, while being balanced with good acidity and rich and lingering mouth coating tannin, and sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with good cloves, black pepper, chocolate, vanilla, leather, nice leafy tobacco, tar, all in great balance – BRAVO!!!

2010 Ramot Naftaly Duet – Score: A-
This is a winery I missed in my last trip to Israel and one I hope to get to in my next return. The wine is a blend of 60% Cabernet and 40% Merlot. The nose shows Cabernet stylings with great graphite, good control, green notes, pipe tobacco, and blackberry. The mouth is rich and layered and aggressive, with good control, nice black pepper, great spice, cherry, with baskets of cassis, full frontal tannin attack, and sweet cedar. This is a wine that some will see as way too out there, but I think it is a wine that with time will come into great balance and one that I would enjoy now. The finish is long and spicy, with nice green notes, good acidity, more spice, chocolate, vanilla, and layers of lingering red and black fruit.

2010 Ramot Naftaly Shiraz – Score: A-
This is a winery I missed in my last trip to Israel and one I hope to get to in my next return. The wine is classical in its Israeli stylings and its Shiraz style. The nose is ripe with sweet fruit, black pepper, and lots of roasted meat, pipe tobacco, and mineral. The mouth is ripe with blueberry, blackberry, with a rich attack and blue and black fruit, full bodied with ripe controlled fruit, boysenberry, sweet black plum, spice, and tannins that linger long and sweet tobacco and cedar that warp it all up. The finish is long and spicy with licorice, leather, chocolate, tar, and rich fruit.

2010 Ramot Naftaly Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: B++
The nose on this wine is filled with crazy tobacco, graphite nose, and slight sweet notes. The mouth is medium plus in weight with rich and ripe black fruit, cassis, blackberry, along with nice tannin, rich fruit, zesty and sweet raspberry, and good wood. The finish is long with mineral, bitter pith, and good oak influence.

2010 Ella Valley Chardonnay – Score: B+
This was not the wine that I was expecting, which is a shame because I love Ella Valley wines. The nose is rich and filled with peach, apricot, and fig. The mouth is nice in body with good tropical fruit, pineapple, melon, kiwi, grapefruit, lemon, green apple, and nice oak. The finish is long and spicy with fruit, nice spice, bitter notes, mineral, slate, light floral notes, and a lingering sensation of honeysuckle.

2011 O’dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc – Score: B+ to A-
I loved this Sauvignon Blanc – it may not be as rich and layered as the 2011 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc or as balanced as the Covenant Sauvignon Blanc – but this wine is so insanely intense and so over the top acidic that it almost reminded me of the crazy 2012 Teperberg Sauvignon Blanc – that is lemon juice in a wine bottle. The nose explodes with crazy gooseberry, piss, kiwi, and crazy acidity, combined with ABSOLUTELY insane cut grass notes. The wine is medium in body with good tart and acidic attack of rich fruit, grapefruit, melon, bright acidity, and stone fruit that screams. The finish is long with green grass, slate, and hints of bitter notes. Quite a nice wine indeed.

2012 Recanati Rose – Score: B+ (QPR)
This is one of the nice rose wines out there that is really fun made of Barbera and merlot grapes. The nose starts off with nice white stone fruit, raspberry, bright notes, strawberry, and cranberry. The mouth on this wine shows a nice body of cherry, more acid, good white fruit, yellow apple, kiwi, and great acid that with grapefruit and lemon. The finish is long and tangy and tart with nice spice, good control, with good dirt and earth, slate, and mineral. A nice balanced wine that shows off no bitterness, good body, nice fruit, and nice mineral – good QPR.

2010 Recanati Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A- (QPR)
This once again proves that Recanati knows what it is doing and how it continues to be a QPR leader. The nose starts off green and nice with baskets of black fruit along with green fruit, while being controlled along with leafy tobacco. The mouth is full bodied and ripe with good control, lovely elegance, not an overripe fruit bomb, nor a attack force – but rather a controlled, mouth coating, elegant wine, with layers of fruit, good mouth coating tannin that rises, with good chocolate, sweet cedar, and graphite – Bravo – what a lovely mouth. The finish is long, spicy, and lingering with more black and green fruit, chocolate, mineral, nice aggressiveness, tobacco, and a hint of pith.

2009 Recanati Merlot, Reserve – Score: B++
Another great wine from Recanati with crazy tobacco, mineral, rich green notes, nice graphite, and light hints of dark overripe fruit. The medium+ bodied wine shows a mouth that is controlled but only so much, with blackberry, cassis, crazy black plum – almost zesty, hints of date appear, with black/red forest berries, nice mouth coating tannin and sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with good chocolate, tobacco, mineral, graphite, with green fruit and mineral lingering long.

2010 Tel Arza Malbec – Score: B to B+
The nose is nice and controlled with great animal notes, mineral, graphite, date, and black forest fruit. The mouth on the medium bodied wine turns overripe and sweet with date, black cherry, blackberry, plum, and cranberry, with sweet cedar, and concentrated fruit, with insane tannin. The finish is long and spicy with animal lingering, deep earthy notes, coffee, graphite, along with green and red fruit.

2011 Tel Arza Petit Verdot – Score: B
The nose is filled with deeply tilled earth, forest floor, candied cherry, and date. The mouth is way over the top with sweet leanings, date, raisin, blackcurrant, with cedar and tannin. The finish is long and earthy with sweet candied cherry, candied Kirsch, coffee, oriental spice, and cloves.

2011 Tel Arza Mediterranean Blend – Score: B to B+
This wine is a blend of Petite Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and yes Cote de Rhone – WHAT! That was what I was told when I asked for the varietals in this wine, yeah – so this is a wine made up of PV, Cab, and many other southern France grapes. The nose on this wine shows sweet notes, roasted animal, along with Kirsch cherry and raspberry. The mouth on this interesting blend has a medium+ body with crazy tannin, along with a rich attack of fruit, candied cherry, tons of currant and cranberry. The finish is long and spicy with coffee, crazy spice, oriental spices, cloves, black pepper, chocolate, with tannin that rises with rich mineral and graphite.

2010 Tanya Cabernet Sauvignon, Ivri – Score: B
The wine is a classic over the top Cabernet with candied fruit, date, and a hint of cherry. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is aggressive, over the top with sweet overripe fruit, chocolate, candied cherry, crazy mouth drying tannin, blackberry, and tar. The finish is long and spicy with a deep-rooted attack of earth, mineral, spices, cloves, coffee, and black fruit.

2010 Tanya Merlot, Ivri – Score: B to B+
The nose is a bit more controlled than the Cabernet, but it is still a bit too far out there, with nice green notes, and plum. The mouth is medium in weight with crazy mouth drying tannin, along with a fruit assault of blackberry, blackcurrant, charcoal, plum, and cedar. The finish is long and spicy, with chocolate, tobacco, and mineral.

2010 Tanya Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz Blend, Ivri – Score: B
The nose on this wine is very closed and not easily accessible, the wine is a blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and 5% Shiraz. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is super fruity with over the top candied fruit, candied and liquored plum, candied cherry, raspberry, and blackberry jam with cedar and more Tanya styled mouth drying tannin. The finish is long and spicy with far more sweet notes and spice – not for me.

2010 Tura Mountain Peak – Score: A-
This wine to me was one of the clear winners of the tasting to me, outside of the crazy good City Winery wines). The wine is a blend of 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Merlot, 21% Petit Verdot, and 10% Cabernet Franc. The nose on this black colored wine is a rich nose of graphite, mineral, blackberry, and slate. This wine is a full bodied and WOW wine to me, with unbelievable finesse, rich layered concentrated fruit of plum, great blackberry fruit, black cherry, along with pipe tobacco, lovely mouth coating tannin that linger and caress, with good oak influence. The finish is long and spicy with rich layers of dark fruit, chocolate, coffee, slate, herb, and rich spice, cloves, and oriental spices – BRAVO!!!

2010 Livni Cabernet Sauvignon, Sdeh Calev, Single Vineyard – Score: B to B+
This wine continues the style of Livni – big, aggressive, and in your face kind of wine style. This wine has an over the top nose with sweet dates and raisin. The mouth is huge, aggressive, and attacking with massive mouthfeel and uncontrollable date, and new world stylings, more date, candied cherry, candied plum, blackberry liqueur, with crazy mouth drying tannin, and sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with chocolate, candy, tobacco, and green notes.

2011 Livni Reed Pipe – Score: A-
This wine is a lovely wine with crazy spice and one with a very unique blend of 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Pinot Noir. The nose explodes with black pepper, rich mineral, light animal notes, and coffee. The mouth on this medium+ bodied wine is filled with charcoal, rich layers of plum, blackberry, along with sweet concentrated fruit that is controlled and contained by mouth coating tannin and oak. The finish is long with crazy mineral, lovely acid, green notes, massive tobacco, chocolate, along with a sensation of having licked pencil shavings. This was a fun wine and worth finding.

2009 Kadesh Barnea Petite Verdot – Score: C+
Sorry – this is yet another wine from this company that I cannot bring myself to drink. All the nice labels in the world cannot save this wine, one simple word: SWEET! This tastes like date butter, raisin compress, and who knows what else, I tried my best. A few of my wine freak friends said it is OK, sorry, I cannot appreciate it.

2010 Shirah Bro Deaux – Score: A- to A
This was as close as the winner of the show as you can get other than the crazy City Winery Cabernet – BRAVO GUYS! The wine is a blend of 36% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Cabernet Franc, 18% Malbec, 18% Petite Verdot, and 10% Syrah – Hey they never promised a Bordeaux blend – just a good name! The nose on this wine is nice and balanced with tobacco, mineral, herb, along with cherry, and green notes. The mouth on this medium+ bodied wine is classical Bordeaux (not withstanding the Syrah), with lovely green bell pepper, blackberry, tobacco, along with great layers of concentrated, extracted fruit sweet and ripe fruit, nice acid, almost mouth searing tannin, and good sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with nice chocolate, mineral, rich mouthfeel, hints of date, and charcoal on the long lingering and rich finish – BRAVO!!!

2011 Shirah Coalition – Score: A- (and maybe a bit more)
This wine is a blend of 60% Zinfandel, 12% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, and 8% Touriga Nacional. The wine is a unique blend, just like its older 2010 vintage. The nose explodes with crazy wine aromas – the kind of attack that only the Weiss brothers can bring you, heavy notes of blackberry, date, watermelon, spice, cranberry, and chocolate. The mouth on this crazy full bodied wine is ripe, concentrated, extracted, and layered with control and style, black plum, ripe zesty raspberry, hints of white peach, mounds of tannin, and sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, black pepper, insane tannins that linger long, with candied currant, fig, tobacco, and mineral. This is a wine that is teetering on the edge of madness and sweetness, but only the Weiss brothers can pull this off – BRAVO!!!

2009 Odem Limited – Score: B+ (maybe)
This is unfortunately another example of the overripe fruit epidemic that is taking over the 2009 Israeli vintage. The blend on this flagship Odem Mountain Winery wine is 36% Merlot, 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 9% Cabernet Franc. The nose is riddled with sweet fruit, liquors galore, and candied fruit. The mouth on this rich, layered, and candied mouth is filled with overripe fruit, date, cherry, blackberry, mineral, and sweet cedar. This is a wine I can see some liking – given its richness and expressive fruitiness – but not for me. The finish is long and spicy with chocolate, good spice, tobacco, more tannin, cloves, and black pepper.

2010 Shirah Syrah/Mourvedre Blend, Thompson Vineyard – Score: A-
This is a wine that is a bit of a funk right now, a wine that needs time and deserves it given where this wine can clearly be heading. The wine is a clear buy wine, but one that needs time to come into itself. The nose starts off with a crazy and out of control nose of liquored and drunk blackberry, candied grapefruit (yes grapefruit!), candied cherry, and insane spice. Well the mouth is close to indescribable – but I will try. The mouth on this layered and rich full bodied wine is out of control with layers of concentrated and ripe fruit, yet somehow controlled for the most part, with blackberry, black plum, zesty strawberry, ripe black cherry, that again is inches away from the over the top cliff, but once again the Weiss brothers steer clear with good sweet cedar and enough tannin to burn a hole in your mouth. The finish is long with a sensation of overripe characteristics coming into focus with cardamom, oriental spice, cloves, chocolate, boysenberry, along with a massive and assaulting attack of tar, green notes, and tobacco. Please wait on this to come together and BRAVO Weiss brothers!

2009 Carmel Limited Edition – Score: A-
I must place a disclaimer here – this wine is filthy and concentrated, extracted, rich, and insane, and the reason it did not score in the stratosphere is because the fruit is candied and sweet. This is a classic example of an uncontrolled wine that can still work – if the wine is so richly built and so expertly executed that who cares. The nose on this wine is redolent with nice candied fruit, date, graphite, and cherry. The mouth on this full bodied wine, is rich, layered, and insanely concentrated, with extracted fruit, searing tannin, blackberry, cassis, lovely graphite, sweet cedar and a sense of wine that takes your breath away. The finish is long and rich with chocolate, tobacco, crazy mineral, and spice. WOW what a rich and layered wine – bravo, but the overripe fruit is just too much – sad, even the king of Carmel could not hide from the sweet tooth epidemic of the 2009 vintage.

2010 Shiloh Barbera, Shor – Score: B+
The nose on this wine starts off with cherry, mineral, graphite, floral notes, and red fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is filled with toast, red fruit, plum, raspberry, Kirsch cherry, along with good spice, soft tannin, and light cedar. The finish is long with tobacco, coffee, toffee, and spices. This wine is in drink now to drink up mode.

2009 Galil Mountain Winery Meron – Score: B+ to A- (QPR)
The wine is a blend of 72% Syrah, 19% Petit Verdot, and 9% Cabernet Sauvignon. The nose explodes with boysenberry, cherry, cassis, plum, and rich toffee. The mouth on this rich and layered full bodied wine is filled with nice animal notes, blueberry, cherry, blackberry, spices galore, chocolate, searing tannin, and more black and blue ripe fruit! The finish is long and spicy with good mineral, plum, cloves, licorice, and black pepper – yum!

2010 Gvaot Pinot Noir, Gofna – Score: A- to A
The wine continues to impress like the last time we enjoyed it – but with air the heavy fruit expressions give way to deeper more ethereal wine notes which make me smile. The nose calms and gives way to cherry, but more importantly it shows expressions of lightly tilled earth, dusty notes, toasty notes, and lovely fresh brewed espresso, all tied together in an ethereal manner with wisps of fruit and oak expression in the air. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is lovely with tons of coffee, really nice integrated tannin, sweet raspberry, mushroom notes, dirt, with black cherry, black plum, cedar,and lovely balancing acid to bring it all together. The finish is long with more dirt and red fruit lingering long on the palate with fig and mineral.

2011 Gvaot Pinot Noir, Gofna – Score: A-
This wine starts off one way and ends up another way – clearly this wine is in deep sleep mode and should be bought ASAP and laid to rest for 6 months. The wine starts off with crazy cherry, ripe raspberry, rich mineral, toffee, and coffee. The mouth is nice and round with tart fruit, with a good balance of toast to fruit, great acid, red fruit and cedar – clearly closed. The finish is long and spicy with tart fruit, fig, great control, with sweet cedar, tobacco, vanilla lingering.

Over time the wine opens a bit more but shows more of the dirty mouthed 2010 than the fruity yet closed 2011. The nose is filled with dirt, dusty floor, mushroom, raspberry, and toast. The mouth is rich yet still not expressive with a great body, showing ripe cherry, ripe and tart red fruit, good toast and more mushroom. The finish is long and herbaceous, with nice dirt, mineral, clear watermelon, green apple, tart raspberry, and more ripe/tart red fruit lingering.

2011 Borgo Reale Chianti – Score: B to B+
The nose is quite nice with cherry, raspberry, dried currant, and some nice date. The mouth is ripe and round with medium body and good herb and spice that helps to pick the wine up with plum, and red fruit. The finish is medium long and spicy with cloves and herb.

2010 Saslove Cabernet Sauvignon, Adom – Score: A-
The nose on this wine is somewhat different than the wine itself – which is concerning, but the mouth is so fantastic that it is easily worth looking past. The nose is unique with ripe and tart strawberry, cherry, tart raspberry, plum, along with dirty dusty notes and some mushrooms. The mouth is rich, layered, concentrated, and mind blowing all at the same time, with layers upon layers of mouth drying tannin, wonderful controlled fruit, more dirt and terroir, along with ripe concentrated blackberry, black plum, green notes, sweet cedar, and an overal great finesse/big body that makes you stand and take notice. The finish is long and spicy with black pepper, spice, cloves, chocolate, green bell pepper, and tannins that linger and rise and really impresses.

2010 Saslove Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserved – Score: A-
This saslove Cabernet’s nose is congruent with its body and in many ways a more finessed and impressive wine. The nose hits you with menthol, graphite, charcoal, ripe blackberry, and lovely green notes. The mouth is rich, layered, and truly an artful and finesse wine with a combination of concentrated yet controlled fruit, with ripe sweet cassis, black plum, blackcurrant, wonderful mouth coating tannin that lingers forever, great balancing acid, and sweet cedar to bring it all together. The finish is long and green with sweet herb, mineral, chocolate, spice, and tobacco – that all linger long with sweet tannin.

2010 Gvaot Vineyard Dance, Herodian – Score: A- (and a bit more)
This is a wine I have tasted three times now, once at the winery with Shivi and the gang, once at Shai house, and again finishing that bottle for dinner. The wine changes throughout and is a true joy – a classic Bordeaux blend that Israel is having much success with. The wine is a blend of 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Petite Verdot, and 25% Merlot. The wine starts off with rich and elegant nose of coffee, toast, green notes, ripe fruit, blackberry, and raspberry. The mouth is rich and layered with concentrated fruit, butterscotch, black plum, candied cherry, lovely mouth coating tannin, along with more candied fruit and sweet cedar to bring it all together. The finish is long and sweet with date, lovely mineral, green notes, mounds of spice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper, nice chocolate, and vanilla.

However, with more air the wine starts to show off Israel’s 2010 hidden weapon – blue fruit. All the time that I spent in Israel, on my last trip, one of the clear characteristics of the 2010 fruit was blueberry! No not on Carignan or Syrah – but even on Merlot and Cabernet! It came out in full force here when I smelled it last week after the bottle was open for sometime. The nose is filled with boysenberry, blueberry, blackberry, mineral, and rich spice. The mouth is layered and rich with blueberry, chocolate, black plum, rich and concentrated, with nice spice, tons of mouth coating tannin, and pure unadulterated joy. The finish is long and rich with sweet plum, candied cherry, licorice, espresso coffee and more spice. This is a really fun wine and one worth hunting down.

This past weekend I was hanging with EL and MT, those same two of Napa wine adventure fame. It was a true insane blast, and the wine intake was so intense that I had to name this post appropriately. The blueberry reference is an ode to the sheer number of wines we had that were seriously showing blue fruit.

When I think of hospitality so many names come to mind including ER, Mrs. L, Shaindy and Chaim, and now I am happy to add EL and MT to the wonderful list of people who think of others above themselves. I came this shabbos to NY to hang with family and go to two wine events. The two wine events sandwiched a Shabbos so I asked EL if he could handle a madman like me for a weekend! He graciously accepted and now the Shabbos is in the history books and may well go down in annals of mankind as one of the craziest Shabbos that I have had the opportunity to enjoy (though my first Benyo Shabbaton is up there too with the Shirah Boys).

The Friday started with me opening the bottle of Tavel, which while deeply aromatic was a slight letdown with a light and almost lifeless mouth. Still, it had the acid to keep up; this was all while we learned some Yoshua before heading to minyan. El lives in a large Jewish community and the number of synagogues within a square mile of his house, rival the number of museums in all of NY City! Still, we were blessedly spared the walks to those hallowed halls. Why? Think August in Las Vegas and add 90% humidity and you get the picture – AKA felt like walking through swap land – without the swamp!

So, where did we go, well that is the funny thing, if there are tons of options for free standing synagogues in this section of New York, there may well be more options of home bound synagogues! Indeed, people have synagogues in their basements, living rooms, and just about any section of their home that their wives can tolerate (more on that in a bit).

Friday night started in the library room of a beautiful home, 5 doors down from EL’s house. Mincha started at 8 PM and we were done with Mincha and Maariv at 8:45 PM. Heck, where I live, we could still be davening Mincha in 45 minutes! We went home, and even walking the length of 5 homes made you feel like you wanted to jump into a shower ASAP! What heat! Anyway, dinner started with a bottle of 2012 Lueria Gewurztraminer. A lovely wine that was cold and bracing, with enough residual sugar in it to make both EL and his wife happy! From there we moved to two Roses that accompanied a plethora of sushi! Awesome idea, really, clean tasting sushi is a great idea on a hot summer day! The sushi was solid as was CL’s SICK challah that was greatly enjoyed with dips and soup. The Tavel was OK, as said above but the Agur rocked it for me and it was mostly drunk by me as well.

After that we moved to the main course, which was roasted chicken and some incredible Rib Roast! EL begged me to taste some before Shabbos and I knew at that point that this chunk of meat was going to slay it on Shabbos! The roast has something for everyone, it was rare inside and medium rare on the edges. It was herbed to perfection and was so juicy that it screamed to be eaten some more – WOW what a real treat!

At this point I must point out that we had already decanted two wines for the dinner, the newly released 2011 Vignobles David Reserve GS wine and the 2012 Hajdu Cabernet Franc (will probably be blended – but a distinct barrel sample for now). It was at this point that the family bailed and left EL and I to slowly enjoy the two bottles/carafes of wine. That was until Mark came over with two more wines in tow. The wines were the famous 2007 Brobdignagian/Brobdingnagian Syrah – a blockbuster wine we have enjoyed twice, and a 1999 Hagafen Syrah! The wine is a richly layered, concentrated beast that has zero desire to calm down or back-off its no holds barred structure that makes one truly stand up and take notice. Some find it too much, but for me it is a wine created by an unbridled mad genius, with eyes wide open – what a wine! When I saw the hagafen Syrah at Mark’s house before Shabbos I thought there was no way that the wine was drinkable. It turns out that the Syrah was Hagafen’s first and a wine that has truly stood the test of time.

We started with the already opened bottle of the 2007 Brob Syrah and what a true joy it was! The bottle that was brought came in a Rhone style bottle, but the last bottle that I have at home is in a Bordeaux style bottle, who knows. Next we tasted the opened Vignobles David – side by side and what a joy they were! These beautiful wines started me thinking about the intertwining themes of hospitality, haze, and blueberry! What can I say the entire lineup of red wines that I enjoyed over the Shabbos were blueberry wonders, excepting only the Flam Cab, reserve!

Hey what can I say, the weather and I were slowly coalescing into a single hazy mindset. Still, the haze did give way to more food, constant water intake, and more wonderful rib roast! The Brob Syrah was sweet ripe and viscous monster, while the Vignobles David Reserve was far more about mineral, chalk, graphite, blue and red fruit, with hints of black all wrapped in powerful and deeply rooted espresso expressions. Both shared a common theme of blue and spice – but that was where the commonalities ended and what a wonder experience it was to taste them side by side.

From there we opened the 1999 Hagafen Syrah and it was one of the wonderful wine surprises of this trip. The wine screamed blue, black, graphite, cedar, and YES still intense mouth coating tannins. The wine was medium in weight but it did not miss in capturing your attention. It was smooth (yes even with the coating tannin), it was rich, but not in the Brob extracted way. It was mineral for sure, but not in the intense Vignobles Reserve kind of way. If there is a single thing you can take from this particular rant and ramble of a wine post, I hope you listen to what I do and not say, and create pairings for yourself. Two Merlot, two Cabs, two or three Rose, etc. The ability to see how wines differ side by side is a totally different experience – then reading about three wines and trying to compare notes – even your own. It is far better to taste them side by side and come to your own conclusions.

Returning to the subject at hand, the wines were followed up by tasting the Hajdu barrel sample Cabernet Franc. What a wine! What a classic and categorical defining Cabernet Franc, all the components were there; floral, green ethereal notes, deep red fruit, black overtones, and yes even a hint of blue fruit, all wrapped in lovely herb and spice! This one is as classic a Franc can get – BRAVO!

Another aspect was the option to enjoy two wines from Hajdu, his first singly labeled wine (the 2007 vintage was Hajdu’s first vintage on his own) and his latest vintage. Though the two wines are vastly different wines and varietals, you can see his professionalism and how it has morphed from unbridled madness with a sense of control to controlled madness with a sense of extraction – quite a journey indeed.

At that point it was more of each wine and then some Yarden T2 for dessert with wonderful gooey chocolate tarts that were wonderful with the T2 and the Brob. The Brob did not survive the evening, while parts of the others wines did. I made sure to let Mark go home with maybe his last 1999 Hagafen, though it was waning at the end, so I hope he enjoyed it later that night/morning!

The next day I woke with a slight headache, even though I drank copious amounts of water, such is life when you go through 8 bottles of wine (yeah forgot to write the Yarden T2 wine we partook of). Once I got some more water we went four doors down (at 9 AM the heat was already unbearable) and davened by Kahal Barry – and what a prayer service it was. We arrived a bit late, but services started promptly at 9 AM and finished with everything by 10:10 AM – 70 minute Shabbos prayers! That is what I call awesome! That said, while the living room is truly spacious, the minyan has gotten out of hands. It turns out that I my opinion was clearly voiced at the last Kahal Barry board meeting where the decision was made to expand the living room to encompass the backyard deck! That would make for more room, but watching the kiddish I think there is a far simpler option.

The heat limited the kiddish options, so the 40+ humans packed into the hosts’ beautiful dining room. This made the basketball court sized dining facilities look small – but hey we are talking about 40+ people plus kids, and some were packing away a bit too much liqueur! As I watched these guys slugging bladder busting sized cups of very expensive adult beverages, the only thing I could think of was Kiddish club! Then I had it, they should have their own breakaway minyan that – wait for it – had a kiddish club and expand davening to 82 minutes! That way, they could leave room for those who want to daven and then drink, or was it read Barry’s photo books and enjoy kiddish – I get them mixed up all the time! Either way, it clearly needs to slim down, the hosts’ wife could barely come down to her own kitchen (overflow capacity for the minyan – or was it the schmoozing room – I forget) to get a cup of coffee – sorry no michitza at this minyan!

In the end, all I can say is that this city is fantastic! We are talking about some of the most kind and giving folks I have ever seen – truly! The hosts were kind to open their home to all of the neighbors and to do so in style – thanks so much to the Kahal Barry for their wonderful kindnesses.

We headed for lunch to MT’s house for lunch and while the heat was high, it was still nice in the shade. Once we got to the home, I could see why MT hates going on road trips. What a lovely family and his hospitality was a mirror image of that of El’s home (which to those in the know would understand). Another wonderful quality that this “hachnasas orchim” duopoly is their inanely good cooking abilities! WOW, did I enjoy myself the entire shabbos, both Friday night and Shabbos day. The food was cooked to perfection, and once again we were served a plethora of food that pleased the eye and the appetite! The first course was handmade tuna tartar that was plated beautifully and whose quality and flavors were wonderful. This dish paired perfectly with the 2011 Teperberg Viognier, the flavors meshed perfectly and the bracing acidity cut through the Tuna’s fat perfectly.

The conversation on the table was a multifaceted and quite informative. At times, we went back and forth on recipes and foodie ideas, and at other times it revolved around torah concepts and children’s education. The next course was cholent cold cuts and chicken (I regret that my memory is failing me – totally because of my inability to keep all these things straight). All the courses were wonderful, along with the salad dish and the vinaigrette that was enjoyed with it. We enjoyed the 2009 Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon, El Rom and the 2009 Capcanes Peraj Ha’abib and wow – what a shocker, the El Rom was as blue as a smurf! I could not believe it at all. The nose and mouth were rich and layered but with more sweet notes than minerality like the Capcanes had. Both were wonderful and I doubt I will ever taste the 2009 Capcanes again, as it sold out more than a year ago, when literally only 30+ cases were brought into the US. It was a true treat and many thanks to MT and his lovely family for all the kindness they showed us. For dessert we enjoyed MT’s birthday cake (Happy Birthday again my man) and a bottle of the magnificent Laurent Perrier Champagne that goes quite well with dessert – one of the many dessert pairing secrets out there.

Well there you have it! My many thanks to the kind hosts and friends who put up with me for 30 or so hours. The wine notes follow below, also there are no photos as these wines were not in my control:

2012 Vignobles David Tavel Le Mourre de l’Isle Rose – Score: B+
We last spoke about Vignobles David, owned and operated by Fred David and his wonderful wines. At that tasting I begged Fred to sell his rose here in the US, and guess what he DID!!! The wine is a blend of 40% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 20% Cinsault, and 10% Clairette Blanche. This crisp Rose has bright red fruit notes with a delicate palate, that has a wonderful and balanced minerality and spiciness. The nose is filled with lovely strawberry, hints of rose petals, ripe raspberry, lemon, peach, flint, and mineral. The mouth is light to medium with OK acidity, but lacking bracing acidity, along with nice tart lemon fresche, grapefruit, and lemon pith. The finish is long and herbal with a pique of bitterness and long lasting tartness.

2012 Lueria Gewurztraminer – Score: B++
The nose on this off-dry wine starts off with candied grapefruit, floral notes, tropical fruit aromas, kiwi, and peach. The mouth is medium in weight, with slight residual sugar, along with hints of tannin, orange, and its pith. The finish is long and pithy, with green apple notes, and tart cherry apple notes.

2012 Agur Rosa - Score: B+ to A-This rose is a blend of 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Cabernet Franc and 20% Mourvedre. The wine was fermented in oak that gives the wine its medium bodied weight, deep salmon color, and viscous mouthfeel. The nose is filled with classic rose fruit; strawberry, raspberry, kiwi, and floral notes. The mouth is rich and viscous with good backbone, nice acid, and deep mineral notes. The finish is long with slight fruit pith, and grapefruit notes.

2012 Hajdu Cabernet Franc (AKA Brobdingnagian) – N/A
The CF was sick and that is saying something. The grapes come from the Carneros AVA, a terrior within Sonoma and Napa Valley that is cooled by the San Francisco Bay influence. This allows the region to grow very different types of varieties than the rest of Sonoma and Napa, like Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir. The wine was a test sample so – no score but just overall feelings. Hajdu tells me that this wine will be sold as a single varietal! I cannot wait to get some of this SICK elixir!!

The nose screams Franc with lovely ripe red fruit, deep minerality, all under a rich and almost perfumed canopy of green foliage, the nose is truly intoxicating. The mouth is medium to full body with ripe green and black fruit, along with hints of blueberry, all wrapped in a tightly bound package (this wine needs time) of rich mouth coating tannins, and structure that can only say Napa. The finish is long and floral, with hints of rose and hibiscus, more blue hints, deep black fruit flavors, black tea, and more green notes bound again by pencil shavings, lovely spice and herb, and lingering tannins. BRAVO!!!!

2011 Vignobles David Reserve – Score: A- (QPR)
We last spoke about Vignobles David, owned and operated by Fred David and his wonderful wines. At that time I was lucky to taste the 2010 reserve and since than have tasted that wine a few times and it continues to blow me away for its unbelievably good QPR. It also strikes me as one of the better French kosher wines out there, especially for the price.

The new 2011 vintage is composed of 40% Syrah, and 60% Grenache, also known by the folks in the know, as GS, an acronym stemming from the first letter of the 2 varietals used in this blend. This bright purple colored wine steps up and slaps you across the head with a crazy rich and heady nose of blackcurrant, bramble, rich oak, roasted meat, freshly brewed espresso, spice, raspberry, blackberry, and tar. This wine shows a super rich, full-bodied, yet bright mouth with mouth coating tannin, rich extraction, along with focused concentration of fruit, all coming together into a truly earthy, fruity, meaty mouth. The finish is richly spiced with layers of more coating tannin, soft leather, tar, black fruit, rich minerality, espresso and oak. Quite a lovely wine that is not another big and black Syrah, rather this is a lovely balanced GS that shows its richly spiced and terroir driven roots in more ways than one.

2007 Brobdingnagian Syrah – Score: A- to A
This is the second time we have had the honor to enjoy this wine and it was as awesome as it was the last time! The first thing you sense when holding the bottle of brob is that the glass is extremely heavy, but this wine came in a Burgundy shaped bottle rather than the one we enjoyed in 2012, turned out that in 2007, Jon ran out of Burg bottles and finished bottling with Bordeuax shaped bottles! Mystery solved! That said, not much else changed – the wine is still awesome and may well be the best Syrah I have had, along with the 2003 Four Gates Syrah, and the 2010 Flam Shiraz, Reserve.

Everything about this wine is unapologetic and clearly Brobdingnagian in nature, hence the name and the elephant on the label. This was the first release by the Brobdingnagian micro boutique winery and it was a massive hit. The wine says it is 16% alcohol, but that is not felt in the wine. Rather the wine feels like a monster that is proud of its extreme prowess but one that does not hit you over the head with its sheer power. Rather it is a wine that grabs you and keeps your attention while it reminds you of its mass – quite a unique wine. In a way this is not a wine for polite company, unless they are wine freaks like us!

The wine is brooding in the nose with a lovely mixture of blackberry, cassis, blueberry, herb, and spice. The mouth is massive and Schwarzenegger muscled with nice and concentrated black and blue fruit, huge tannin, along with obvious but constrained oak influence, that is highlighted by spice, and one that has yet to hit its high step yet. The finish is long, spicy, and black with a focus from tobacco, leather, black pepper, spicy wood, and cloves. While enjoying this wine around the table, I loved the comments of a few of my guests; “this is a great wine because it is a big, bad, and bold and it is proud of it! It is a big wine and it is not attempting to apologize for it as it obvious from the packaging, name, and bottling – Kudos Jonathan!

1999 Hagafen Syrah - Score: A-
At this point my memory is lacking and I would have to say that the wine was startlingly very good! This was the winery’s first vintage of Syrah and it was shockingly solid, some 14 or so years later. The wine was still classic Hagafen, filled with crazy cedar and tobacco, but there was still mouth coating tannins, rich blueberry, cherry, and black fruit, all bound up in layers of fruit and tannin. The finish was filled with licorice, plum,  hints of roasted notes, leather, and tar. A very nice wine for the age – but a wine that seemd to start faltering as the evening turned to morning.

2010 Flam Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A- to A (Very close to A)
This wine is as good an Israeli Cabernet Sauvignon that exists, including Yarden El Rom and others. This wine is so classically old world that one would be shocked to know it came from Israel. The wine is a blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Petite Verdot. The grapes are sourced from the Ben Zimra vineyard in the upper Galilee, and were aged in French oak for 14 months, and then bottled aged for another 10 months before being released.

The control and care shows on the nose filled with beautiful and clean black and red fruit, along with deep earthy notes, followed by rich mineral, charcoal, and lovely richly roasted herbs. The mouth is full bodied, layered with concentrated and extracted flavors of blackberry, black plum, cherry, and mounds of spice all wrapped together with lovely tannins that are still integrating and sweet cedar. The finish is long and richly spiced, with tobacco, dark chocolate, eucalyptus, and bracing acidity all coming together wonderfully. Give this another year and the wine will be ready for prime time. Till then if you must open, decant for an hour or two and then enjoy.

This is a wine which I am happy to say comes from Israel, and one that I hope will act as a poster child for how wine can be made in Israel. This wine’s intense body, deep lines, and never ending finish shows the world that Israel can make quality wines that last forever and do not require a pound of sugar to prove it! Bravo!!

2011 Teperberg Viognier, Terra – Score: A- (QPR in Israel)
I say often that the best Viognier out there are the Midbar Viognier (for when Yaacov was the wine maker like 2010), Dalton Viognier, Teperberg Viognier, and Yatir Viognier, in that order. For the price the wine is a steal, though it is not available here in the US, this wine was shlepped back from Israel.

Like most Viognier and Chardonnay out there, the wine likes a bit of time in Oak, to round out the sweet notes and give it a heft and body. This wine was 50% oaked for 6 months, without malo laoctic fermentation, keeping the butter flavors away from the wine’s fragile floral notes. The nose on this yellow colored wine starts off with rich honeysuckle, ripe grapefruit, candied lemon, fantastic floral notes, jasmine, rose, and ripe apple curd. The mouth is highly tropical with layers of Asian pear, pineapple, tangerine, honeysuckle, and red apple. The finish was long and mildly sweet, but well balanced with bracing acid that gives you a tart and sweet finish that is lovely with seafood, chicken, and tuna tartar (which is how we enjoyed this wine) – BRAVO!

2009 Capcanes Peraj Ha’abib – Score: A-
I really wish I had my bendable shabbos notes with me as I absolutely loved this wine, and I was running out of space to remember all the notes. This wine was shockingly closed to starts, so it was good that we poured the wine into a carafe. With time the wine opened to display beautiful blue and black aromas, along with deep rooted earthy notes, mineral that smelled like a mine, and green foliage. The mouth on this wine was full bodied with layers of concentrated fruit, including blackberry, cassis, black cherry, boysenberry, all brought together with still searing tannin, crunchy forest floor notes, eucalyptus, and cedar. The finish was long and luscious and very different than the second wine we tasted (the 2009 Yarden El Rom) with bracing acid, fresh espresso coffee, and more earthy mineral. Lovely!

2009 Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon, EL Rom – Score: A- (and a bit more)
Holy mackerel – this may well have been the real shocker of the entire shabbos (if not for the 1999 Hagafen being alive)! This wine started off closed as well, as it is still a very young wine. However, the wine quickly opened and showed the theme of the shabbos – blueberry, boysenberry, deep ripe blackberry, cherry, forest berries, and mocha madness. The mouth on this full bodied wine is round and rich, with layers of sweet fruit, with a hint of earthiness, followed by more blue and black fruit, truly sweet cedar, and nice sweet tannin. The finish was long and sweet with ripe fruit, that was not over the top, chocolate, mounds of sweet tobacco, red fruit, and root beer (sweet ginger).

This wine was highly sweet but not over ripe, controlled but another wonderful side by side tasting of the El Rom against the Peraj Ha’abib, one was earthy and mineral (Peraj Ha’abib) and one was sweet and controlled, almost Cali in nature (the Yarden El Rom). Lovely – both of them.

Laurent Perrier Champagne – Score: A-
The thing I dislike about this wine (and that may be too harsh a term), is the lack of vintage in any manner. I do not know how often the wine is made, but having some sort of vintage on it – like they do with the Tio Pepe Sherry Fino, would really help. Also, this wine is hit and miss in terms of showing well, but the last two times I have enjoyed it – the wine has shown exceptionally well indeed!

The nose explodes with beautiful toast notes, lovely green apple, peach, mounds of rich yeasty goodness, and lovely mineral and slate. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has a lovely attach of small mousse bubbles, more minerality, along with tart fruit, quince, peach, along with tart lemon, and grapefruit. The finish is long and yeasty and truly satisfying, more slate, tart fruit, herb, yeast notes, and bubbles that linger forever. Bravo!!

This past week I spent some time with family and we enjoyed some great white and red wines. Mostly white and rose wines were enjoyed simply because I was in a very hot climate (no not the Bay Area), and so white and rose wines were truly the only option.

I wanted to have some red wines so I included two reds that I have been wanting to taste for a long time and both were great. The only real “let down” was the Tavel Rose which I have still not come to appreciate. To me it lacks the bracing acidity and it is far too bitter, for my tastes.

So, I will keep this short and sweet – the wine notes follow in the order they were enjoyed:

2012 Makom Grenache Blanc – Score: A-
This bottle is back!!! The last bottle we had was right after bottling, and it was not showing beautifully. This week, it was showing alot more like what it did before bottling. The nose explodes with rich slate, followed by lovely floral aromas, ripe lime, lemon, grapefruit, jasmine, lovely cut grass, and herbal notes. The mouth is ripe and medium bodied, with nice lemon friache, good strong and balancing acid, and ripe peach. The finish is long and spicy, with hints of banana, ripe fig, and nice mineral. I am so happy this wine is back -be sure to enjoy!!!!

2006 Recanati Special Reserve – Score: A- to A
This wine is a blend of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8% Merlot. The wine was aged for 19 months in new French barrels. The nose starts off with an intoxicating perfume of rich mineral, freshly shaved pencil, black cherry, spice, and crushed herb. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and layered but elegant with now softening integrated tannin that coats and lingers, along with rich concentrated black fruit, that is not forceful but ever present, with sweet cedar, spice, and herb. The finish is long with chocolate, tobacco, and great play between the tannin, fruit, leather, and herb, each giving way to each other o make for a very enjoyable experience. BRAVO!!!

2011 Elvi Wines In Vita – Score: B+
The wine is a blend of 40% Sauvignon Blanc and 60% Pansa Blanca – which is the grape used in making of Cava wines.
The nose starts off with a lovely floral attack, fresh cut grass, guava, followed by honey notes, Asian pear, lychee, bright citrus, honeysuckle, and white flowers. The mouth is nice, round, and ripe, with bracing acid, a fantastic dichotomy that plays out with bracing acid, citrus zest, honeyed background, along with green apple, baked apple, and quince. The finish is long and zesty with lemon/lime fresche, tart fruit lingering, with slate, mineral, and grassy/straw notes.

2012 Vignobles David Tavel, Le Mourre de l’Isle, Rosé – Score: B+
This wine is a blend of 40% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 20% Cinsault, and 10% Clairette Blance. The nose is filled with lovely strawberry, ripe raspberry, lemon, peach, flint, and mineral. The mouth is light to medium with OK acidity, but lacking bracing acidity, along with nice tart lemon fresche, grapefruit, and lemon pith. The finish is long and herbal with a pique of bitterness and long lasting tartness.

2012 Teperberg 1870 Sauvignon Blanc, Terra – Score: A-
When I tasted this with the winemaker some 9 months ago, this wine had screaming and bracing acid. Since bottling, the wine has lost some of its zing, but the lovely balance of sweet fruit, acid, straw and cut grass really makes for a nice wine.
The nose on this wine starts with grapefruit, orange, crazy citrus, lemon, fresh tropical fruit salad, cut grass and pineapple. The medium plus bodied wine is vibrant with fresh fruit, kiwi, guava, and mango, that captures your attention, along with nice acid that brings the mouth together. The finish is long and spicy, with what tastes like white chocolate, spice, more tropical fruit, a hint of honey, nectar, and a drop of pith on the long finish.

2009 Weitzman Petite Verdot, Dionysus – Score: A-
This wine is a blend of 85% Petite Verdot and 15% Merlot. The wine was aged for 24 months in new French barrels. The nose is intoxicating with lovely dark cherry, rich loamy dirt, along with smoked animal fat, insane smoking tobacco, licorice, crushed herb, and sweet oregano. The mouth on this full bodied and concentrated with shocking control, no date to be found, with concentrated blackberry, raspberry, and layers of dark brooding fruit that is coming together perfectly with sweet cedar and nice tannin. The finish is long and luscious more tobacco, cigar smoke, soft leather hide, chocolate, and butterscotch that lingers long with coffee and mouth coating tannin. BRAVO!!!

2012 Hagafen White Riesling, Devoto Vineyards – Score: A-
8/16/2013 This wine continues to impress me and one that I never get tired of. It is a step beyond simple quaffer, with great balance of 2% residual sugar and great acidity, controlled with lovely tropical fruits. The nose starts off with sweet notes or tropical fruit, clear honeysuckle commands the nose, with pineapple, and candied grapefruit taking the side stage. The mouth is rich and layered and truly captivating with an almost oily texture from the sugar, along with banana, peach, more tropical fruits, along with tart white cherry. The finish is long and sweet with a great balance of tart to sweet fruit, sour red apple, and guava. Bravo!

Before I left for China and India I had the chance to hang with friends and go through many of the best kosher Malbec wines on the market. Since then a few new ones have popped up, which I have yet to taste, so I will add those to my next tasting run of Malbec wines hopefully.

As you know if you read my blog, I like wines that are blue in nature and I have no problem saying that out loud! The blueberry and boysenberry fruit are so rare and unique in wine that I am always overjoyed to taste them. That said, in a Merlot or a Cabernet Sauvignon they taste downright weird. So what about Malbec? Is Malbec a blue fruit wine or a black fruit wine? Well that depends, in the very same vein that can be asked about Syrah, is it a blue or black fruit wine? While were at it what about Zinfandel or Petite Sirah?

To the Petite Sirah question, until Israel, I had not tasted a PS without blue fruit, but I think the extreme heat in Israel kills the blue fruit, much like it does to the Syrah fruit (this is not a scientific statement – just my experience). Case in point, the Ellla Valley PS is black and earthy, but no blue fruit to be found. Same goes for the 2010 Yarden Malbec, black and earthy, just like in France. What can I say, it is interesting that these four varietals have the possibility of displaying blue fruit, but when grown in Israel there is less of an option. Now to be fair, the Dalton PS is full of blue fruit, as is the Teperberg Malbec.

There is a reason why Petite Sirah and Zinfandel go so well together, like in the Recanati Petite Sirah/Zinfandel blend, or the Hajdu NV Besomim wine. Either way, the fruit compliment each other, as does the spicy notes, the earthy components and the bramble. Same can be said for some of the insane blends that Tzora, Ella Valley, and others are perfecting in Israel. The Ella Valley 35/25 wine, a blend of Petite Sirah, Syrah, and Merlot (in 2008) is such a wine that is full of blue and black fruit (from what I hear I have not personally tasted it). Same goes for the wonderful Misty Hills or Shoresh wies from Tzora which take the Australian blends to the max, mixing Cabernet or Merlot with Syrah.

So why are some varietals grown in locations so vastly different in their fruit characteristics? I wish I knew, but I cannot find any good answer to that question. That said, the one thing that is common to all the Malbec we did taste, was that it is very akin to the Merlot of old. I think both Eric Asimov, of the NY Times (not the science fiction writer) and Lettie Teague, of the WSJ, said it best – Malbec is a wine for the “regular people”.

Asimov writes; That really depends on your point of view. Malbecs’ emphasis on soft, ripe fruitiness over more polarizing flavors and their velvety textures make them safe and reliable for people who may be unsure of their tastes. Some of the wines we opened were a little more ripe and jammy, while others were spicier and more linear. But these were small divergences in what was largely a uniform set of characteristics.

This leads us to the same paradoxical, underwhelming conclusion we reached after the last malbec tasting: part of the reason malbecs are so popular is that they are not displeasing. In other words, their consistent profile is a virtue, especially for people who do not appreciate being surprised or challenged by a wine. The genre itself has become a brand.

Teague writes; And there are plenty of reasons that Malbec might appeal to “regular people” (perhaps the same reasons it doesn’t appeal to sommeliers): It’s rarely expensive or hard to find. Its flavors are straightforward, with notes of spice and red-berry fruit. The best Malbecs also have a lively acidity and approachable tannins. I think of it as a meatier, manlier version of Merlot.

Malbec is one of those unique grapes that is really better suited for blending. It is not a slight to the malbec grape at all, but rather a statement that to bring the best out of Malbec, and to allow it to show its truest potential, it needs to be blended. Malbec by itself, when grown in France shows lovely tannin, black fruit, and not much else. Its truest expression and greatest potential as a single varietal, may well be from Argentina in the high mountains (no kosher wine has yet been made from there). There in the 1500m ranges, below the jagged peaks of the Andes is the perfect place for the Malbec’s thin skin grape to slowly mature and truly bring all of its phenolic potential to bear.

Clearly, the highest rated Malbec varietal has come from Argentina’s high mountains, but Israel’s high altitudes are also helping in taming this wild grape. The grape ripens in mid-season, and brings with it a heap of dep black purple color, along with ample tannin. In France those tannins are overbearing and searing, in Argentina and Israel, they are more supple and ample. The plum and black fruit favors dominate the French varietal, while the Argentinian and Israeli varietals show more blue and deep black flavors along with floral and smokey/roasted animal notes.

No matter how you slice it though, the varietal wants to go wild, and that is why the older vines help in managing the vine’s exuberance. At lower yields, the fruit does get a chance to bring higher acid and more expression, but when all is said and done, in the kosher world, the grape has not yet shined to its theoretical potential. For now, look to these wonderful wines as a very nice wine that is balanced and food friendly, but not one that shines on its own or will truly wow you with deep expression or extraction or complexity. This again is not a slight to the wine, and is a wine that should be truly enjoyed with meat and pastas.

That is not to say that there are no complex and utterly satisfying Malbec wines out there, just not many if at all, in the kosher world. Even the best Malbec we had, the 2009 Teperberg Malbec was very nice, but in a very soft and accessible manner. Sure it needed time to open, but once open – we are talking full on frontal, nothing left to the imagination here. The 2011 Teperberg Malbec, a wine that is now available in Israel, is even better than the 2009 (the 2010 is not for me), but still lovely in a soft fluffy bunny rabbit lovely. It is food for thought I guess.

Currently, on the market (here and Israel) the kosher Malbec wines – that I would recommend are:

1. 2009 Bodega Flechas de Los Andes Malbec Gran Malbec (not a fan of the 2011 vintage)
2. 2009 Domaine Herzberg Malbec (2010 was nice as well) – available in Israel
3. 2009 Teperberg Winery Malbec, Terra (or 2011, 2010 comes in third place, 2012 is as good or maybe better than the 2011)
4. 2009 Tishbi Malbec (or 2010)
5. 2012 Terrenal malbec was nice, but it has faded, so wait for the next release
6. Ramat Naftali Malbec is lovely (available in Israel)
7. 2010 Yarden Malbec (their first year)

The wine notes follow below:

2009 Teperberg Winery Malbec Terra – Score: A-
This is the third year for this wine and it continues to get better, with the 2009 vintage being the best of the three. The varietal has received much praise in Argentina and Chile, and makes sense to thrive in Israel, given the extreme heat that the area can receive at times. I have tasted and drunk this wine a few times now, and each time I continue to be impressed by it. The wine starts off with a blast of clear animal notes, followed by good mineral, bramble, ripe blueberry, plum, and raspberry. The mouth is round and full with medium+ weight, clear date influence that has recently started popping up, nice integrating tannin, blackberry, blue fruit, and controlled toasty oak that is now harmonious. The finish is long with good concentration of fruit, crushed herb, leafy tobacco, tart and ripe red fruit, strawberry, espresso coffee, and vanilla. A lovely wine that will be around till 2015 and maybe a bit later.

2011 Teperberg Winery Malbec Terra – Score: A- (and a bit more) tasted in winery
This is probably the one wine that is the closest thing to a wonderful Malbec, but even though that may be true, it is wonderful because it is supple, rich, and layered, yet not at that next level (i.e not overly complex). This nose is downright insane, with what I can only call a California Grenache nose, showing ripe blueberry, boysenberry, black cherry, lovely violet notes, and root beer. The mouth on this full bodied wine, has layers of ripe and rich blue and black fruit, along with mouth coating tannin, blackberry, cassis, tart raspberry, and lovely sweet cedar. The finish is long and tart with with great mineral, graphite, slate, chocolate, and vanilla, BRAVO!

2009 Tishbi Malbec Kosher – Score: A–
This Malbec may well have been the winner of the night. The wine has finally come out of its funk and is showing as well as it did at the winery, a true beast of a wine, with rich roasted animal notes, and body that hoilds up to most meals.

The nose starts off with rich blue fruit notes that fade into a cacophony of roasted animal notes, loamy earth, and black fruit. The wine mellows over time to rich tobacco and violet, with smoke, eucalyptus, and date. The mouth is medium to full bodied, rich and layered with concentrated and tangy fruit, ripe sweet strawberry, rich black plum, intense blueberry, blackberry, more crazy sweet tobacco, sweet cedar, candied black cherry, all controlled with little to no date, but still sweet – very Californian in style. The finish is long and sweet with butterscotch, raspberry, hints of tar and loamy earth.

2009 Bodega Flechas de Los Andes Malbec Gran Malbec – Score: B+
This wine, like the Herzog needs lots of air time! Once it opens the wine shows classic blue and animal notes, along with a full body. The heavy extracted notes have calmed, but this was a love or hate wine. I liked it, but most of the table was not impressed, as I think the wine’s “aggressive and push it to the max attitude” was a bit too much for most civilized company.
The nose is still super rich with now nice smokey notes, rich tar, roasted animal, along with floral notes, blueberry, eucalyptus, and licorice. The mouth on this insanely full bodied wine is rich and toasty with mouth coating tannin, sweet cedar, blackberry, cassis, date, sweet cherry cough drops or liquor, and nice raspberry. The finish is long and spicy with integrating tannin, chocolate, tobacco, and vanilla. This wine is super rich and focused but the complexity is what is missing. This is a wine that should be enjoyed with meat and a meal and not tasted by itself, and it is now in drink up mode.

2009 Domaine Herzberg Malbec – Score: B+
This is a wine that I have had a few times now, and this was its best showing, other than at the winery itself. The nose is nice with red fruit, raspberry, spice, currant, nice black cherry, all assailing you in a lovely perfumed manner, along with smokey notes, toast and mineral. The mouth is medium in weight with sweet cedar, fantastic mouth coating sweet tannin that goes forever, and along with nice ripe strawberry, black plum, blackberry, and crazy tobacco. The finish is long and mineral based with vanilla, espresso coffee, loamy dirt, followed by sour tart cherry, and more lovely tannin that lingers on the rise.

This past week, I was once again in Israel and it gave me the chance to taste the recently released 2008 Yarden Rose Bubbly, which was one of the highlights of my trip. I also finally had the chance to sit with and enjoy a bottle of the 2011 Teperberg Malbec, that I tasted at the winery, and it lived up to my hype. Finally, I tasted the recently released Yarden Malbec, and though it is a well constructed wine, it was too sweet for my palate.

Please be clear – the Yarden Rose will not be making its way to the United States, for reasons I do not know, but it is a wine that is well worth finding in Israel. The wine notes follow below:

2008 Yarden Rose, Brut – Score: A- (and more)
To call this brut wine a rose, is such a misnomer that it is not even close. This should have been called a Rose Brut, like the 2007 Blancs de Blancs is called a Blanc! Still, what can you do the labels are printed and such is life. The wine is made of 30% Pinot Noir and 70% Chardonnay, and then was bottle aged for 5 years on its lees. It is a classic bubbly wine that I have now had the chance to spend a Shabbos with and taste three times. I asked a few winemakers about it, and each replied with their own leanings, some find it a perfect match to Champagne and some find it too light for them, liking more the Blancs de Blancs brute force and style. To me both wines are a wonderful gift to the kosher wine world and a must for anyone drinking sparkling wine. As of now the wine is not going to be imported to the US – so buy it when you are in Israel.

The nose on this beautiful pink salmon colored wine is rich and redolent, but shy as well, with classic yeast notes, followed by pink grapefruit, strawberry, and peach. The mouth on this medium to medium plus bodied wine starts off with a lovely attack of fine bubble mousse, freshly baked and then toasted brioche, along with green apple pie, freshly roasted almonds, pear, and cherry notes. The finish is long, luscious, and captivating with bracing acidity, candied currant, fig, and white chocolate. BRAVO!!!

2011 Teperberg Malbec, Terra – Score: A- (plus more)
I finally had the chance to drink this wine over a shabbos and I was NOT disappointed! After having had the chance to taste the Yarden Malbec and the Ramot Naftali Malbec, I can say safely that of the Malbec wines from Israel, that I have tasted, this is the best one.

That said, it is not an overly complex wine, yet it is a supple, rich, and layered wine. This nose is downright insane, with what I can only call a California Grenache/Syrah nose, showing ripe blueberry, boysenberry, black cherry, lovely smoked meat, along with earthy notes, and rich smokey notes. The mouth on this full bodied wine, has layers of ripe and rich blue and black fruit, along with mouth coating tannin, blackberry, black plum, tart raspberry, and lovely sweet cedar. The finish is long and tart, with sweet ripe and tart fruit, great balancing acidity, nutmeg, cinnamon, root beer, rich chocolate, and good sweet spice. BRAVO!

2010 Yarden Malbec – Score: B+ (Sweet / New World wine)
This wine continues Yarden’s long tradition of creating very professionally made wines, with a bent towards ripe and new world styled wines (excepting for their whites, sparklers, and higher end wines). That said, there will be many people who truly find this wine lovely and captivating. Much along the lines of the Tishbi Malbec that I had a few weeks back, this wine was truly ripe and driven with clear roasted animal notes that seem to jump out of the glass and slap you upside the head.

The nose on this black colored wine shows freshly roasted animal notes, along with ribbons of blue fruit, good earthiness, and cherry. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine shows its colors with overly ripe fruit (for my palate), with date, rich chocolate, more ribbons of blue fruit, blackberry, black plum, all coming together with good concentration and fruit structure, while being kept together with good searing tannin and spicy oak. The finish is long and super sweet, with balancing acidity, almost salty notes, mineral, graphite, with good sweet spice, and root beer. This is a nicely and well built wine, that will have its fans for sure, just not my cup of tea.

2011 Carmel Riesling, Single Vineyard, Kayoumi Vineyard – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this light gold colored wine screams with rich and vibrant floral notes, wild mineral, nice petrol hints, ripe peach, kiwi, vanilla, and grapefruit, and more citrus. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is drier than the 2010 yet crazy rich and gives you a sweet perception from the very ripe fruit, the floral notes flow well through and mingle beautifully with the bracing acidity, along with more sweet fruit, light oily texture, lychee, tart/sweet apple compote, herbal notes, and good spice. The finish is long and spicy, with great acid, nice melon, great slate, and lemon fraiche.

As I have stated before, these postings are from my previous trip to Israel, where Jerusalem and mush of the north was snowed in with many feet of snow. Picking up from where we left off, the Sabbath was snowed in and cold, but at least we had power. The next day, my brother drove the car to the hotel and from there – the careful but madman driver – known as Mendel made his way to both GG and me and using Waze we were off to highway 1. The road itself was open, as was clear by the crowd sourcing cars driving up and down the road on the Waze map. However, there were parts of the road that were packed to the gills, because these were car drivers – driving to har menuchot (Jerusalem’s cemetery which has a massive parking lot) to pick up their abandoned cars! Yup, on Friday, these folks could not make it into Jerusalem, as their car was stuck, and they could not get back to where they came from, so they left their cars and were bussed out by the Army using mechanized solider transport vehicles, that can drive through snow or up a hill, for that matter.

Well, as we drove by that horde of cars, our minds were all single focused on getting to Teperberg Winery, one of the best unheralded wineries in Israel. As I wrote about in previous posts, here and here, ever since the U.C. Davis trained senior winemaker Shiki Rauchberger joined the winery, they have been producing wines destined to appeal to a more sophisticated audience. With the addition of Olivier Fratty and tons of new high-end equipment, the winery is poised to make the next leap into the upper echelon of Israeli kosher wine producers.

When we arrived after driving through the snow covered mountains, the roads cleared as we dropped in elevations, and the mountains became hills, and their color turned from white to green. Not too far down the highway, we turned off for the road leading to Bet Shemesh, and from there another turn and we quickly found out way to Kibbutz Tzora (where the Tzora Winery can be found), which is across the street from the Teperberg Winery, and down the street from Mony Winery.

We arrived almost on time, and Shiki and Olivier were there to greet us and lead us to a room where we would be having the tasting. Shiki told us that they are drawing up plans for a visitor’s center where they can have official tastings, and exhibits where the winemakers and the guests can interact in a more intimate environment. The exact date for this building to be completed is still unknown, as it has yet to even start, but it is on the books to be started soon.

2009 was a great year for Teperberg, while 2010 was an average year for the winery, which is shown in the scores. However, 2011 and 2012 are both showing to be very solid years for the winery, overall. The tasting started with their entry-level wine for the US and Israeli markets, the 2012 Meritage, a red blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petite Verdot. It happens to be that these very varietals are being used into single varietal wines in the reserve series that it helping to push Teperberg to the next level, in terms of quality. The 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were fantastic, while the 2011 are the best so far. The Cabernet Franc, single varietal is a new wine for the reserve series starting in 2010, and the Petite Verdot, is a new single varietal wine for the reserve series starting in 2011. Both are very nice, but the 2011 vintage for all the reserve series wines shine brightest.

Of course the Malbec continues to be the most accessible, enjoyable, and best priced wine out there for the price (high QPR winner), especially the 2011 vintage, which may well be the best kosher Malbec out there. After the Meritage, we rolled into the a fore mentioned Malbec wines, which makes sense, because as lovely as they are, they lack the richness and complexity that the Shomron Merlot and Galilee Cabernet have. The fact is that the vast majority of the wines from Teperberg come from the Samarian/Shomron wine region, which in many ways are a blessing and a curse. The Shomron is perfectly situated for growing cooler climate varietals, like Merlot, Chardonnay, and Petite Verdot, the Malbec is sourced from the Judean Hills where the temperature is slightly higher, while the Cabernet, for the reserve series is sourced from BOTH the Shomron and the Galilee regions. The Galilee wine region has the higher heat and cooler evenings to make the Cabernet vines happy at day and night. The Shomron has great acidity, but lacks the depth of potential, as the vines sometimes do not get to their phenolic happy state, without the higher heat.

The ability to blend or gather or harvest the grapes when they want allows for Teperberg to make a wide range of wines, from their lower end wines, all the way to the Terra and Reserve wines, with the finesse and control that is really magical. I must stress, that while Israel had a few bad years in 2009, 2010, and 2011, Teperberg really only had a bump in the road during 2010, and only a small one. Many other wineries, created overly ripe and sweet new world style wines, because of the lack of control on their vines and other circumstances that did not allow them access to the vines when they needed attention most.

This is a pair of issues that Israel is struggling with now. The three years of vintages will make for tough times for Israeli wine, overall. However, the real issue lies in the style of wine that is being produced in these regions. In some regions, the 2010 and 2011 vintages were both hot and cold and made for some very underwhelming wines and under ripe wines. The dichotomy of how the 2010 and 2011 years treated different wines regions is truly amazing. The wines in the Judean Hills and Shomron were unaffected by 2009, but the wines in the Galilee, were super ripened. The 2010 season in the Galilee was poor as was the wines in the Judean Hills, for the most part. The 2011 vintage is still up in the air, parts of the Judean Hills and Shomron are showing well, while the Galilee did less impressively, but time will tell for sure. The 2012 vintage seems to be a boon and a return to the amazing wines of the Galilee wine region, as well as the rest of the wine regions overall.

The amazing fact is that even with the size and bottle count of Teperberg, at four million bottles, the winery has not bent to the sweet tooth of the new wine drinking generation in Israel. I may harp on this subject a fair amount, and to many of the wine drinking populace, in the kosher market, no one cares. However, I write this blog to teach and to remind me what and where I was when tasting wines, so I guess it matters! Shiki may well be UC Davis trained, but that does not mean he craves over ripe Napa Cab wines in Israel. Actually, he is far Older World in his styling and Olivier is as well, which bodes well for us true wine lovers.

The next wines were the new single varietal Cabernet Franc. Starting in 2010, the reserve line will now have a varietally true Cabernet Franc! So, all you Franc lovers, add this wine to your must have wines, especially in 2011. It was hilarious when they opened the new wines, and I said I loved the new label, as my compadre(s), were not of the same mind! I liked the modern art label that is an ode to the Modern Art School or Israel that took on the project to make a label for the new wine – I thought it looks lovely. They were not sure if the label would continue with the 2011 Cabernet Franc, but the wine is so wonderful, and one of the better Franc’s I have tasted in sometime, that it is really going to be a wine that needs to be on your short list for the best wine of the year – especially in the Franc category.

From there we moved to Merlot and then Cabernet Franc, and then the Petite Verdot, which is another new varietally true wine for the reserve series, and the yet unreleased, Super Reserve wine from the 2009 vintage. We have spoken about that wine here, when Shiki poured it at the Gotham Wine event.

I must say that the Petite Verdot was shockingly good and so true to its varietal that I really look forward to getting some when it is released. The 2011 vintage and the 2012 vintage, which we tasted from barrel, are both showing extremely well for the entire reserve line. The 2010 wines were nice, with the 2010 Cabernet showing the best, along with the Franc. The Merlot was a bit short, but it may come around, a thing I am happy to admit, that I was wrong about the 2009 wines when I had them at Gotham event. at times the Teperberg wines come across closed or short, or missing in the middle, but they fill in over time, as they come together in the bottle. That said, at this point the Merlot is a step behind the Cab and Franc.

The Super Reserve wine from 2009 continues to impress, but a wine that is not yet ready according to Shiki. It needs time to come together some more and allow it to be enjoyable at release and for years to come.

My many thanks to Shiki and Olivier! Of course, thanks to Olivier, we could not leave before enjoying some lovely and fantastic Fricasse! These came from a shop in Jerusalem, that Olivier convinced to make us the box of sandwiches! It was so very kind of Olivier, Shiki, and the winery to host us, feed us, and let us taste these wonderful wines. My notes follow below!

2012 Teperberg Meritage – Score: B++ to A-
The 2012 vintage continues to impress with great wines for normally baseline wines. The Meritage is normally a B+ or so wine and this vintage is a bit better with ripe and more concentrated fruit. This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petite Verdot. The nose starts with ripe blueberry, nice roasted meat, ripe red fruit, crushed herb, and rich aromas. The mouth on this full bodied wine is easily accessible with soft caressing tannin, nice ripe fruit, very good acid, all wrapped up in a supple body with good fruit structure, mellow tannin, and nice tannin. The finish is long and ripe, with nice blue/black/red fruit, spice, and pith lingering long. The soft body is ready now, but will improve a bit and coalesce within the year and drink well for the next two to three years.

2012 Teperberg Malbec, Terra – Score: A-
The 2011 Malbec was off the charts and this one is as good with better acid and riper fruit. The nose on this wine starts off with lovely blueberry, cassis, watermelon, licorice, tar, red fruit, and ribbons of roasted meat. The mouth on this lovely full bodied wine is controlled with nice fruit structure, balanced well with insane mouth coating tannin and rich acid, blackberry, black plum, cherry, and nice spicy oak. The finish is long, spicy, and rich with nice vanilla, ripe black and blue fruit, tobacco, and mouth coating tannin that lingers long – BRAVO!

2010 Teperberg Merlot, Reserve – Score: B+ to A (most probably more in the future)
The 2010 vintage continues to push the envelope with blue notes, ripe red fruit, and good structure. The Merlot fruit for this wine was sourced from Shiloh. The nose on this wine shows lovely blueberry, ripe blackberry, spice and red fruit. The mouth on this elegant medium bodied wine, shows red and black fruit, nice fruit structure, all coming together with a nice round mouth, integrated tannin, concentrated fruit, cherry, currant, and spice. The finish is medium long with chocolate, toast, spice, nutmeg, clove, pith, and mouth coating tannins that linger long and nicely. As always, with Teperberg reserve wines – they need time. This wine is still a bit young and I hope to revisit this wine in the coming year to decide its true score. For now, the shorter finish is what is driving the score down, but I have been wrong in the past with these wines. I was wrong about the 2009 Merlot reserve wine and I del given the structure and body that this wine may well come together in the coming year and then we can asses its true score.

2011 Teperberg Merlot, Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on this black colored wine is lovely with deep red and black fruit aromas along with sweet herb and green fruit. The mouth on this full bodied wine hits you with layers of concentrated fruit, blackberry, cassis, black plum, cloves, along with a fantastic fruit structure that is built to last, mouth coating tannin, and spice. The finish is long and spicy with lovely green notes, bell pepper, chocolate, tobacco, with tannin, spice, and tobacco lingering long BRAVO!

2012 Teperberg Merlot, Reserve (barrel tasting) – Score: N/A
This wine is clearly a beast, with unique aromas for a Merlot, I did not score this wine as it is sure to change more and scoring with ranges is not my thing. The nose starts off with blueberry, roasted animal, dark fruit, cherry, and spice. The mouth on this full bodied wine is a beast, with rich mouth coating and searing tannin, great structure, concentrated fruit, and lovely oak influence. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, black fruit, chocolate, and some sweet notes.

2010 Teperberg Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on this lovely wine is dark and black, with blackberry, cassis, dark cherry, along with nice crushed herb, and spice. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich with heavy tannin and clearly a step back from the 2009 and 2011 vintages, but still a nice wine for the year, along with rich heavy tannin, and layers of black fruit, raspberry, and nice mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and spicy with lovely spice, chocolate, vanilla, cloves, and lovely tobacco.

2011 Teperberg Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A- (and more) (QPR Star)
The nose on this wine is intoxicating and rich with ripe and fresh fruit, with black and red fruit, cherry, bell pepper, spice, and blackberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is super rich and layered with concentrated fruit, black fruit, black plum, searing tannin, along with crazy sweet oak, that lingers long with still not integrated tannin. The finish is long with great balancing acid, spicy notes, along with ribbons of blueberry, leafy tobacco, chocolate, spice, cloves, and black/red fruit lingering long. Bravo this is a fantastic wine that is beyond a fantastic QPR wine.

2010 Teperberg Cabernet Franc, Limited Edition – Score: B++ to A-
The wine is graced by a modern art painting that was made by a school of modern art in Israel, and though I liked the art work, the wine was a step back as much of 2010 was for Teperberg. The nose on this wine is graced with lovely green notes, cherry, raspberry, black plum, cranberry, and spice. The mouth on this medium bodied wine nice integrating mouth coating tannin, along with nice red fruit, spice, and oak that supports and caresses the tannins. The finish is long and spicy with bell pepper, nice fruit, slight sweetness, chocolate, and tobacco.

2011 Teperberg Cabernet Franc, Reserve – Score: A- (and more) (Great QPR)
This is the first year that Teperberg released a reserve Cabernet Franc, and it is a lovely wine that deserves the reserve tag and one that bodes well for a great year by Teperberg, overall. The nose on this wine is beautiful and perfumed with rich red fruit, sweet rounding oak, green notes, and bell pepper. The mouth on this lovely full bodied wine is rich, complex, and layered with ripe, concentrated fruit, raspberry, blackberry, along with nice mouth coating and round tannin, with spice, and tobacco. The finish is long and spicy, with crazy spice, still searing tannin, leather, tobacco, cloves, almond pith, and lovely ripe green notes that linger long. BRAVO what a lovely, complex, rich, and layered wine!

2011 Teperberg Petite Verdot – Score: A-
This is Teperberg’s first varietal release of Petite Verdot, a classic blending grape that is getting more and more attention for it potential as a varietal wine. The wine elicits thoughts of a large chunk of meat being roasted over fresh sweet oak, along with ripe black and red fruit. The mouth on this richly concentrated full bodied wine, is not overly complex and layered, but has lovely control, along with enough black and red fruit to grab your attention. The wine shows nice blackberry, cassis, and raspberry, along with freshly crushed herb, spice, and tannin that coats and lingers long. The finish is long and balanced with nice acid, lovely mineral, slate, floral notes, along with tobacco, and spice. A very nice first effort and hopefully this will lead to more of these fun and lovely wines.

2009 Teperberg Super Reserve – Score: A- (plus more)
This is Teperberg’s first (with more to come) super blends when they find fruit that truly grabs them. This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petite Verdot. This is the third time I have had the chance to taste this wine, and while Teperberg is still not ready to release the wine, the elixir is getting close to its release date. The nose is intoxicating with deep ribbons of blueberry, richly round with spicy oak, and black fruit to complement. The mouth on this layered, complex, and full bodied wine is rich with layers of tannin that is just now integrating, along with layers of blackberry, cassis, along with great bracing acid that lifts the entire wine. The finish is long and spicy with spicy oak, chocolate, leather, tart fruit, vanilla, smoking tobacco, and red/black fruit that lingers long. BRAVO to Teperberg, this is truly a lovely wine, and one worthy of calling its flagship wine.

When one speaks about Israeli wine – the name Yarden is sure to be one of the first wineries that are spoken of. Why? Because simply stated they are the defacto standard for quality in Israel. That was at least until the past few years, when the red wines took a very clear and strategic direction towards more ripe and classic new world styled wines. Why? Well, as I wrote here in my year in review, the kosher wine public is still a few years behind the wine learning curve, and they crave wine that is as subtle as a two-by-four between the eyes. Why? Well, to be blunt, starters do not have the capacity to appreciate the more subtle aspects of old world wines. That takes training and in the words of the late Daniel Rogov – the best way to appreciate and learn more about wine – is to drink more wine. Until that point, we will all have to wait for the majority of the kosher wine buying public to learn the joy of subtlety and stop craving sweets, and live with the result of that fact – meaning sweet and overripe wines. Thankfully, there are wineries that are still interested in creating well-rounded and all around enjoyable wines – like Tzora, Recanati, Netofa, Yatir, Castel, Dalton, Flam, Four Gates, and many others.

That said, Yarden is still the clear king of white and bubbly wines in Israel. First of all, there are few wineries with more than three quality labels of white wine. Many are still just producing one white wine. Tabor is one of those wineries that is showing it QPR value and clearly coming out from under the haze of Coca Cola and its perceived wine quality, in their situation “perception is NOT reality”.

Proof of this can be found in the bottle. Tabor Adama Roussanne, Gewurztraminer, Viognier, and Sauvignon Blanc are examples of GREAT QPR wines, though only the Sauvignon Blanc is available here in the US.

The Yarden 2013 Sauvignon Blanc may very well be the best kosher Sauvignon on the market and maybe ever made. yes, that is high praise for a white wine, but ignoring the sweeter side of Sauvignon Blanc (AKA late harvest or Sauterne) this is one of the best or the best kosher version of a dry blanc that I have tasted yet. Along with that the Yarden Gewurtz and Yarden Chardonnay – both Odem and non are great this year. Finally, the Viognier and the entire line of bubbly wines are absolutely crushing it! Even the Gamla Blanc is very nice. Essentially, while Yarden may have had some missteps or may want more ripe red new world fruit, the whites still are showing why Yarden is king of the kosher bubbly and white wines. The only real competitor in the kosher market to the vast array of Yarden’s whites would be Hagafen’s vast array of white wines and rose wines.

The Yarden red we had was an older vintage and showed well enough. The 2005 Yarden Merlot, Kela Vineyard is a lovely Merlot and one that is in clear drink up mode.

The 2005 Yatir Cabernet shows why Yatir continues to shine and excel at its craft. The wine was not on the edge, though it is in drink up mode. The wine still held its ripeness in check and showed a clear level of constraint in both wood and ripeness and shows why Yatir is one of the best wineries in Israel.

We also had a bottle of the lovely 2011 Teperberg Malbec, Terra. The wine showed just as well here as it did in Israel and though the wines are not complex in nature they are very impressive all the same. Teperberg Winery continues to push the envelope and produce solid wines with good acidity and fruit control.

Finally, we had a Midbar Orange 44 from the 2010 vintage, when Yaacov Oryah was still doing the kashrut and the wine continues to impress me. The wine is rich and layered and shows more than enough acidity to keep the fruit in check – lovely and BRAVO Yaacov!

The wine notes follow below:

2011 Teperberg Winery Malbec, Terra – Score: A- (plus more)
I finally had the chance to drink this wine over a shabbos and I was NOT disappointed! After having had the chance to taste the Yarden Malbec and the Ramot Naftali Malbec, I can say safely that of the Malbec wines from Israel, that I have tasted, this is the best one.

That said, it is not an overly complex wine, yet it is a supple, rich, and layered wine. This nose is downright insane, with what I can only call a California Grenache/Syrah nose, showing ripe blueberry, boysenberry, black cherry, lovely smoked meat, along with earthy notes, and rich smokey notes. The mouth on this full bodied wine, has layers of ripe and rich blue and black fruit, along with mouth coating tannin, blackberry, black plum, tart raspberry, and lovely sweet cedar. The finish is long and tart, with sweet ripe and tart fruit, great balancing acidity, nutmeg, cinnamon, root beer, rich chocolate, and good sweet spice. BRAVO!

2013 Yarden Sauvignon Blanc – Score: A- (plus more)
I had this wine a few times in Israel and in the US and the continues to impress, which makes me so happy. This is a wine that is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and was aged in French barrels for 2 months. The oak gives the wine lovely roundness but it does not get in the way of the wine or the acid which is insane! I strongly believe that this may well be the best kosher Sauvignon on the market. For the price it is a 100% STEAL!!

To start this wine still needs time to open, PLEASE make sure to open this wine an hour or two in advance and then be sure to serve this well chilled. The nose on this light straw colored wine is aromatic and redolent with intense gooseberry, fresh cut grass, melon, white flowers, and lovely mineral – what a nose! The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and expressive yet not over the top, with lovely control and ripe fruit, starting with lemon/lime friache, tropical fruit, guava, and kiwi, grapefruit, nectarine, and lovely green notes. The finish is long and mineral based with great core acidity, that carries the fruit forward but allows for the slate, rock and lemon to clean up at the end – BRAVO!!!!

2010 Midbar Orange 44 – Score: A- (plus more)
The wine is the first kosher Orange wine I had ever tasted. It is a blend of three grapes (yeah – get over it) 52% Chenin Blanc, 24% Chardonnay, and 24%, Viognier. This was unique and different to me, but to many it is becoming a lightening rod – why? I am not sure, but many are finding orange wines to be too much of a fad in the non-kosher world. For me, there is only one of them – so one a fad does not make. The wine is different – it is not a white wine and while it is not a red wine the long skin maceration, 14 days in this case, causes the wine to take on an orange hue. The idea here is that the grape skins gives the wine tannin and it gives the wine more body.

The nose starts off with almond paste, oaked honeysuckle, ripe floral notes, and passion fruit. The mouth is ripe and medium in weight with nice mouth coating tannin, cherry, orange fruit, lemon, apple sauce, creme bruelle, lovely sweet cedar, all melding together with brioche, grapefruit, yeast, and a creamy and balanced mouth feel. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, allspice, butterscotch, kiwi, apple, marzipan, tart fruit, and cinnamon, along with biter notes and tangerine. A unique wine and one that may not be for everybody – but it sure works for me!

2013 Tabor Gewürztraminer, Adama, Chalk Soil – Score: B++
This is a nice enough off dry wine with some classic Gewurztraminer notes, but it is a wine that shows better with time so that the extreme bitter notes blow off. The nose on this straw with green halo colored wine shows off aromas of mango, guava, pineapple, and spice. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is clearly sweet with residual sugar, showing well with good acid, nice bitter notes, orange pith, kiwi, and straw. The finish is long and bitter with more pith, lovely honeysuckle, honeydew melon, and rose water that lingers on a long and bitter finish.

2005 Yarden Merlot, Kela Vineyard – Score: A-
This wine is a sweet new world wine, but the structure, backbone, and sweet fruit help to hide the date like notes that normally really bug me. The nose on this black colored wine is redolent with dark forest fruit, insane licorice, mint, date, smokey notes, and blackberry jam. The mouth on this full bodied wine shows the oak influence with sweet cedar, concentrated and extracted black fruit, raspberry, plum, and intense mouth coating tannins that linger long on the rise. The finish is long and herbal with more dark fruit, chocolate, leather, green notes, spice, and fig.

2005 Yatir Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: A- (plus more)
What a lovely wine – this wine is still screaming with intense tannins and smokey notes – lovely!! This was the first true varietal true Cabernet Sauvignon from Yatir, until then all the Cab was blended into the blend of the Forest. The wine is a blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Shiraz. The nose on this purple to black colored wine is screaming with oriental spice, rich leafy tobacco, cloves, black fruit, and roasted herb. The mouth on this full bodied shows still searing tannin, toasty notes, spicy oak, along with layers upon layers of concentrated cassis, blackberry, raspberry, and mouth coating tannin. The finish is long with intense earthy notes, mineral, heavy graphite, chocolate, and dates that recede over time. BRAVO!!! This wine will last for another 3 or so years. The wine is at peak, not improving from here. Enjoy now as the sweet notes are rising and why wait – you have a wine at peak – enjoy it there!!!

This past weekend we had a few friends over for a lovely Friday night dinner, and I decided it was time to drink some great kosher Merlot wines. To be honest, to me Merlot is one of those wines that rarely find the sweet spot, it either boring, nondescript, or overly green. However, there are still many great Merlot wines out there. Of course this was Miles point in the now famous, but to me disgusting movie called Sideways. I felt that the subject matter was so poorly projected that I always feel sick when I think of that movie. Still, the debased yet highly quoted cult movie had a huge impact on the Merlot and Pinot Noir sales in the US. It was the average Merlot’s nondescript attributes that so viscerally turned the protagonist off of the grape variety. Clearly, as I have described many times, here most recently, and more in depth here, that his prized Cheval Blanc was made up of the very varieties he so deeply despised and dissed in the movie, being 66% Cab Franc, 33% Merlot, and 1% Malbec!  We do hope that the irony is not lost on you, as it was certainly not lost on the producers!

A fair amount of the problem starts in the vineyard, as always wine is 90% vineyard management, 5% winemaker, and 5% science/luck (those number can be moved around a bit but not much). Some of the very best Merlot wines out there are French. For instance one of the famous kosher French Merlot wines out there are the 2005 and 2006 DRC – Domain Roses Camille. They hail from the Merlot dominated Pomerol wine region of Bordeaux. The DRC is mostly Merlot with a bit of Cabernet Franc thrown in, while the non kosher and world-famous Petrus – is mostly all Merlot with a bit of Franc thrown in some years.

There are two other French Pomerol kosher wines, the Chateau Montviel and the Chateau Royaumont. I recently tasted the two of them, and I loved the 2003 Chateau Montviel, while the 2011 Chateau Royaumont was nice enough, but at that price, a B+ wine is not worth the effort for me.

France has cool summers and some years are great while some are not so much. However, in other regions where heat is the not the issue, it is about elevation and the land that makes the grapes sing. For instance, to me, the best dollar for dollar kosher Merlot wine out there has to be Four Gates Merlot. The DRC is fantastic as is the Montviel, but the DRC is vastly more expensive and the Montiel is harder to find. That said, outside of Santa Cruz County, the next best option is Israel, and that is like saying the best place to play golf in the world would be in the middle of the Sahara Dessert!

With the high temperatures that Israel has, one legitimately has to ask – what were they thinking of planting Merlot there? The answer “Location, Location, Location” does not only apply to real estate prices, it matters in the world on vineyards as well. When it comes to grapes, it is all about the vineyard, its location, its soil, and most importantly; its elevation.

Take Har Bracha as an example, it elevation is 870 meters above sea level, and besides having large temperature shifts from day to night and back to day again, there is the fog that rolls in all winter and even during the summer. These two factors are one of the main reasons why the vineyards are producing some wonderful wines from Tura and Gvaot Winery. Gvaot Winery is producing some blockbuster kosher Pinot Noir wines while Tura is producing some lovely Merlot wines from these vineyards.

Moving further up north we find Yarden’s efforts being used to its best with locations like Kela Vineyard at an elevation of 800 meters to Odem vineyard at an insane 1200 meters. Beyond the elevation it is the temperature shifts, the rock and dirt, that reflect the sun or cool the sun’s effects, depending on the ground’s makeup. However, after it all, it is also how the vineyard is managed. Things like leaf management can make the sunlight hotter or cooler, same goes with shoot placement, and of course when the grapes are pulled.

So, when I decided that it was Merlot night, I wanted to make sure that we had a good cross-section of wine styles and locations, and I think we hit them pretty well. Sadly, I had no French wines to try, but I added the notes here to give you an idea of what is available. For me in Israel, Merlot is more of a fascination than it is a reality or a long-term play. Still, if you want some Israeli Merlot, stick to these wineries; Gvaot, Tura, Ella Valley, Teperberg, Tabor, and Yarden. Interestingly, the wines are all sourced from locations of high elevations and created by wine makers who care deeply about vineyard control. Sadly, the Ella Valley winery has not made many top rate Merlot wines since 2006 or so. Still, they were great. However, with the elevation of Teperberg, Tura, and Tabor – I feel there are very solid options from Israel available today.

In the end, of all the kosher Merlot options, I happily go with Four gates Merlot. Other than 1999 I cannot think of a single one that has disappointing me. Sadly, I had a bottle of the 1999 recently, and out of the bottle it was godly, but within 10 minutes it went flat. Many would say that is not bad for a 15 year old wine, but to be truthful, it was never a very good vintage. So, one bad vintage with so many home runs, I lean towards Four Gates. Sure, Benyo is my friend, but no one can dispute that he is the king of Kosher Merlot, and my notes bear that out as well. In other words, stock up on his vintages of Merlot, and then hide them away for 6 years and THEN try one. His wines are so dark and tannic and bright with bracing acid that it takes many years for all the components to come together. Till then drink some other lower level Bordeaux or Rhone wines, California wines, or Israeli Rhone varietal wines and then come back to these masterpieces once they have settled down a little.

My notes follow below:

French Merlot Wines:

2003 Chateau Montviel, Pomerol – Score: A- (and more) (tasted in August 2014)
The nose on this wine is lovely with rich mineral, loamy dirt, rich aromas of barnyard, green notes, and herb. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine hits you with layer and layer of rich concentrated fruit, intense structure, blackberry, plum, sweet tobacco, lovely spicy oak, all wrapped in captivating mouth coating tannins. The finish is long with bracing acidity, more lingering tannin that drape your mouth, along with chocolate, leather, more dirt, vanilla, and rich spice – BRAVO!!!!

2005 Domaine Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: A
This is a wine made up of 98% Merlot and 2% Cabernet Franc. Of the 2005 and 2006 vintages this is clearly the winner – but still it is a winner in the very French and elegant styled manner. I know there will be many that find this wine lacking and not worthy of the accolades – different wines for different folks. The nose explodes with insane perfume of herbaceous notes, green bell pepper, rich barnyard funk, raspberry, black cherry, and strawberry. The mouth opens nicely to mouth coating tannin, along with layers of green herb, candied fruit, blackcurrant, blackberry, red fruit, and cedar that melds into a quite elegant whole. The finish is long with good spice, nice chocolate, tobacco, toast, and a hint of citrus zest. A lovely wine that comes together when given the time to open and show its true self. Still, a wine that needs much more time till it is ready to be appreciated by the wine populace, give this a few more years and then try again.

2006 Domaine Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: A- (plus more)
This wine, like its older brother is made up primarily of Merlot grapes and is another great example of what elegance looks like in French Bordeaux. The nose starts off with an attack of lovely green notes, raspberry, and nice graphite and mineral. Over time the nose opens to layers show dark cherry, rich aromas of tobacco, and candied fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is soft, rich, plush, and elegant in all the right ways, with ripe blackcurrant, nice mouth coating and plush tannin, and a hint of cedar that comes together quite nicely. The finish is long and luscious with chocolate covered tobacco leaves, tobacco covered fruit, all under a canopy of green and red fruit. The mouth is rich and layered but it is the elegance of the wine and the finish that bring this wine home.

2011 Echo de Roses Camille, Pomerol – Score: A-
The wine starts off closed and cold shouldered as can be with medicinal funk, eucalyptus, and loamy dirt, with the mouth following the nose with medium body and good tannin. After a fair amount of decanting this wine finally came out to play. Until then the wine was hollow and empty in the middle. Once the wine opened it showed a nose of loamy dirt, red fruit, mineral, green forest underlay, and classic bell pepper. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is layered with ripe red fruit, cherry, raspberry, plum, and hints of cassis, all coming together with a nice mouth coating tannin that lingers long, with sweet cedar, and green notes. The wine is well structured with great acid and nice layered fruit. The finish is long with good balancing acid, tobacco, chocolate, leather notes, herb, eucalyptus, and lovely sweet tart red fruit that lingers long after the wine is finished. I MUST STRESS – this wine is not ready for prime time. Please let this lie in your cellar for a year. If YOU MUST open it, I mean this with all seriousness, open the bottle 24 hours before enjoying. I saw the best in this wine after 24 hours of air and no refrigeration.

Israeli Merlot Wines:

2005 Ella Valley Merlot – Score: A- (and more) (tasted January 2014)
The nose on this wine, a blend of 95% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, is old and mature but not over the hill at all! The nose is rich with dark fruit, candied raspberry, cherry, with insane barnyard funk coming out, along with rich loamy dirt, earthy notes, and spice. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and layered with lovely funk and mushroom, with good blackberry, forest floor, all wrapped up in a cocoon of green leafy notes, sweet cedar, and mouth drenching tannin. The finish is long and spicy with lovely leafy tobacco, salty notes, rich mineral, graphite, chocolate, and rich dark fruit and leathery notes – BRAVO! The wine is drink up mode and it is throwing sediment – but enjoy!

2006 Yarden Merlot, Odem Vineyard – Score: A- (and a bit more) (tasted in Oct 2014)
This is the first single vineyard Merlot from the Odem Vineyard. This vineyard is tended to organically, but the word Organic is nowhere on the label as there are sulfites added. The first thing that hits you is the massive amount of heady spice and herb, what follows is crazy candied plum, nice chocolate, blackberry, eucalyptus/menthol aromas, and black cherry. The eucalyptus dies down over time and makes way for more rich spice and black fruit. The mouth is massive and inky with mouth coating tannin, layer upon layer of spice and herb, black fruit that is focused and concentrated, and sweet cedar that is integrating and rich in the mouth. The finish is super long and spicy with lovely tobacco, chocolate, blackcurrant, orange rind and loamy dirt. Over time the wine opens further and shows layers of butterscotch and  creamy vanilla.

2010 Tabor Merlot, Adama, Bazelet - Score: A- (and a bit more) (MAD QPR)
This is a wine I had with a friend of mine in January at the winery and I was not that impressed, which just goes to prove that tasting wine at a winery with 10 minutes or less to let the wine open and show it potential, is not the best way to judge a wine. The wine showed well, but not this well. Further the wine recently received a 93 from Wine Enthusiast, which judges kosher Israeli wine far more on par than other wines than other publications that I also read.

So, I had to give this wine a second chance and man were they right! This wine is a screaming QPR wine, it is rich and layered and shows black and red fruit throughout. It has no clear flaws and the acidity is what brings it all together.

The nose on this wine shows rich smokey notes, barnyard notes, along with candied Kirsch cherry, freshly rooted dirt, and ripe black notes. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine shows lovely and rich complexity from beautiful mouth coating tannin that lingers long, along with ripe concentrated blackberry, plum, raspberry, along withe sweet cedar, and spice. The finish is long with rich mineral, intense graphite, loamy dirt, lovely acidity, all culminating to an impression of a dark and brooding male with a long leather trench coat, puffing on a freshly rolled cigar, while enjoying some bitter chocolate and a cup of espresso. BRAVO! and double BRAVO for the insane price and quality! I have said before that Tabor is the new QPR leader in white wines, and throw this one on top of the heap at well!!

2009 Teperberg Merlot, Reserve – Score: A-
When I first tasted this wine a year or more ago I was truly shocked at how wonderful it was. This time around, I think the wine turned a bit sweet on me. The structure and the body were still there, but the fruit was riper than before.

The nose on this wine starts off with raspberries, dark plums, cherry, and lovely green notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine shows ripe red and black fruit that follow the nose, insane mouth coating tannin that is starting to integrate, along with sweet tobacco, graphite, loamy dirt, and sweet herb. The finish is long and herbal with more green notes, mint, tannin, and chocolate. Start drinking

2005 Yaren Merlot, Kela Vineyard – Score: A-
This wine is a sweet new world wine, but the structure, backbone, and sweet fruit help to hide the date like notes that normally really bug me. The nose on this black colored wine is redolent with dark forest fruit, insane licorice, mint, date, smokey notes, and blackberry jam. The mouth on this full bodied wine shows the oak influence with sweet cedar, concentrated and extracted black fruit, raspberry, plum, and intense mouth coating tannins that linger long on the rise. The finish is long and herbal with more dark fruit, chocolate, leather, green notes, spice, and fig.

2010 Tura Merlot – Score: A-
The Tura winery continues to improve year after year, showing more control and finesse, that helps to highlight the superb qualities of the Har Bracha grapes that they own.

The nose on this wine starts off with sweet oak, raspberry, blackberry, along with mounds of green notes, and barnyard aromas that help to accentuate this lovely wine. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is layered with dark chocolate, sweet cedar, plum black fruit, mushroom, along with great still searing tannin and balancing acidity. The finish is long and spicy, with good mineral, graphite, leather, and funk all on a long and enjoyable ride! BRAVO! This wine is ready to go now, and will last till 2018 or more.

2012 Haroe Winery Merlot – Score: B++
The nose on this nice and controlled wine is redolent with toasted oak, smoke, ripe raspberry, and green notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and layered with ripe fruit, great acid, black forest berry, searing tannin, and lovely spice. The finish is long with mouth coating tannin lingering, nutmeg, cinnamon, dill, and spice – NICE!!

California Merlot Wines:

2005 Four Gates Merlot M.S.C. - Score: A- (and more)
The nose on this still vibrant purple colored wine is packed with blackberry, cherry, plum, eucalyptus, and some lovely Merlot funk. The mouth on this full bodied wine is richly layered and extracted with waves of concentrated fruit, intense ripe raspberry, plum, cassis, and mouth coating tannins that all come together with bracing acidity and sweet oak. The finish is long and spicy with leather, spice, still tight and searing tannin, sweet notes, espresso, leather, chocolate, and hints of tobacco and cloves – BRAVO!!! This is a wine that is going nowhere anytime soon with more acid and tannin to keep this alive for another 5 to 8 years.

2001 Four Gates Merlot, M.S.C. – ­ Score: A- (tasted in September 2014)
The color of this wine is a beautiful deep garnet. The nose on this wine has strong aromas of blackberry, dark plum, cranberry, eucalyptus, along with lovely light notes of barnyard funk. The mouth on this full bodied wine is layered and complex. The mouth is full with blackberry, plum, and raspberry and then layers in mint. The mid palate adds core acidity, eucalyptus and lovely integrated tannins. The finish is long and satisfying with black fruit, chocolate, graphite, tobacco, and vanilla. A wonderful wine – it is at its peak if not a bit over the other side – drink up soon!!

2007 Four Gates Merlot, La Rochelle – Score: A- to A (tasted in June 2014)
This wine, in stark contrast to the 2008 Merlot, is what I would call elegant and constrained, while still being rich and lovely. In many ways this wine reminds me of the Carmel Mediterranean, though with a bit more Merlot styling. The nose starts of stunted and under a haze of funk, but after some time the nose is rich and expressive with dark cherry, raspberry, blackberry, plum, along with richly roasted herb and graphite. The mouth is perfectly balanced and rich from beginning to end, with lovely layers upon layers of concentrated red and black fruit mingling well with sweet cedar, and tannin that have yet to integrate. The finish is long and spicy with good tobacco, chocolate, cedar, loamy dirt, bell pepper, and menthol, all leading to leather and spellbinding finish.

In many ways this wine reminds me of a giant wielding a sledgehammer while daintily tiptoeing around in a china store wearing ballerina shoes. The finesse and power of the wine really does show that Merlot, when handled correctly, can yield magnificent outcomes.

2008 Four Gates Merlot, M.S.C. – Score: A- to A (tasted in August 2014)
The nose on this black colored wine was insane with ripe blackberry, eucalyptus, mint, dark plum, followed by intense dark chocolate, and spice. The mouth on this full bodied wine hits you in layers of concentrated ripe and dried fruit all at the same time, raspberry, cherry, red and black fruit, followed by intense dirt, mineral, roasted herb, all wrapped up in crazy mouth coating tannin and sweet oak. The finish is so long I could not clean my palate, with acid that seems to have been born from a lemon, yet perfectly balanced within the whole, with chocolate, oriental spice, fig, and roasted notes. BRAVO! FILTHY! This is a wine that is going nowhere anytime soon, and will be at peak very soon. Enjoy until 2018 with the peak hitting soon if not already here.

Well, I have posted my year in review, and now I wanted to get to my top wines for 2015. Please beware that I know I missed many wines and that this list does not include wines that I have tasted that are not available on the open market – like older Covenant Wines and the sort.

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 an A- or higher. Anything less would not be on my list.

On an aside, there continues to be a whole mess of madness around wines notes and scores, even the Jewish Week weighed in on the matter. So, let me explain this really simply – go look at some of my recent blog posts – they talk about some nice enough wines, but wines I would not specifically buy. They have all the nice words and such, which were all true and to the point. But without the final value score, I can tell you a Cabernet is full bodied with good fruit and spice – and you may say cool I want that – but then I would say well, yeah but it was not complex or layered. You could try to reason that out of the words I wrote, because the words complex and layered are missing. However, the simple fact that it was scored a B+ or whatever, would have told you that it is not always a wine worth going after (unless it is the Terrenal or such where it gets a QPR moniker).

My point being that wine notes – without a proper context (AKA a real score) – is like looking at a wedding hall through a slit in the window. Sure you can “see” the hall, but are you really sure you want to get married there? I never scored wines to tell people to listen to my score. I score wines to set the context and to always read the notes to see if that sort of wine works for you!

OK, enough of the darn score rant for the day, back to the matters at hand, being wines of the year. The list is long – get over it. It is a list of wines that I would buy, have bought, and will buy again – simple enough I hope. I did not differentiate by another other criteria or aspect – if it was solid (A- or higher) it made the list. I hope you enjoy!

2013 Elvi Wines Clos Mesorah – Score: A- to A
This is the flagship wine of Elvi Wines (though the Herenza Reserva may have a word to say about that) and it is a blend of 50% Carignan, 30% Grenache, and 20% Syrah. Elvi Wines makes 7K of these bottles. The wine was sourced from vines that are 20 to 100 years of age. The nose on this wine is insane and intoxicating with aromas of watermelon, root beer, ripe boysenberry, blueberry, along with chocolate and black fruit. The mouth on this full bodied wine hits you with layers of concentrated fruit, with an attack of blue and black fruit, balanced perfectly, showing great elegance, along with mad mineral, graphite, slate, rich and freshly tilled earth, along with deeply concentrated black fruit. The wine is the perfect example of elegance and balance with ripe fruit that flows into a plush mouth made from mouth coating tannin and rich fruit structure. This is truly a wine speaks for itself. The finish is long and intense, showing rich roasted animal, lovely mushroom, and floral notes. With time, the wine shows mad barnyard, mushroom, and even more loamy dirt. Bravo!!!

2010 Elvi Wines Herenza Rioja Reserva – Score: A- to A
There are only 4K of these bottles made and each one is a true gift! The wine is closed and slow to open, but with time and a fair amount of decanting, the nose shows of mad soy sauce (like the 2009 Herenza Reserva), chocolate, richly tilled earth, loam, along with crazy mushroom and mad mineral. This wine is the epitome of umami, showing intense layers of umami with white summer fruit, cranberry, craisins, blackberry, pomegranate, and tart cherry in the background with mounds of earth. The finish is intensely long and dirt filled, with  dark chocolate, licorice, blueberry and red fruit. BRAVO!!!!

2012 Chateau Haut Condisas, Medoc – Score: A- (and much more)
The 2011 was very nice, but the 2012 a slight step up. The nose on this wine is rich and redolent with lovely dirt, dark black fruit, barnyard, earth, and mushroom. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich, ripe, and in your face with nice chocolate, mad toast, mouth drying tannin, all wrapped in crazy acid, but bigger and riper than the 2011, almost Israeli in nature, but classically French controlled, with blackberry, raspberry, plum, with mineral and graphite. The finish is long and dirty, with hits of herb, along with layers of concentrated fruit, more mad mineral/earth/dirt/mushroom with dried raspberry, and rich garrigue. WOW! BRAVO!

2010 Chateau Fourcas Dupre, Listric – Medoc – Score: A- (and more) (CRAZY QPR)
This wine is on the list for its insane value and its goto ability above all wines from France for the price! The 2010 was a nice wine – but the 2012 is even better! The nose on this wine is lovely with rich dirt, cherry, crazy tart and juicy raspberry, followed by more dirt and mineral galore. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is lovely and still young but give it time, the acid is impressive along with nice spice, mouth coating tannin that is gripping along with lovely blackberry, cassis in the background, along with crazy mushroom, and layers of fruit and earth and forest floor that come at you and do not give up. The finish is long, with insane acid and more mouth drying tannin, more earth, dirt, tart lingering fruit, and lovely mineral/graphite. The fruit and mineral lingers long – BRAVO!!!!

2012 Domaine du Castel Grand Vin – Score: A- to A
To me this may well be there best Grand Vin, other than the 2008 (which was a Heter Mechira shmitta wine). The nose on this wine is perfumed and intoxicating, a mixed aroma therapy of mad ripe black and red fruit, wrapped in insane dark chocolate, and candied plum. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and layered with intense fruit structure, rich extraction, ripe plum, blackberry, intense saline and charcoal with crazy mineral and currant, all wrapped in searing tannin and so young, with ripe black fruit and draping mouth cotton. The finish is long and crazy rich, with chocolate, more mineral, graphite, and lovely oriental spice! MAD PROPS BRAVO!!

2013 Tzora Shoresh White – Score: A- to A
This wine was the clear winner of the tasting, maybe one of the best whites to be released by ANY Israeli winery. When I last tasted this wine the oak did not dominate the aromas, now the fruit is slightly subsiding on the nose and exploding on the mouth. The nose starts with crazy oak, pink grapefruit, green apple, smoke, flint and vanilla. Wow wow wow what an acid bomb, ripping acid that blows my mind, some of the deepest acid I have ever tasted from an israeli wine, laced with rich quince, mad tart citrus, lovely apple cobbler, hints of brioche that are now showing very well and integrated, candied pineapple, melon, all wrapped in a crazy body balanced and complex and layered – WOW! The finish is long and acidic with rich toast and mad herb, cloves, slate, rock, hint of vanilla, and butter – INSANE!

2012 Gvaot Pinot Noir, Masada – Score: A- to A
This is the first time that Shivi decided to make a Pinot Noir in the Masada label, he thought the wine was that spectacular that it needed to be at the Hero level. The nose on this lovely wine starts off with lovely plum, dark fruit, rich mineral, slate, and more dark fruit. The mouth on this full bodied wine is not about ethereal notes – but rather about the in your face kind of characteristics that one would get from an Israeli Pinot Noir. The mouth is full bodied and rich, with layers of fruit, rich extraction, full and mouth coating fruit structure, with a soft but deep body, dark plum, nice spice, earth, dirt, rich mushroom, cherry, and blackberry. The finish is long and rich in layers with more great structure, cloves, mouth coating tannin, all wrapped in sweet but controlled fruit. Impressive!

2013 Carmel Riesling, Single Vineyard, Kayoumi – Score: A- (and more)
This may well be the best Riesling out of Israel. The nose on this lovely wine is crazy, with petrol, rich notes of honeysuckle, dried green tea, and fresh-cut straw. The mouth on this medium plus bodied wine is ripping with intense acid, lovely yellow grapefruit, lemon, tart green apple, sweet melon, pear, that flows into crazy mineral, spice, and garrigue. The finish is long and spicy with tart fruit, slate, and hints of bitter almonds.

2009 Yarden Rose Brut – Score: A- to A
In many ways even better than the 2008, and now this epic wine will be sold in the USA! This vintage shows more red fruit than 2008, but the insane acid is there, with mousse of small bubbles and citrus madness. The wine is a blend of 70% Chardonnay and 30% Pinot Noir, giving it a pinkish hue.
The nose on this lovely rose colored bubbly is ripe with raspberry, plum, yeast, and spice. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with lovely structure, along with layers of sweet and tart fruit, pomegranate, candied cherry, grapefruit, lemon, and strawberry, all wrapped in a small focused mousse attack and ripping acid. The finish is long with a clean attack of acid, tart fruit, lemon friache, floral notes, and yeast. BRAVO!!!

2013 Recanati Carignan, Mediterranean – Score: A- (and much more)
What can I say this may well be the best one so far. The 2013 vintage was a blessing after 10,11, and 12 for some people. The 13 was kind to everyone!
The nose on this wine is insane with lovely rich roasted animal, blue and black fruit, spice, with pomegranate, and green notes. The mouth on this rich and full bodied wine is lovely with extraction, rich fruit, that attack you with rich mineral, spice, all wrapped in a rich body and fruit structure, it is on the edge in its fruit forward approach, but it is controlled with blackberry, cassis, and nice layers. The finish is long and blue with ripe and juicy boysenberry, crazy blueberries, leather, with sweet spices, nutmeg, and sage.

2012 Mia Luce Rosso – Score: A- to A
To me this wine has a bit more mineral, spice, saline, and hedonism than the Recanati Carignan, but they are both lovely wines! this wine is a blend of 97% carignan and 3% syrah. This wine starts off with rich charcoal, mineral, earth, and dirt, followed by roasted animal notes, tar, and blackberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich, black, and intense, layers of black fruit, extracted with crazy coffee, intense black olives, bb, black currants, and cassis. The finish is super long with mounds of mineral, saline, tannins coating the mouth with spice, green notes, and leather. BRAVO!

2011 Flam Noble – Score: A- to A
The wine is a blend of 61% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Petit Verdot, 11% Merlot & 11% Cabernet Franc sourced from the best plots of Flam’s Dishon & Ben Zimra vineyards (Upper Galilee) and Mata (Judean Hills). The nose on this wine needs time to open, but with time it shows ripe notes, sweet dill, lovely blueberry, candied plum, crazy graphite, mad roasted bend, rosemary, crazy mineral and earth. Wow what a mouth, full bodied, with rich acid, mineral, saline, black olives, with crazy elegance and rich chocolate and sweet dill that attacks with layer after layer of concentrated and saline driven sweet fruit with mineral that does not give up with raspberry and cherry. The finish is long and saline with tart raspberry and sweet dill and green notes with chocolate that lingers long with leather and oriental spices. Bravo!

2013 Gush Etzion Mourvedre – Score: A- (and more)
This is one of the first pure Mourvedre wines made in Israel and what a joy it was to enjoy it! The nose on this wine is truly lovely! Intense, with a classic cali nose, blueberry, raspberry, floral notes, violet, nutmeg, sweet spices, toast, smoke, and smoked meat. The mouth on this medium bodied wine with rich black olives, crazy earth and dirt, mad sweet spices, cloves, and bleak pepper. The finish was long, spicy, and richly floral juice, toasty herb, with mad kirshe cherry, candied fruit, tar, all lasting long with mineral and saline.

2014 Matar Special Edition – Score: A- (and more)
This is a special wine made for the Derech Hayain wine stores. It is mostly Chardonnay with a bit of Sauvignon Blanc added in. It is crazy because this was tasted blind like all the other wines in this tasting and we thought it was an SB – no way this was a chard! The bit of SB overpowered this wine in a very special manner. This wine has a lovely nose of wet grass, cat’s piss, gooseberry, with citrus and lemon. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is crazy with sick ripping acid, intense crazy citrus pith, nectarines, with rich sweet and tart fruit, it flows into lemon grass, pineapple and tart yellow grapefruit. The finish is long with straw and mineral finish with crazy kiwi lingering. BRAVO!!!

2012 Tzora Misty Hills – Score: A- to A
This wine is a blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon and 45% Syrah. The nose on this wine is filled with ripe fruit but awesome control, with rich elegance, ripe black fruit, nice saline, mad roasted animal, and mineral, with rich green notes. The mouth on this flagship wine is full bodied with crazy saline, mad Kalamata olives, butterscotch, insane acidity and rich attack of layers and mad complexity of blackberry, blueberry, plum, with butterscotch and intense graphite and rich balance and green notes that come together with draping tannin and insane chocolate. Long and spicy and green, with a lovely graphite finish, showing such finesse and elegance, mixed with mad earth and mineral, and balanced with leather and spices.

2011 Teperberg Cabernet Sauvignon, Reserve – Score: A- (and more)
The nose on this wine is intoxicating and rich with ripe and fresh fruit, with black and red fruit, cherry, bell pepper, spice, and blackberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is super rich and layered with concentrated fruit, black fruit, black plum, searing tannin, along with crazy sweet oak, that lingers long with still not integrated tannin. The finish is long with great balancing acid, spicy notes, along with ribbons of blueberry, leafy tobacco, chocolate, spice, cloves, and black/red fruit lingering long. Bravo this is a fantastic wine!

2011 Yatir Forest – Score: A- to A
This wine is a blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and 35% Petite Verdot. The wine is a sheer beauty, impressive, what a lovely wine with ripe fruit, but lovely control, showing a lovely intoxicating nose of control, and mineral. The mouth on this full bodied wine shows crazy acid, draping elegant tannin, with nice saline, mineral, dried green notes, with oriental spices, ripe fruit, blackberry, blueberry, with lovely elegance of tannin structure, and extraction all balanced by wicked power and attack. The finish is long, deeply concentrated and lingering, with elegance, chocolate, oriental spice, leather, butterscotch, and vanilla. Bravo!!

2011 Four Gates Frere Robaire – Score: A- to A
The wine gets its name from Benyamin Cantz’s brother – Robert, but the name does bring a smile to my mind when I think of the other meanings. The wine is a blend made up primarily of Merlot and fleshed out with some Cabernet Sauvignon. In comparison to the 2011 cab, which was a slight step back, the 2011 FR is a freak, from its clear Merlot leanings! It may well be the best or a close second to the best of the frere robaire wines.

The nose on this lovely wine is rich with dark plum, ripe strawberry, along with crushed herb, forest floor, and ripe raspberry. Lovely medium to full bodied wine with layers of refined fruit, rich complexity, showing spicy oak with still searing tannin, along with crazy intensity, and extraction, followed by dark fruit, blackberry, intense oriental spices and forest floor. The finish is long and green with nice spice, more mouth coating tannin, green notes, barnyard, and dill, with butterscotch and tea lingering. Bravo!!

2009 Hagafen Melange, Prix – Score: A- (and much more) (mevushal)
What can I say, this is an epic wine, refined and elegant and it is mevushal – crazy! The 2004 vintage was and is legendary, and though each vintage may be a bit behind it, they never disappoint! The nose on this lovely wine is redolent with spice, ripe plum, cassis, crazy anise and dirt. The mouth on this medium bodied Bordeaux blend wine shows lovely finesse, sweet cedar, lovely dark chocolate, with vanilla, dill, crazy mouth coating tannin, all enveloped in an elegant mouth, followed by layers of plum, cherry, and blackcurrant. The finish is long and spicy with more chocolate, dill, expressive layers of spice, nutmeg, and leather followed by vanilla and butterscotch. Long and luscious, and joy. BRAVO!!!!!

2013 Covenant 
Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Veeder Vineyard – Score: A- to A
Personally, this is the best wine so far ever made under the Covenant Cabernet wine label, and its fruit was also sourced from Rudd’s Mount Veeder fruit. The nose on this epic wine shows crazy intense and extracted aromas with mineral, graphite, black cherry, blackberry, and herb. The mouth on this massive and fully extracted wine shows with crazy rich fruit, an inky structure, with layers of concentrated black brooding and intense fruit, currant, cassis, and intense anise with ginger, mineral, graphite, all wrapped in rich dark fruit, along with mouth coating tannin, and rich herb. The finish is long with green notes balanced with crazy ripe fruit, lovely leafy tobacco, dark chocolate, along with pith, intense graphite, bringing imagery to mind of a leather coat with rich cigar smoke. This wine is better than the 2012 vintage, with more extraction and richness, but balanced with ripping acid, herb, pith, anise, and mad mineral. DOUBLE BRAVO!!

2011 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Solomon Lot 70 – Score: A- to A
I can honestly say that Solomon wines seem to have this insane mouth coating and draping quality to them, almost like a velvet robe – very impressive. As we have stated before, the name Solomon comes from Leslie’s Rudd’s Hebrew name (Jeff’s partner in the Covenant Winery) and the number 70 is an ode to the container number in which the wine was fermented in 2008 (the first year of the Covenant Solomon). The number 70 just happened to also be the numerical value of the wine in Hebrew (Yayin)! The 2011 vintage in California was not as hot as many would have hoped, but Jeff waited for the fruit to come to him, and in 2011 he waited till the very last day – when rain would be falling, and picked it as close to its true ripeness as possible. The outcome is quite a wine! The nose on this wine is rich and intoxicating with insane chocolate, green notes, garrigue, intense cranberry, currant, black plum, and spice. The mouth on the full bodied wine is richly extracted, with great concentrated fruit, cassis, and blackberry, along with nice spice, green herb, mushroom, loamy dirt, and inky fruit structure with more black and red fruit, searing acid and tannin, but perfectly balanced with rich mineral and graphite. The finish was long with crazy good chocolate, vanilla, followed by a dollop of citrus zest – quite a nice wine.

2013 Capcanes Peraj Habib, Flor de Primavera – Score: A- (and more)
The wine is a blend of 40% Grenache, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 20% Carignan. The nose on this lovely wine is quite jammy with rich toast, lovely currant, garrigue, and nice blackcurrant. The mouth on this full bodied wine is massive and it hits you with layers of concentrated black and red fruit, intense saline, olives, along with intense searing tannin that gives way to creme de cacao, blackberry, cassis, sweet herb, and highlighted by great fruit structure and spice. The finish is long and spicy with cloves, black pepper, leather, followed by mineral and graphite. Bravo!!

2013 Capcanes La Flor del Flor de Primavera, Old Vines Carignan – Score: A- to A
This is the first 100% Carignan wine from Capcanes that is kosher. It comes from vines that are 80 or more years old! They made a wine in 2012 and I blogged about it here, but in the end the bailed on it and dumped it into the Peraj Habib, which is why the 2012 PH was INSANE! The 2013 has followed that – but they saved some for a pure bottling as well.

2012 Hajdu Proprietary Red, Hossfeld Napa – Score: A- (and more)
This is the second year for this lovely wine, and it continues to impress. The 2011 was Howell mountain, this year is the impressive Hossfeld hills of Napa Valley. The percentages of the Bordeaux blend are not told, but the wine is impressive and who cares anyway! The nose on this lovely wine shows off red and black fruit, with great sweet herb and lovely coffee. The mouth on this full bodied wine is elegant and refined, but also aggressive and so Cali, with mad sweet dill, smoking tobacco, along with lovely layers upon layers of rich black and elegant fruit, blackberry, plum, currant, balanced perfectly with rich acid and lovely spice. The finish is long, green, and tart, with forest berry, foliage, crazy searing tannin, rich sweet oak, spice, green notes, chocolate and leather. Impressive!

2013 Shirah Aglianico – Score: A- to A
This wine needs a ton of time to open, it starts off very closed but with 10 hours it will be good. The nose on this wine is crazy with floral notes, ripe blue fruit, raspberry, and juicy strawberry with mad perfume of dirt and sweet spices. This is another Shirah monster wine, another wine from the Weiss brothers that live up to the heritage of crazy big, bold, aggressive Cali wines. SO AWESOME! The mouth on this full bodied wine is a purple/black colored wine with ripe blackberry, crazy acid, followed by mouth scarping tannin and mineral, with graphite followed by layers of juicy boysenberry, strawberry, with sweet tannin, sweet spices, apricots, and juicy fruit that does not stop. The finish is long and mineral with tannin that does not end, with graphite, nutmeg, sweet spices, and sweet basil. WOW What a wine, BRAVO guys!!!

The next wines that I enjoyed on my last trip to Israel and Europe, came after I had finished tasting wonderful wines from the ever capable Yaacov Oryah (head winemaker at Psagot Winery) at one of the newest hip kosher wine bars in Jerusalem – the Red and White Wine bar – kitty-corner from the beautiful Mamilla hotel (8 Shlomo HaMelech Street at the corner of Yanai Street).

After going to see the Kotel (following the tasting at the Red and White bar), I made my way to where I was staying. It was not far from where we would be having the next two tastings, at our friend’s home DD. While, our host was fantastic, the wines were not so much. Much of that was a shocker to us all, because the wines we brought were not lightweights, they just did not show well at all.

There were some winners, a bottle of the epic Von Hovel kosher Riesling – that we will talk more about in a later post, but for now – the notes were very similar and the wine was insane. It was intoxicating (in its flavors) as much as it was intense, showing mineral, sweet notes, and acidity all at the same time.

The real winner of the night to me (other than the epic Von Hovel) was the 4 Vats red which was really nice and a solid QPR wine.

My many thanks to our friend DD for hosting us in his lovely home! To be honest after all the wine tastings I had up until this point, I was done for, so my notes were not very good this time. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2016 Yaacov Oryah Light from Darkness (Blanc de Noir) – Score: A-
This is a white wine made from Yaacov Oryah’s Rhone varietal vineyard, using Grenache, Cinsault, and Mourvedre. The juice of the grapes was pressed out of the grapes with no skin contact. The juice of red grapes is clear until it is left to macerate with its red skins.
Really a fun and unique wine never had such a wine showing red fruit notes in a white wine, showing grapefruit, sour cherry, rich mineral, yeasty notes with lovely minerality, green olives, and saline. The mouth is well integrated with lovely acid, rich peach, lemon and grapefruit with tart citrus, dried orange and more saline and slate galore, with nice pith on the long finish. Bravo! Drink by 2018.

2015 Matar Sauvignon Blanc / Semillon – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this wine was lovely, showing ripe grapefruit, flint, spice, kiwi, and green notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has just enough acidity, showing nice focus with slate, saline, and nice peach, with pink grapefruit, yellow pear, and lovely acid. Drink UP!

2014 Von Hovel Hutte Oberemmel Riesling, Mosel, Gefen Hashalom – Score: A- to A
This was my initial notes for this wonderful wine, without knowing I would taste this very wine in the Von Hovel winery and bring a few home! Stay tuned for that post soon.
A nice Riesling wine, great funk, with rich petrol, honeysuckle monster, with great spice, with heather, lavender, with yellow apple, and yellow plum. The mouth is rich and layered and rich acidity that is insane, with layers of rich blossom honey, and layers of never ending oily texture that is dripping with acid and white peach, lovely funk that gives way to minerality and intense lovely saline, with the sweet notes showing instead of the ripping acid/slate that the 14 Nik showed. Bravo!

2016 Teperberg Pinot Gris, Essense – Score: B to B+
Flat and boring with a bit of acid. Pineapple and grapefruit and not much more.

2015 Shirah Furmint -Score: B
This wine was clearly wrong, maybe the travel caused its early death – no idea. I loved this wine a few months prior and think it was a bad bottle. The nose is grapefruit, and kiwi, with green apple, and spice, with oak galore. The mouth is a bit flat, and bad

2015 Matar Chenin Blanc – Score: B
I wrote very little, all I know was I disliked it.

2016 Gush Eztion Sauvignon Blanc – Score: B+
I had high hopes for this wine, but sadly it was not what I was hoping for. The nose on this wine was lovely, showing classic Sauvignon blanc notes, gooseberry, grass, cats pee, with good kiwi. The mouth is nice with good acidity, tropical fruit, passion fruit, kiwi, that is missing a bit in the middle, with cloves, slate, good pith.

2016 Carmel 2 Vats Rose – Score: B
Sadly, the 2015 Rose was far better (in 2016), this wine was a letdown. Sweet nose and funk and sweet and flat

2016 Capcanes Peraj Petita Rosat: Score: B+
I tasted this first in Israel and had it again in the USA, and posted here.
Nice funky nose with good grapefruit, peach, and raspberry. Nice enough. Drink Up!

2012 Adir A red – Score: B+
Nice nose of green notes, dark fruit, raspberry, dark cherry, bell pepper, and lovely foliage. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is pushed and ripe, but no date, with nice currant, and nice mouth coating tannin, rich spice, earth, and nice salinity that gives way to dark fruit and spice. The finish is long and hot, but nice with leather, and green notes.

2012 Yatir Petit Verdot – Score: B
The nose is green, mineral, smoke, dirt, and menthol. The mouth was pure date juice, really fruit forward, not a wine I would buy.

2016 Carmel 4 Vats – Score: A- (GREAT QPR)
Interesting nose, raspberry, jammy fruit, with pushed fruit, but not dates, spice, cloves, mineral, and roasted animal. The mouth is lovely with minerality, ribbons of graphite, but sweeter fruit with nice mouth drying tannin, with rich saline, ripe blackberry, earth, green notes wrapped in blueberry and heady and lovely spice. The finish is long and green with good acid, fresh and tart fruit that gives way to graphite, garrigue, and rich earth, with mushroom in the background. Bravo!

2010 Gush Etzion Cabernet Franc – Score: B
All I have is no.

2014 Agur Karka – Score: A-
Eran Pick from Tzora Winery planted Oseleta grapes in 2009 and he was interested in using them in Tzora’s wines. In the end, the grapes did not work for Tzora, so Agur started to use them and this is the wine that was made with them.
Interesting nose of dark cherry, currants, rich licorice, and nice earthy and good spice. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice with good ribbons of mineral and graphite with bitter notes, that gives way to more mouth coating feeling as it ages or opens in the bottle, good acidity and great fruit focus that is backed by ripe red fruit, along with dark plum, nice sweet spices, nutmeg, earth, and dry flowers. Overall this is a well-made wine, balanced and biting, and yes it has bitter notes – I like that but some have issues with it. Nice! Drink by 2021

2015 Ella Valley L – Score: B
This wine felt really rushed and unprofessional, all I have on it is: unfinished and not clean not professional wine.

2013 Lueria Grand Vital – Score: B+ to A-
I have very little in terms of notes. The wine was professionally made, well built with good acid and fruit, but a bit too fruit forward for me at this point. I would drink by 2019.

2012 Mia Luce Rosso – Score: NA
corked

2015 Mia Luce Syrah and Stem – Score: B
Again, little in terms of notes. This was not a fun wine. It showed flat and really not expressive. What can you say, 2015 was a horrible vintage.

2012 Tzora Misty Hills – Score: A-
I do not know what happened, all I know is that this bottle did not taste like the wine of old – which I loved a few years ago. This wine is a blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon and 45% Syrah. The wine still shows well, and I did not take much in terms of notes, but what really shocked me was how ripe the wine was. Even in the notes the wine was ripe, but well controlled. Maybe it lost that control, the acid was not as obvious as it was three years ago. I would start drinking up.

2010 Chateau Du Rocher – Score: B
This wine is in serious drink up mode, it was flat with tannin. Drink UP!

It is officially Spring (though it snowed in Chicago for Passover – so I will hold judgment on that fact for a bit), which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!

Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?

Wine Color

What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes squeeze them and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.

White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.

The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).

Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.

The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature.

Rose wines are the in-between story – hence the chameleon term I used above.

Rose Wine

Rose wine is made in one of three ways. I will list the most dominant manners and leave the last one for last.

Maceration:

This is the first step of the first two options and the only difference is what you do with the rest of juice after you remove it? You see, as we stated above, the color of the juice from red grapes is clear to green and for one to get the lovely red hues we all love from red wine, it requires the juice to lie on the grape skins – AKA maceration.

The rose hue depends on how long the juice macerates. I have heard winemakers say 20 minutes gives them the color they like, and some say almost half a day or longer. The longer the juice macerates the darker the color. While the wine is macerating, the skins are contributing color by leaching phenolics – such as anthocyanins and tannins, and flavor components. The other important characteristic that the skins leach into the rose is – antioxidants that protect the wine from degrading. Sadly, because rose wines macerate for such a short period of time, the color and flavor components are less stable and as such, they lack shelf life – a VERY IMPORTANT fact we will talk about later. Either way, drinking rose wine early – like within the year – is a great approach for enjoying rose wine at its best!

Now once you remove the liquid, after letting it macerate for the desired length of time, the skins that are left are thrown out or placed in the field to feed organic material into the vines. This is a very expensive approach indeed because the grapes are being thrown away, instead of doing the Saignée process which is described in option #2. This approach is mostly used in regions where rose wine is as important as red wines, like Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon. Mind you, the grapes used in this method are most often picked early, as they are being solely used for making the rose.

You can tell which method is used (Saignee or plain Maceration), by looking at the wine’s alcohol level. If it is above 14% – you can be sure it is a Saignee, meaning the wine was made as an afterthought of the main wine – its red brother. The wines I crave are the maceration type. When you taste the wine, look for the acid, is the acid natural or out of place? If the grapes are picked at red wine maturation, the alcohol will be high, sure it can have good acid, but it will still have high alcohol and weight. That kind of wine, even if well balanced with acid (whether added or natural) is not the kind of rose I like to sip. That is more of a light colored Beaujolais kind of wine. When the grapes are pulled earlier, allowing for a lower alcohol level, they tend to be crisper like a white summer wine, think Sauvignon Blanc, or Reisling. Add a touch of red notes from the short red skin contact and you get a fun and zesty wine that matches summer fare.

Saignée:

The second approach for how Rose wine is made, is essentially the same as maceration – the only difference is that they do not remove all the juice. In the second method for making Rose wine, the Rose is the afterthought – in DRASTIC contrast to the first approach, where the rose is primary.

So in places like California and Rhone in France, winemakers will pick the grapes when they reach their appropriate phenolics. Then to concentrate the wine, the winemaker will bleed some of the juice – hence the term Saignée in French which means bleed. By removing this juice, after the juice has macerated long enough, the resulting wine is further intensified, because there is less juice lying on the same amount of grape skin surface.

The interesting thing here is that the grapes used to make this kind of rose are normally one with higher Brix, as the grapes are destined for red wine. So, when you bleed the juice out of the must, what is being pulled out is juice at a higher alcohol level than Rose wines made using the first method (as explained above). So what do you do when you have a wine that is too high in alcohol so early in the game – well that is simple you water it down! Now remember this wine is already low on phenolics and color, so if you know that your rose will be high in alcohol when all is said and done, you have lots of options here. You can leave the juice to macerate for longer, yes the juice you finally pull out may well be darker than you desire. However, you will be watering it down, so it is all a question of numbers and winemakers who make these kinds of wines, are used to it and know how to handle it.

Now you ask what is wrong with high alcohol rose? Well, a rose is normally meant to be light and fruity wine, and higher alcohol wines are neither of those things.

Blending Method:

Finally, what do you get when you mix some white wine with some red wine – a rose by George a rose! This last method is the least common method for creating still rose wines. That said, it is very common in the world of Champagne and sparkling wines. Next time you enjoy sparkling rose wine, you can almost be sure that it is a blend of Chardonnay (white wine) and either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier (red wine).

As stated before, in the pure rose still wine market, there really is very little of this kind of rose being made.

State of kosher rose wines

Types of Rose made:

1. Red Rose wines: There are truly few examples of this, but they have been made and they are not a rose wine. They are billed as a rose at times, but to me, they are essentially a light red wine, much like a Gamay
2. Sweet Rose wines: Sweet wines are created because either the winemaker could not get the wine to completely finish primary fermentation or because they stopped it. Sweet rose wines sometimes lack balance because they lack the screaming acid needed to make it all work. That said, sweeter rose wines are the gateway wines to get people to try drier wines. The best of the sweet wines IMHO is the 2017 Dalton estate rose, or Kna’an as it is called in Israel.
3. Dry rose wines: Dry is not a subjective concept it is measurable in a lab and can be tasted as well. That said, what we as humans can perceive does seem to be subjective. Some of us will think a Sauvignon Blanc is sweet unless it is a Sancerre – you know who you are JR! Dr. Vinny was asked this question here, and essentially we can start perceiving sweetness at 0.5% residual sugar, but as the Doc says, sometimes a bone-dry wine can be perceived as sweet because of its ripeness and/or lack of balancing acidity.
4. Dark rose wines: Color in any rose or red wine is defined by the amount of maceration the wine goes through, as described above. Some people like that salmon color and some like that darker rose color. The 2017 Recanati Rose (not the Gris de Marselan which is lovely and light colored) is a dark rose – and OK, I guess. There are so many colors in the rose spectrum, and no, the darker roses are not based on what grape is used in the making of the wine, unless it is based on a Teinturier grape – which I have yet to see.

So where does that leave us? To recap IMHO, rose wine is meant to be light, refreshing, tart, and low in alcohol. It can have a varying rose hue, from Gris (gray in French – light color) to Salmon, to rose, and all the way up to dark red. Yes, there have been wineries who tried making heavier rose wines, that were essentially red wines, whom I will not mention and they have all been epic disasters. If you want a red wine – make a Gamay and leave me alone! Rose is about summer, tart and refreshing wine.

White and Rose wine education

Royal Wines has done a great job in bringing these two wines in, but I must stress – we need more education! Any wine distributor today can sell a Cabernet Sauvignon in its sleep! Why? Because the kosher wine drinking public is programmed to drink big bold red wines! Nothing light and lithe, only sledgehammers! Now, who am I to disagree with what someone likes – if you like a wine enjoy it! What I would like to see is people finding a way to expand their palate – by doing so they will learn more about wines and maybe they will actually see why they like and dislike a wine more – education is the answer! Now to those who say – why bother, if they like it let them enjoy it? To that answer I say – sure, when u were three years old you liked mud, and you really liked spreading it all over your sister’s new white dress! Should we have let you enjoy it forever?? Of course not!

Now your reply will be, come on we are talking about wine – not personal growth and their humanity! Of course but like everything in this world – we should want to strive and learn more about what makes us happy and why! If you like a Monet painting – you owe it to yourself to learn why? What grabs you when you see 100+-year-old paint on a canvas? So what he painted a haystack – good for him? What makes you want to stare at it for hours? The answer is inside of you – and you need to learn the answer. I hope we can all find the answers about what makes us tick, why we all love some things and why we hate other things. That is called human evolution – it makes us what we are – human! Anyway, I am off my soapbox now, but I hope we can agree that growth is good – no matter the subject.

I beg distributors and wineries to get out and teach! Get out and go to wine stores and pour wines – pour wine to anyone that wants to taste or even to those that do not! Education is the foundation of this industry – and without it, we are doomed to stasis – something that terrifies me!

The temperature to enjoy Rose

Please do yourself a favor and enjoy rose wine at 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Meaning if you leave a bottle of wine in your refrigerator and pull it out after half a day of fridge time or more, it will probably be at the refrigerator’s frigid temperature of 37 or so degrees Farenight – which is HORRIBLE for rose. Rose at room temperature of 70 or so degrees is also not fun. It needs to be a bit cold, but not over the top. Please do not think that it needs to be iced down in an ice bucket either, that is for sparkling wines.

Drink the rose at the beginning of the meal

Rose is NOT a long-term drinking animal. It is not meant to be enjoyed for more than a meal. Why? Because as we explained above once it is fully oxygenated, it will go bad – really bad fast. The tart fruit notes and the acid will dissipate faster than air leaves a punctured tire. It is simply the life of Rose, drink it very young and fast. Never stock up on Rose, there is no purpose in that! Go to the store and buy a rose and drink it, if they have none, then no worries drink something else.

White and Rose wine drinking in the kosher wine world

I find that white and rose wines just do not sell to the kosher market. Sadly, they do not see the joy that I and much of Israel now sees. Eight years ago, if you had said that Israel would be making nice white and rose wines and not so many great reds, wine aficionados would have looked at you askance. Well, that is exactly where we are today! Much of what Israel makes in the red wine world, is not very good, especially from the larger wineries. There are the usual suspects that are continuing to impress vintage after vintage, but the vast majority have sold out to the sweet-toothed date drinkers. However, they are creating wonderful white and rose wines! What is more – is that they are selling much of it in ISRAEL! Yes, that is right, Israelis are drinking far more white and rose wine than ever and the craze we are seeing here in the non-kosher world for Rose is happening in the kosher world in Israel!

Now, the rose madness is here for sure, even in the kosher market. This year the wines have arrived earlier and are available as we speak. More will be arriving soon, and some are only available at wineries, like the Hagafen rose, which is nice.  Sadly, my community has not come to appreciate rose or most whites wines. If I open one I would need to drink the bottle on my own, because few in my community drink white wines. The exception is Four Gates Chardonnay, which to be fair is a great wine and it is so rich and intoxicating that it appeals to red wine drinkers.

I really hope that articles like this can start to pique people’s interest. Rose and tart refreshing white wines have so much to offer. They are meant to be lithe and refreshing, but also complex and unique. They go well with so many great summer foods and yet, when summer comes around folks just continue drinking heavy reds or beer. Now, I like beer like most people, but between a lovely rose or beer, I choose rose!

The good news is that kosher wine drinkers are finally getting the message, but they are only buying the stuff over the summer months. Outside of those, NYC/east coast drinkers of kosher wine could care less. Which means white and rose wines from 2014, 2015 and 2016 can still be found all around at shops and stores. DO NOT buy rose wine from any vintage other than 2017! SIMPLE!!

State of affairs with rose 2017

So where are we in 2018 with Rose wines? Well, as I stated kosher wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark. Why? Because there are MANY wine shops, even on the hallowed grounds of NYC, that still have Rose wines on their shelves, from the 2015 vintage, and even older lying around. Why is that a problem? As stated above, Rose wines are NOT meant for aging. Rose wines should NEVER be sold after their drink by date, which is the summer after the wine’s vintage. So, 2017 wines should be sold out by the summer of 2018 – simple! Sadly, I still see 2015 wines being sold all around! There is simply too much older rose lying around and too much new 2017 Rose wines coming in. The outcome is that someone is going to eat a lot of rose wines, or they will push them on to the unsuspecting public, who really do not understand roses at all.

I BEG the manufacturers to work with the stores and merchants to eat the 2015 and 2016 wines, one way or the other, and get them OFF the shelves. Please DO NOT attempt to put them on sale, they are not wines that should be pushed to consumers, as it only ends up hurting the wineries and the companies selling them. Please remove them and figure out how to handle the loss. No one will be drinking Rose wines for Rosh Hashanah. That means there is a LOT of wine to sell in a very short period of time – PLEASE help yourselves – start selling the 2017 wines already and walk away from the 2015/2016 wines!

One part that is better than last year is that many of the rose wines are here and more coming very soon. I wish they would have all been here in March, but it is MUCH better than last year. Sadly, Netofa is still not here in the USA! Very sad! I went to Netofa on my last trip to Israel, and I will post that soon enough, some really fun wines that are showing beautifully.

Best rose so far in 2018

Well, let’s hold up here for a second. I have not tasted all the roses out there yet. I have tasted LOTS of them, like 30 plus of them so far and the Israeli 2017 roses are all “sweet”. Now be careful here, when I say sweet – I mean I perceive sweetness. These roses are ripe, big in the mouth, and leave a perception of sweetness. There are a few roses from Israel that are lithe in nature, and those are my preferred options so far, from what I have had the chance to enjoy.

So with that said, here are the winners for me so far, with more European roses arriving soon I hope. The best Israeli roses – in order of preference:

1. 2017 Netofa Latour Rosado
2. 2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan
3. 2017 Covenant Blue C Rose. Nice – best of the “sweet perceived wines”
4. 2017 Netofa Rose – QPR 
5. 2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – QPR winner so far in Israel
6. 2017 Dalton Kna’an: SHOCK! QPR Nice – SWEET! Great gateway rose

The best California Rose is the just released 2017 Shirah Rose – really fun (I have yet to taste the new Covenant or Hajdu 2017 roses)!

The best European Rose so far is the 2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – and so far it is the overall QPR winner. That may well change when the rest of the European roses appear – ASAP I hope!

Blind Tasting in Jerusalem

A bit more than a week before Passover, I was in Israel, and I had the chance to hang with my French/American crazy wine friends, AD, MB, JK, AS, AS, AO, MB, and others. The tasting entailed 65+ wines, most of them were rose or white, with a few reds thrown in at the end. It was a long night, and very enjoyable, including some crazy moments, but overall very enjoyable and my many thanks to JK’s office – where the madness took place.

At the event, we tasted over 20 roses. Besides that, I have been tasting roses for the past couple of months now. Like, in the past, some of the wine notes are really light on data some are longer, and some are just one word, like No, or boring.

Overall, as I stated Israeli roses from 2017 are mostly too sweet for me, but many are well balanced and I think will work for others. As stated above, to me at this point I will stick with the European roses from for 2017 until I taste an Israeli rose that makes me take notice, though the Netofa Latour rose is really close, sadly it is not available in the USA. That said, they do ship here from Israel!

The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2017 Shirah Rose – Score: 90 to 91 (QPR)
This wine is a blend of 66% Grenache, almost 33% Nebbiolo, with a bit of Zinfandel. This wine is a Saignee wine, though it does not show that way in style or body – lovely!
This wine is really fun bravo, the color, and style is totally Gris – bravo! The nose is lovely and really mineral with nice acid, showing quince, dried fruit, straw, and earth, so much fun! The mouth is really nice with great acid, and lovely mineral, showing nice tart and juicy strawberry, rich dried cherry, grapefruit, and lovely mineral with great slate and rich citrus and floral notes. The finish is rich and acidic and citrus-driven, with rich mineral. Bravo!!

2017 Timbre Rosé (by La Fenetre) – Score: 86
The wine shows a nice and interesting nose of blueberry and raspberry with some slate. The mouth is sweet, and nice enough with strawberry, but too much sweetness and not enough balance. The finish is long and sweet.

2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – Score: 91 (QPR)
This wine is actually a bit better than last year’s rose, with the only aspect of last year’s showing cool charcoal that this one does not have. The nose on this wine is rich and redolent, with ripping pink grapefruit, lovely tart strawberry, mineral, and lovely floral notes with lemongrass. The mouth on this medium bodied wine shows a nice weight, with good fruit focus, showing more fruit than last year, with good acidity, showing sweet but truly tart passion fruit, and a lovely mineral core, with earth, and crazy tart citrus lingering long. The finish is long and tart, with ripping acid, great balance, lovely mineral, and pith lingering long. Lovely!

2017 Amos Winery Rose – Score: No
What can I say this wine is just too strange. It was based upon Muscat and though it had acid, it is one of the many roses from Israel this year that are sweet bombs covered with layers of acid. Not my cup of tea.

2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – 88 to 89 (QPR)
Another Israeli tropical fruit bomb rose for 2017. The nose is ripe with guava, pineapple, cotton candy, extra ripe strawberry and creme, and candied ripe fig. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ok, it has nice acid, but man is it sweet, with clear residual sugar showing passion fruit, guava, and more tropical notes. The finish is long, it lingers very well, and while it is sweet, it is very well balanced. This is a great entry level rose for those wanting to get to more dry rose. Till then, I would not buy this one again, but nice work on balancing a sweet wine with basic fruit structure and freshness. This may well be the best QPR for under 15 dollars in Israel. The Dalton Kannan is right behind it.

2017 Yatir Rose – Score: 85
The nose on this wine is nice enough but too tropical with intense pineapple, super sweet strawberry with creme, with some mineral, and spice. Well, another year and another rose from Yatir that is pith and fruit and no acid. Sad, really sad. With more time, it open to show a bit more acid, but that is it, flat and boring, still sad.

2017 Bat Shlomo Rose – Score: 87
OK, so the one redeeming fact of this wine is its nose, the rest falls apart quickly. The nose on this wine is lovely, I wish it carried to the mouth, with rich salinely, lovely mineral, and red fruit. The mouth is where things fall apart, yes there is acid, but it is all over the place with far too much sweet fruit and not enough structure and coherence in the mouth. The finish is sweet with mineral and pith, but really what lingers is the sweet fruit, candied quince, peach, guava, and tropical notes with citrus. Sad. Another year of unbalanced rose.

2017 Domaine du Castel Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of 60% Merlot, 20% Malbec, and 20% Cabernet Franc
I tasted this blind at the event and then again at the winery, and the tasting was better at the winery but not overly impressive. The nose is nice, that part is clear, showing nice citrus, strawberry, and ripe plum. The mouth shows acid, with a good fruit structure, but too round and sweet, with a makeup that is missing stuff. The finish is long and round with good pith, nice acid, saline, and citrus.

2017 Netofa Domaine Rose – Score: 89
This wine is a blend of 50% Syrah, 30% Grenache, and 20% Mourvedre. The nose on this wine is lovely but sweet, with rosehip, ripe strawberry, and grapefruit, with cherry and raspberry. The mouth is medium bodied with great acidity and with lovely currant and quince that works great with dry fruit, that is richly saline and mineral but sweeter, than the Netofa Latour. The finish is sweet and yet nicely balance with mineral, slate, and pith. Nice!

2017 Netofa Latour Rosado – Score: 91
This and the Recanati Gris de Marselan are the only two Israeli roses that I really liked, and are leaner and not tropical or fruit bombs. This wine is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Grenache. The nose on the first ever “reserve” rose from Netofa wine is more refined than the baseline Netofa rose, with rosehip again, but now with quince, raspberry, and strawberry creme. The mouth is not the screaming acid bomb that the Domaine rose is, but this is perfectly balanced with good pith and slate, showing more refinement and elegance with more citrus and grapefruit and less of the sweet currant fruit, with lovely slate and floral notes. The finish is green and red with pith and spice. Love it. Bravo!

2017 Tabor Adama Rose – Score: 89 (QPR)
The nose starts off with lovely gooseberry, followed by big, bright, and juicy strawberry and really lovely cherry. The mouth is sweet, yet well balanced with tart fruit, great acid, bright and tart with great acid, with good balance, and lovely pith. Solid!

2017 Psagot Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine starts off really nice, with rosehip, cranberry, really ripe strawberry, green notes, and ripe quince and peach. This wine is nice and round, again another ripe Israeli rose, with OK acid, gooseberry and grapefruit round out the palate with tart fruit and acid. Pith and slate lingers.

2017 Tulip White Franc – Score: 75
The wine is Bubblegum and sweet fruit, boring – sorry.

2017 Shiran Rose, Conductor – Score: NO
I will say this the wine must have been spoiled or something really wrong. That said, not my cup of tea still, sweet and off.

2017 Teperberg Rose, Impression – Score: 88
Nice nose of sweet notes, with rose, currant, and sour cherry. The mouth is round and has dried/tart stone fruit, with enough acid, showing some peach, and quince, grapefruit galore, nice weight.

2017 Shiloh Rose – Score: 75
Nice nose with good fruit, slate, and grapefruit, with citrus and stone fruit. The mouth is where the wine falls apart, sadly it was flat and dead.

2017 Covenant Blue C Rose – Score: 89
This is the second time I have tasted this wine and it is nice. Rosehip and sweet notes are a theme of the 2017 Israeli roses, no idea why, this wine has them in spades, with mineral, cotton candy, sweet candied fruit, watermelon, but balanced nose. The mouth is well balanced with good fruit, grapefruit, dark cherry, slate, and ripe juicy strawberry. Nice!

2017 Dalton Kna’an (AKA Dalton Estate in the USA) Rose – Score:  89 (QPR WINNER)
Ok, first off the SAME wine is sold under two labels. It is marketed in Israel as Kna’an Rose, but here in the USA, it has kept its old Dalton Estate label. The wine is really fun in its nose, nice, with slate and mineral, good fruit, with quince, and dried cranberry. The mouth is well balanced, really nice, fun, but it is RIPE and sweet, literally, there must be some residual sugar in there, showing great balance, with slate, and nice peach, passion fruit, and graphite. Nice! Good overall body. To me, this is the perfect gateway rose to get people into the rose game!

2017 Kerem Ben Zira Rose – Score: 70
No

2017 Vitkin Israeli Journey Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Grenache Noir and Carignan. Nice rose and sweet wine, fun with candied grapefruit, bubblegum, with sweet strawberry, and guava. The mouth is tart, really acidic, with tropical fruit, hints of floral notes, and more sweet fruit. The finish is long and sweet, but balanced enough.

2017 Galil Rose – Score: 83
Ripe, sweet, and not as fun, boring flat dead.

2017 Gvaot Rose – Score: 88
Even Gvaot could not keep the tropical notes and guava juice madness out of their rose. This wine is like many of the 2017 Israeli roses, nice enough nose with candied fruit, cranberry, watermelon, and stone fruit. The mouth is round, ripe, and tropical in nature, with some mineral, with good balance, nice stone fruit, and pith.

2017 Recanati Rose – Score: 89
This may well have been the darkest colored rose at the tasting. The nose is classic Recanati rose – Cotton candy, candied fruit, raspberry, and sweet strawberry. That said, the extreme sweet notes and all are a good gateway wine for many, it is tart, showing saline, sweet notes galore, with good acid, and candied strawberry, with hints of saline. Nice!

2017 Flam Rose  – Score: 88
Nice nose, mineral, with slate, fewer sweet notes but still ripe, and ripe strawberry. The mouth is round, ripe, with stone fruit galore, no tropical notes, but very ripe with candied fruit galore, balanced, nice enough, with good acid.

2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan – Score: 91
So far only one of the two Israeli roses I have tasted this year that is not a fruit bomb. Nice nose with good funk, flint madness, with good structure, properly made, nice! The mouth is ripping with great acid, balanced, with tart and juicy fruit, balanced but rich and saline based, with ripping mineral, and grapefruit, and dried and tart peach and hints of guava. Bravo!

2017 Kishor Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Cabernet Franc and Grenache. The nose on this wine is ripe and tart with lovely notes of strawberry, gooseberry, hints of raspberry and floral notes with rock and herb. The mouth is weightier than most, with good acid, but the wine shows a hole that fills with time, with saline but showed poorly at the tasting. Maybe a bad bottle, but overall a nice enough wine.

2017 Herzberg Rose – Score: NO
I think this along with the Shiran Rose were DOA, but what we had was not enjoyable at all.

2017 Borgo Reale Rose – Score: 86
Last year this wine was really much better, this year it is very akin to the Israeli roses, a fruit bomb, with not enough acid to bring it all together. In the end, nice enough but lacking the acid.

2017 Hayotzer Rose – Score: 75
Oak on rose, with strawberry and spice, and OK acid, but in the end the wine is out of balance with oak, fruit and not enough acid to bring that oak around.

2017 100 Tropez Rose – Score: 89
This wine is nice enough but for the money, not a wine I would buy. The nose on this wine shows lovely strawberry and floral notes galore with raspberry and citrus. Lovely mouth with nice acidity, great flint, a bit ripe nectarines, and candied fruit and good mineral. Nice enough!

2017 Don Ernesto Hagafen Rose – Score: 89 (mevushal)
The wine is only available at the winery. The wine is like past years, very ripe, and this year the acid shows well but overall the sweet to tropical notes do really start to stick out like a sore thumb. Still, a very nice mevushal rose options. (only available at winery)

Viognier (pronounced Vee-Ohn-Yay) is a very special grape and one that must be handled with great care.  The Viognier grape/wine is a special treat. It is a wine that has distinct characteristics: perfume, floral notes, and acidity, but it is also a very picky grape. It is very easy to lose to mold and because of this wineries will plant roses next to the grape vines to act as a canary for detecting mildew early on. The grape needs to be picked late otherwise; it does not generate the classic perfume that we are used to seeing in Muscat and Riesling wines. The winemaker has many choices with how he/she wants to manage the grapes.  The winemaker can allow the wine to go through malolactic fermentation (to give it a bit more weight) or let the wine lie in the must (to give it more perfume) or to let it have a bit of wood to give it roundness.  With all the choices and difficulties that Viognier wines have, they rarely meet expectations and are, therefore, not one of the current popular white wines.  Finally, Viognier is not meant for long storage – hence the VERY early release dates on these wines, also the wine should have the acidity, fruit, and perfume to make it a real winner. By default, the Viognier grape is lower in acidity than other white varietals, which makes for a wine that is not meant for cellaring, at least not yet in the kosher market.

The most famous of Viognier wines come from Condrieu AOC and though they are highly desired, even there they are not always winners. The climate in Condrieu is colder than much of the Rhone, and its soil is made up of a porous, drainable granite, chalk, mica, and deposits of gneiss. The area is known as the original mother of Viognier and in the AOC, the only legal grape is Viognier.

While I really liked the 2016 Psagot Viognier last year, now it is losing its steam and it acid is falling off, making for a fetter more round wine. Dalton, in the past, threw so much oak at the wine that it was built to last longer. Psagot and Kos Yehuos both do not throw that much oak at the wines and they release them early on. Psagot has a fascinating way to get acidity and perfume. Yaacov Oryah, picks around 80% of the Viognier early, for acid, minerality and low alcohol, and 20% later in the season, for perfume.

I really enjoyed the 2017 Covenant Israel Viognier, it was varietally true, and really lovely. The sad fact was that I could not find it in Israel, the week before Passover, and I tried almost every wine store in and around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem! I had to come to the USA to taste it, and it is a lovely wine indeed!

Still, of all of them, the Kos Yeshuos Viognier is showing a more old world and mineral style than the perfume madness of the Israeli options. It is sad that there are so few options in the world of Viognier. Galil has some, and they are OK but pretty average. Same with the 2016 Yatir Viognier, it was muted to me. The 2016 Dalton Viognier was nice, but it is an oak monster, and that is an acquired taste.

Now I stated that there were 7 Viognier wines here in the title, and while there are 5 varietal Viognier wines, the other two are blends. The first of the blends is the 2017 Shirah Vintage Whites which is a blend of 55% Viognier and 45% Chardonnay, from the Murmur Vineyard in Santa Maria Valley. The last of the blends is the 2017 Teperberg Fermitage White, Inspire.

The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2017 Covenant Israel Viognier, Blue C – Score: 90
Classic viognier notes with crazy rich floral notes, with rich saline, lovely peach, and some oak. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is really fun and showing a lovely oily texture, with rich weight and more fun saline, followed by apricot rolled in the grass, with floral notes. The finish is sweet and ripe and fresh with tart notes of stone fruit, with lemongrass and flint. Bravo!

2017 Psagot Viognier: 89 to 90
This year’s vintage is leaner than last year’s vintage, but also more light in style and focus. The wine starts off very ripe and needs time to come around, give this wine time. The nose starts off with ripe fruit notes of pineapple juice, honeycomb, really ripe, with cloves, allspice, peach marmalade, and apricot, and stone fruit. With time the nose turns to nice mineral notes, backed by peach marmalade, wonderful peach jam, and lovely hay, quince jam. The mouth is more round and fat than I would have hoped, with orange and nectarines, still, it is well structured. With slate, saline, and pith galore. Nice.

2017 Kos Yeshuos Viognier – 92 (QPR)
Do not cool this wine too much, it likes 30 min in the fridge and no more.
This wine has evolved over the past 6 months. Gone is the fruity nose and now the nose is pure flint, yeast, smoke, and really fun straw and mineral, with peach and honey in the background. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe for sure, but really well balanced and showing lemongrass, with a rich oily coat that covers the mouth, well focused with rich acidity, nice mineral, great fruit pith, apricots, peach, and lemon, with rock, and grass. The finish is long and acidic, with enough complexity to grab your attention and keep it throughout the finish with lovely white rose tea, sweet spices, notes of fresh lavender, crazy saline lingers super long, with cinnamon, and cloves. Bravo!

2016 Psagot Viognier – Score – 88
So last year this wine was very ripe, now the nose is showing nice funk, with hay, straw, and honeyed notes. last year this wine was an acid bomb, now the wine has lost that rich acidity and now it is well balanced, with good fruit pith, and green notes, and not much else. Sadly, this wine is losing its grip and should be drunken ASAP. DRINK UP!

2017 Teperberg Destitage White, Inspire – Score: 89
This wine is a blend of Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, and French Colombard. The nose on this wine is very floral and classically inclined to Viognier with its intense peach bomb notes, with white cherry notes, and sweet Oak. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is oily and tactile, with a rich weight from the Viognier and Colombard fruit, with sweet Guava and nectarines, followed by with orange notes, The finish is sweet and tart and fun overall, with good acid and floral notes. Nice!

2017 Shirah Vintage Whites – Score: 91 (QPR)
Another winner from Shirah with a blend of 55% Viognier and 45% Chardonnay. The nose on this wine starts off really fun and funky, showing straw and rich mineral, with sweet peach, rich ripe guava, and apricot. The mouth on this wine is really fun, rich, layered, well balanced, oily and textured, and so professionally made, with lovely smoke, oak, with rich apple, dried quince and with fresh focus and lovely weight and viscosity. The finish is crazy and dry, with sweet notes of fig, sweet lemon tea, with intense mineral and lovely pith with a citrus background. Bravo!!

2016 Dalton Viognier, Reserve – Score: 89
The nose is classic Viognier, with peach, too much oak, showing good apricot, sweet rose hips, and a perfume of honeysuckle, and orange blossom. The mouth is medium bodied, with a nice almost oily mouthfeel, showing nice weight, with good notes of summer fruit, with just enough acid, wish there was more, with lovely pear and nectarines. The finish is long and balanced with less acid than before, still too much oak, lovely mineral, slate, and more floral notes. Drink up!

Well, after the first post I stated that I would be doing this rose wine post a few times. The subsequent posts would have the original content, and the newly revised or added rose wines as well. Well, this is part 2, and there will be at least a part 3 or maybe a part 4, such is life. My schedule is insane right now (not complaining in any way), so when I can grab a few moments to update the roses I have had, I take it with both hands!

It is still officially Spring, which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!

Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?

Wine Color

What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.

White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.

The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).

Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.

The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature.

Rose wines are the in-between story – hence the chameleon term I used above.

Rose Wine

Rose wine is made in one of three ways. I will list the most dominant manners and leave the last one for last.

Limited Maceration:

This is the first step of the first two options and the only difference is what you do with the rest of the juice after you remove it? You see, as we stated above, the color of the juice from red grapes is clear to green and for one to get the lovely red hues we all love from red wine, it requires the juice to lie on the grape skins – AKA maceration.

The rose hue depends on how long the juice macerates. I have heard winemakers say 20 minutes gives them the color they like, and some say almost half a day or longer. The longer the juice macerates the darker the color. While the wine is macerating, the skins are contributing color by leaching phenolics – such as anthocyanins and tannins, and flavor components. The other important characteristic that the skins leach into the rose is – antioxidants that protect the wine from degrading. Sadly, because rose wines macerate for such a short period of time, the color and flavor components are less stable and as such, they lack shelf life – a VERY IMPORTANT fact we will talk about later. Either way, drinking rose wine early – like within the year – is a great approach for enjoying rose wine at its best!

Now once you remove the liquid, after letting it macerate for the desired length of time, the skins that are left are thrown out or placed in the field to feed organic material into the vines. This is a very expensive approach indeed because the grapes are being thrown away, instead of doing the Saignée process which is described in option #2. This approach is mostly used in regions where rose wine is as important as red wines, like Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon. Mind you, the grapes used in this method are most often picked early, as they are being solely used for making the rose.

Many producers, especially those in Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon, take a more traditional approach when making rosé wine. Grapes are grown and selected exclusively for rosé production, as stated above, and then often crushed as whole clusters, and then gently pressed until the juice reaches a desirable pale color.

Most think that Saignee wines would have a higher alcohol level, as the fruit used to make that wine is picked later, but actually, that is not always correct, as winemakers can water back the rose juice and get what they want, at least here in the USA. When you taste the wine, look for the acid, is the acid natural or out of place?

Saignée:

The second approach for how Rose wine is made, is essentially the same as maceration – the only difference is that they do not remove all the juice. In the second method for making Rose wine, the Rose is the afterthought – in DRASTIC contrast to the first approach, where the rose is primary.

Now, many winemakers may take affront to this statement, and one did actually, but that is my opinion. When the juice is removed to fortify the red wine, the rose wine, again IMHO, is an afterthought. That DOES NOT mean, that the winemaker does not take the rose wine seriously. Any decent winemaker that makes a wine, should be doing it with 100% focus. My point is that if the rose was important to you, you would pull the fruit earlier, but hey that is my opinion, and yeah, I am not a winemaker.

So in places like California and Rhone in France, winemakers will pick the grapes when they reach their appropriate phenolics. Then to concentrate the wine, the winemaker will bleed some of the juice – hence the term Saignée in French which means bleed. By removing this juice, after the juice has macerated long enough, the resulting wine is further intensified, because there is less juice lying on the same amount of grape skin surface.

The interesting thing here is that the grapes used to make this kind of rose are normally one with higher Brix, as the grapes are destined for red wine. So, when you bleed the juice out of the must, what is being pulled out is juice at a higher alcohol level than Rose wines made using the first method (as explained above). So what do you do when you have a wine that is too high in alcohol so early in the game – well that is simple you water it down! Now remember this wine is already low on phenolics and color, so if you know that your rose will be high in alcohol when all is said and done, you have lots of options here. You can leave the juice to macerate for longer, yes the juice you finally pull out may well be darker than you desire. However, you will be watering it down, so it is all a question of numbers and winemakers who make these kinds of wines, are used to it and know how to handle it.

Now you ask what is wrong with high alcohol rose? Well, a rose is normally meant to be light and fruity wine, and well watered back roses are less so, but I have also enjoyed a few Saignee wines, like the 2017 Shirah Rose, which 100% shocked me when I found that out!

Blending Method:

Finally, what do you get when you mix some white wine with some red wine – a rose by George a rose! This last method is the least common method for creating still rose wines. That said, it is very common in the world of Champagne and sparkling wines. Next time you enjoy sparkling rose wine, you can almost be sure that it is a blend of Chardonnay (white wine) and either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier (red wine).

As stated before, in the pure rose still wine market, there really is very little of this kind of rose being made.

State of kosher rose wines

Types of Rose made:

1. Red Rose wines: There are truly few examples of this, but they have been made and they are not a rose wine. They are billed as a rose at times, but to me, they are essentially a light red wine, much like a Gamay
2. Sweet Rose wines: Sweet wines are created because either the winemaker could not get the wine to completely finish primary fermentation or because they stopped it. Sweet rose wines sometimes lack balance because they lack the screaming acid needed to make it all work. That said, sweeter rose wines are the gateway wines to get people to try drier wines. The best of the sweet wines IMHO is the 2017 Dalton estate rose, or Kna’an as it is called in Israel.
3. Dry rose wines: Dry is not a subjective concept it is measurable in a lab and can be tasted as well. That said, what we as humans can perceive does seem to be subjective. Some of us will think a Sauvignon Blanc is sweet unless it is a Sancerre – you know who you are JR! Dr. Vinny was asked this question here, and essentially we can start perceiving sweetness at 0.5% residual sugar, but as the Doc says, sometimes a bone-dry wine can be perceived as sweet because of its ripeness and/or lack of balancing acidity.
4. Dark rose wines: Color in any rose or red wine is defined by the amount of maceration the wine goes through, as described above. Some people like that salmon color and some like that darker rose color. The 2017 Recanati Rose (not the Gris de Marselan which is lovely and light colored) is a dark rose – and OK, I guess. There are so many colors in the rose spectrum, and no, the darker roses are not based on what grape is used in the making of the wine, unless it is based on a Teinturier grape – which I have yet to see.

So where does that leave us? To recap IMHO, rose wine is meant to be light, refreshing, tart, and low in alcohol. It can have a varying rose hue, from Gris (gray in French – light color) to Salmon, to rose, and all the way up to dark red. Yes, there have been wineries who tried making heavier rose wines, that were essentially red wines, whom I will not mention and they have all been epic disasters. If you want a red wine – make a Gamay and leave me alone! Rose is about summer, tart and refreshing wine.

White and Rose wine education

Royal Wines has done a great job of bringing in white and roses wines, but I must stress – we need more education! Any wine distributor today can sell a Cabernet Sauvignon in its sleep! Why? Because the kosher wine drinking public is programmed to drink big bold red wines! Nothing light and lithe, only sledgehammers! Now, who am I to disagree with what someone likes – if you like a wine enjoy it! What I would like to see is people finding a way to expand their palate – by doing so they will learn more about wines and maybe they will actually see why they like and dislike a wine more – education is the answer! Now to those who say – why bother, if they like it let them enjoy it? To that answer I say – sure, when u were three years old you liked mud, and you really liked spreading it all over your sister’s new white dress! Should we have let you enjoy it forever?? Of course not!

Now your reply will be, come on we are talking about wine – not personal growth and their humanity! Of course but like everything in this world – we should want to strive and learn more about what makes us happy and why! If you like a Monet painting – you owe it to yourself to learn why? What grabs you when you see 100+-year-old paint on a canvas? So what he painted a haystack – good for him? What makes you want to stare at it for hours? The answer is inside of you – and you need to learn the answer. I hope we can all find the answers to what makes us tick, why we all love some things and why we hate other things. That is called human evolution – it makes us what we are – human! Anyway, I am off my soapbox now, but I hope we can agree that growth is good – no matter the subject.

I beg distributors and wineries to get out and teach! Get out and go to wine stores and pour wines – pour wine to anyone that wants to taste or even to those that do not! Education is the foundation of this industry – and without it, we are doomed to stasis – something that terrifies me!

The temperature to enjoy Rose

Please do yourself a favor and enjoy rose wine at 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Meaning if you leave a bottle of wine in your refrigerator and pull it out after half a day of fridge time or more, it will probably be at the refrigerator’s frigid temperature of 37 or so degrees Farenight – which is HORRIBLE for rose. Rose at room temperature of 70 or so degrees is also not fun. It needs to be a bit cold, but not over the top. Please do not think that it needs to be iced down in an ice bucket either, that is for sparkling wines.

Drink the rose at the beginning of the meal

Rose is NOT a long-term drinking animal. It is not meant to be enjoyed for more than a meal. Why? Because as we explained above once it is fully oxygenated, it will go bad – really bad fast. The tart fruit notes and the acid will dissipate faster than air leaves a punctured tire. It is simply the life of Rose, drink it very young and fast. Never stock up on Rose, there is no purpose in that! Go to the store and buy a rose and drink it, if they have none, then no worries drink something else.

White and Rose wine drinking in the kosher wine world

I find that white and rose wines just do not sell to the kosher market. Sadly, they do not see the joy that I and much of Israel now sees. Eight years ago, if you had said that Israel would be making nice white and rose wines and not so many great reds, wine aficionados would have looked at you askance. Well, that is exactly where we are today! Much of what Israel makes in the red wine world, is not very good, especially from the larger wineries. There are the usual suspects that are continuing to impress vintage after vintage, but the vast majority have sold out to the sweet-toothed date drinkers. However, they are creating wonderful white and rose wines! What is more – is that they are selling much of it in ISRAEL! Yes, that is right, Israelis are drinking far more white and rose wine than ever and the craze we are seeing here in the non-kosher world for Rose is happening in the kosher world in Israel!

Now, the rose madness is here for sure, even in the kosher market. This year the wines have arrived earlier and are available as we speak. More will be arriving soon, and some are only available at wineries, like the Hagafen rose, which is nice.  Sadly, my community has not come to appreciate rose or most whites wines. If I open one I would need to drink the bottle on my own, because few in my community drink white wines. The exception is Four Gates Chardonnay, which to be fair is a great wine and it is so rich and intoxicating that it appeals to red wine drinkers.

I really hope that articles like this can start to pique people’s interest. Rose and tart refreshing white wines have so much to offer. They are meant to be lithe and refreshing, but also complex and unique. They go well with so many great summer foods and yet, when summer comes around folks just continue drinking heavy reds or beer. Now, I like beer like most people, but between a lovely rose or beer, I choose rose!

The good news is that kosher wine drinkers are finally getting the message, but they are only buying the stuff over the summer months. Outside of those, NYC/east coast drinkers of kosher wine could care less. Which means white and rose wines from 2014, 2015 and 2016 can still be found all around shops and stores. DO NOT buy rose wine from any vintage other than 2017! SIMPLE!!

State of affairs with 2017 roses

So where are we in 2018 with Rose wines? Well, as I stated kosher wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark. Why? Because there are MANY wine shops, even on the hallowed grounds of NYC, that still have Rose wines on their shelves, from the 2015 vintage, and even older lying around. Why is that a problem? As stated above, Rose wines are NOT meant for aging. Rose wines should NEVER be sold after their drink by date, which is the summer after the wine’s vintage. So, 2017 wines should be sold out by the summer of 2018 – simple! Sadly, I still see 2015 wines being sold all around! There is simply too much older rose lying around and too much new 2017 Rose wines coming in. The outcome is that someone is going to eat a lot of rose wines, or they will push them on to the unsuspecting public, who really do not understand roses at all.

I BEG the manufacturers to work with the stores and merchants to eat the 2015 and 2016 wines, one way or the other, and get them OFF the shelves. Please DO NOT attempt to put them on sale, they are not wines that should be pushed to consumers, as it only ends up hurting the wineries and the companies selling them. Please remove them and figure out how to handle the loss. No one will be drinking Rose wines for Rosh Hashanah. That means there is a LOT of wine to sell in a very short period of time – PLEASE help yourselves – start selling the 2017 wines already and walk away from the 2015/2016 wines!

One part that is better than last year is that many of the rose wines are here and more coming very soon. I wish they would have all been here in March, but it is MUCH better than last year. Sadly, Netofa is still not here in the USA! Very sad! I went to Netofa on my last trip to Israel, and I will post that soon enough, some really fun wines that are showing beautifully.

Best rose so far in 2018

Well, let’s hold up here for a second. I have not tasted all the roses out there yet. I have tasted LOTS of them, like 30 plus of them so far and the Israeli 2017 roses are all “sweet”. And after a month or more, I have now tasted even more roses, which are added below. Now be careful here, when I say sweet – I mean I perceive sweetness. These roses are ripe, big in the mouth, and leave a perception of sweetness. There are a few roses from Israel that are lithe in nature, with a core focus of acid while being complex, and those are my preferred options so far, from what I have had the chance to enjoy.

So with that said, here are the winners for me so far, with a few more European roses I have yet to taste. The best Israeli roses – in order of preference:

1. 2017 Netofa Latour Rosado
2. 2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan
3. 2017 Covenant Blue C Rose. Nice – best of the “sweet perceived wines”
4. 2017 Netofa Rose – QPR 
5. 2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – QPR winner so far in Israel
6. 2017 Dalton Kna’an: SHOCK! QPR Nice – SWEET! Great gateway rose

The best California Rose is the just released 2017 Shirah Rose – really fun, and that is followed by the 2017 Hajdu Rose. The 2017 Hajdu is far better than the 2016 and I really enjoyed it, but still, a slight step behind the 2017 Shirah rose.

The best European Rose so far is the 2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – and so far it is the overall QPR winner. Though the 2017 Chateau Roubine, La Vie en Rose is right up there, with the same score, but not as bone dry and tart as the Rothschild. I have the Roubine to taste still, and then we can make the final decision, with the French roses that are here in the USA.

Blind Tasting in Jerusalem

A bit more than a week before Passover, I was in Israel, and I had the chance to hang with my French/American crazy wine friends, AD, MB, JK, AS, AS, AO, MB, and others. The tasting entailed 65+ wines, most of them were rose or white, with a few reds thrown in at the end. It was a long night, and very enjoyable, including some crazy moments, but overall very enjoyable and my many thanks to JK’s office – where the madness took place.

At the event, we tasted over 20 roses. Besides that, I have been tasting roses for the past couple of months now. Like, in the past, some of the wine notes are really light on data some are longer, and some are just one word, like No, or boring.

Overall, as I stated Israeli roses from 2017 are mostly too sweet for me, but many are well balanced and I think will work for others. As stated above, to me at this point I will stick with the European roses from for 2017 until I taste an Israeli rose that makes me take notice, though the Netofa Latour rose is really close, sadly it is not available in the USA. That said, they do ship here from Israel!

The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2017 Shirah Rose – Score: 90 to 91 (QPR)
This wine is a blend of 66% Grenache, almost 33% Nebbiolo, with a bit of Zinfandel. This wine is a Saignee wine, though it does not show that way in style or body – lovely!
This wine is really fun bravo, the color, and style is totally Gris – bravo! The nose is lovely and really mineral with nice acid, showing quince, dried fruit, straw, and earth, so much fun! The mouth is really nice with great acid, and lovely mineral, showing nice tart and juicy strawberry, rich dried cherry, grapefruit, and lovely mineral with great slate and rich citrus and floral notes. The finish is rich and acidic and citrus-driven, with rich mineral. Bravo!!

2017 Timbre Rosé (by La Fenetre), Opening Act – Score: 87 (tasted again)
The wine shows a nice and interesting nose of cherry, watermelon, with hints of blueberry, with some slate. The mouth is sweet, and nice enough with strawberry, it shows zesty fruit, but too much sweetness, but with time the wine has settled a bit and is showing a bit better than last time. The finish is long, sweet, and tart, with floral notes, and rosehip.

2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – Score: 91 (QPR)
This wine is actually a bit better than last year’s rose, with the only aspect of last year’s showing cool charcoal that this one does not have. The nose on this wine is rich and redolent, with ripping pink grapefruit, lovely tart strawberry, mineral, and lovely floral notes with lemongrass. The mouth on this medium bodied wine shows a nice weight, with good fruit focus, showing more fruit than last year, with good acidity, showing sweet but truly tart passion fruit, and a lovely mineral core, with earth, and crazy tart citrus lingering long. The finish is long and tart, with ripping acid, great balance, lovely mineral, and pith lingering long. Lovely!

2017 Amos Winery Rose – Score: No
What can I say this wine is just too strange. It was based upon Muscat and though it had acid, it is one of the many roses from Israel this year that are sweet bombs covered with layers of acid. Not my cup of tea.

2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – 88 to 89 (QPR)
Another Israeli tropical fruit bomb rose for 2017. The nose is ripe with guava, pineapple, cotton candy, extra ripe strawberry and creme, and candied ripe fig. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ok, it has nice acid, but man is it sweet, with clear residual sugar showing passion fruit, guava, and more tropical notes. The finish is long, it lingers very well, and while it is sweet, it is very well balanced. This is a great entry level rose for those wanting to get to more dry rose. Till then, I would not buy this one again, but nice work on balancing a sweet wine with basic fruit structure and freshness. This may well be the best QPR for under 15 dollars in Israel. The Dalton Kannan is right behind it.

2017 Yatir Rose – Score: 85
The nose on this wine is nice enough but too tropical with intense pineapple, super sweet strawberry with creme, with some mineral, and spice. Well, another year and another rose from Yatir that is pith and fruit and no acid. Sad, really sad. With more time, it open to show a bit more acid, but that is it, flat and boring, still sad.

2017 Bat Shlomo Rose – Score: 87
OK, so the one redeeming fact of this wine is its nose, the rest falls apart quickly. The nose on this wine is lovely, I wish it carried to the mouth, with rich salinely, lovely mineral, and red fruit. The mouth is where things fall apart, yes there is acid, but it is all over the place with far too much sweet fruit and not enough structure and coherence in the mouth. The finish is sweet with mineral and pith, but really what lingers is the sweet fruit, candied quince, peach, guava, and tropical notes with citrus. Sad. Another year of unbalanced rose.

2017 Domaine du Castel Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of 60% Merlot, 20% Malbec, and 20% Cabernet Franc
I tasted this blind at the event and then again at the winery, and the tasting was better at the winery but not overly impressive. The nose is nice, that part is clear, showing nice citrus, strawberry, and ripe plum. The mouth shows acid, with a good fruit structure, but too round and sweet, with a makeup that is missing stuff. The finish is long and round with good pith, nice acid, saline, and citrus.

2017 Domaine Netofa Rose – Score: 89
This wine is a blend of 50% Syrah, 30% Grenache, and 20% Mourvedre. The nose on this wine is lovely but sweet, with rosehip, ripe strawberry, and grapefruit, with cherry and raspberry. The mouth is medium bodied with great acidity and with lovely currant and quince that works great with dry fruit, that is richly saline and mineral but sweeter, than the Netofa Latour. The finish is sweet and yet nicely balance with mineral, slate, and pith. Nice!

2017 Domaine Netofa Latour, Rosado – Score: 91
This and the Recanati Gris de Marselan are the only two Israeli roses that I really liked, and are leaner and not tropical or fruit bombs. This wine is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Grenache. The nose on the first ever “reserve” rose from Netofa wine is more refined than the baseline Netofa rose, with rosehip again, but now with quince, raspberry, and strawberry creme. The mouth is not the screaming acid bomb that the Domaine rose is, but this is perfectly balanced with good pith and slate, showing more refinement and elegance with more citrus and grapefruit and less of the sweet currant fruit, with lovely slate and floral notes. The finish is green and red with pith and spice. Love it. Bravo!

2017 Tabor Adama Rose – Score: 89 (QPR)
The nose starts off with lovely gooseberry, followed by big, bright, and juicy strawberry and really lovely cherry. The mouth is sweet, yet well balanced with tart fruit, great acid, bright and tart with great acid, with good balance, and lovely pith. Solid!

2017 Psagot Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine starts off really nice, with rosehip, cranberry, really ripe strawberry, green notes, and ripe quince and peach. This wine is nice and round, again another ripe Israeli rose, with OK acid, gooseberry and grapefruit round out the palate with tart fruit and acid. Pith and slate lingers.

2017 Tulip White Franc – Score: 75
The wine is Bubblegum and sweet fruit, boring – sorry.

2017 Shiran Rose, Conductor – Score: NO
I will say this the wine must have been spoiled or something really wrong. That said, not my cup of tea still, sweet and off.

2017 Teperberg Rose, Impression – Score: 88
Nice nose of sweet notes, with rose, currant, and sour cherry. The mouth is round and has dried/tart stone fruit, with enough acid, showing some peach, and quince, grapefruit galore, nice weight.

2017 Shiloh Rose – Score: 75
Nice nose with good fruit, slate, and grapefruit, with citrus and stone fruit. The mouth is where the wine falls apart, sadly it was flat and dead.

2017 Covenant Blue C Rose – Score: 89
This is the second time I have tasted this wine and it is nice. Rosehip and sweet notes are a theme of the 2017 Israeli roses, no idea why, this wine has them in spades, with mineral, cotton candy, sweet candied fruit, watermelon, but balanced nose. The mouth is well balanced with good fruit, grapefruit, dark cherry, slate, and ripe juicy strawberry. Nice!

2017 Dalton Kna’an (AKA Dalton Estate in the USA) Rose – Score:  89 (QPR WINNER)
Ok, first off the SAME wine is sold under two labels. It is marketed in Israel as Kna’an Rose, but here in the USA, it has kept its old Dalton Estate label. The wine is really fun in its nose, nice, with slate and mineral, good fruit, with quince, and dried cranberry. The mouth is well balanced, really nice, fun, but it is RIPE and sweet, literally, there must be some residual sugar in there, showing great balance, with slate, and nice peach, passion fruit, and graphite. Nice! Good overall body. To me, this is the perfect gateway rose to get people into the rose game!

2017 Kerem Ben Zira Rose – Score: 70
No

2017 Vitkin Israeli Journey Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Grenache Noir and Carignan. Nice rose and sweet wine, fun with candied grapefruit, bubblegum, with sweet strawberry, and guava. The mouth is tart, really acidic, with tropical fruit, hints of floral notes, and more sweet fruit. The finish is long and sweet, but balanced enough.

2017 Galil Rose – Score: 83
Ripe, sweet, and not as fun, boring flat dead.

2017 Gvaot Rose – Score: 88
Even Gvaot could not keep the tropical notes and guava juice madness out of their rose. This wine is like many of the 2017 Israeli roses, nice enough nose with candied fruit, cranberry, watermelon, and stone fruit. The mouth is round, ripe, and tropical in nature, with some mineral, with good balance, nice stone fruit, and pith.

2017 Recanati Rose – Score: 89
This may well have been the darkest colored rose at the tasting. The nose is classic Recanati rose – Cotton candy, candied fruit, raspberry, and sweet strawberry. That said, the extreme sweet notes and all are a good gateway wine for many, it is tart, showing saline, sweet notes galore, with good acid, and candied strawberry, with hints of saline. Nice!

2017 Flam Rose  – Score: 88
Nice nose, mineral, with slate, fewer sweet notes but still ripe, and ripe strawberry. The mouth is round, ripe, with stone fruit galore, no tropical notes, but very ripe with candied fruit galore, balanced, nice enough, with good acid.

2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan – Score: 91
So far only one of the two Israeli roses I have tasted this year that is not a fruit bomb. Nice nose with good funk, flint madness, with good structure, properly made, nice! The mouth is dripping with great acid, balanced, with tart and juicy fruit, balanced but rich and saline based, with ripping mineral, and grapefruit, and dried and tart peach and hints of guava. Bravo!

2017 Kishor Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Cabernet Franc and Grenache. The nose on this wine is ripe and tart with lovely notes of strawberry, gooseberry, hints of raspberry and floral notes with rock and herb. The mouth is weightier than most, with good acid, but the wine shows a hole that fills with time, with saline but showed poorly at the tasting. Maybe a bad bottle, but overall a nice enough wine.

2017 Herzberg Rose – Score: NO
I think this along with the Shiran Rose were DOA, but what we had was not enjoyable at all.

2017 Borgo Reale Rose – Score: 86
Last year this wine was really much better, this year it is very akin to the Israeli roses, a fruit bomb, with not enough acid to bring it all together. In the end, nice enough but lacking the acid.

2017 Hayotzer Rose – Score: 75
Oak on rose, with strawberry and spice, and OK acid, but in the end the wine is out of balance with oak, fruit and not enough acid to bring that oak around.

2017 100 Tropez Rose – Score: 89
This wine is nice enough but for the money, not a wine I would buy. The nose on this wine shows lovely strawberry and floral notes galore with raspberry and citrus. Lovely mouth with nice acidity, great flint, a bit ripe nectarines, and candied fruit and good mineral. Nice enough!

2017 Don Ernesto Hagafen Rose – Score: 89 (mevushal)
The wine is only available at the winery. The wine is like past years, very ripe, and this year the acid shows well but overall the sweet to tropical notes do really start to stick out like a sore thumb. Still, a very nice mevushal rose options. (only available at the winery)

—————- Rose wines added in my second post ——————-

2016 Sainte Beatrice Instant B Rose – Score: 84 (I tasted the 2016 and not 2017)
I was supposed to tase the 2017 Instant B, but they sent me the 2016 vintage! Go figure! I only noticed it was the 2016 vintage after I wrote my notes and saw how poor it was. Also, the 2017 vintage of the Instant B is mevushal and this one had no mevushal sign anywhere!
The nose is muted to start but comes out with vigorous movement to show nice dry notes of strawberry creme, with raspberry, and lemon. The mouth on this wine is flat, sadly, not showing the acid punch needed, the fruit is not flabby, but the lack of acid makes the wine feel like it is rose-colored water. The finish is long and has a bit of punch, but overall a disappointment, with nice pith, and grapefruit notes.

2017 Jezreel Rose – Score: 88
This is another rose wine that is using a white wine to add the needed acid punch to a rose. This wine is a blend of 45% Carignan, 40% Syrah, and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. The nose is nice enough with bubblegum notes, watermelon, pink notes, with dark plum, and grapefruit. The mouth on this dark colored rose is actually nice, with good acidity, not an overly ripe mouth, showing nice strawberry, with good acid, pomegranate, and fun overall tart notes. This is not a fun, tart, refreshing wine, as much as it is a big bold, rose wine that is well balanced, with good acidity, pith galore, with nice restraint, and balance. Nice! This is the perfect rose wine for date juice lovers, it is a classical sledgehammer of fruity notes that date juice lovers will pick up and enjoy.

2017 Vina Encina Rosado – Score: 89 (mevushal) (QPR)
This wine is made from 100% Tempranillo fruit. This nose on this wine is popping with candied fruit, cotton candy, nice floral notes of rose, big bright and sweet strawberry, raspberry, and mineral. The mouth on this wine is popping with sweet notes but well balanced with tart fruit, gooseberry, tart pink grapefruit, and great acid, with a middle of sweet cherry/currant lifesaver candy. The finish is long and sweet, but again well balanced, tart with more candied lifesaver notes, pith galore, and quince. Nice.

2017 Ramon Cardova Rosado – Score: 90 (QPR)
This wine is a blend of 80% Garnacha and 20% Viura. This is the second year that Royal has made a rose from Ramon Cardova and once again they are using white fruit along with the red fruit. The nose on this wine is mineral-based with rosehips and rose water, followed by candied cherry. The mouth on this wine is sweet, and the sweetness shows far more in the mouth than in the nose, with watermelon, sweet pomegranate, hints of sweet quince, with candied grapefruit, and red fruit that gives way to good acidity and sweet fruit focus. The finish is long and sweet, with tart fruit, pith galore, and nice mineral, rock, slate. Nice.

2017 Chateau Roubine, La Vie en Rose – Score: 91 (QPR)
This is the second year that Royal has made the La Vie Rose from Chateau Roubine. The nose is sweeter than last year, with lovely white fruit notes of grapefruit, followed by a cacophony of red fruit notes, strawberry, raspberry, and sweet passion fruit notes. The mouth on this rose is sweet, not as sweet as the Spanish roses, but sweeter than I had hoped, and showing far more mineral, but still not as good as the Rothschild rose, with sweet raspberry, gooseberry, and ripe red fruit, that is well balanced with good acid, nice pith, and fun fruit focus. The finish is long, and tart, with good acidity, lovely mineral, slate, and pith galore.

2017 Covenant Wines, Red C, Rose – Score: 88
Lovely nose of rose hip and gooseberry, ripe fruit, with strawberry notes. The mouth on this wine is ripe and sweet in style, with clear leanings toward cherry and plum lifesaver candies, with lemonade and less acid than I was hoping for. The mouth is round and ripe and nice, balanced enough with fun red fruit and lingering notes of red tea and grapefruit.

2017 Camuna Cellars Rose – Score: 89 to 90
This wine is made by Eli Silins, one of the wine hands at Covenant Winery, and it is made of 100% Barbera fruit. The wine is as natural as you are going to get in the kosher wine world, though it did have a bit of sulfite added to it somewhere in the process, from what I understood. I will say that this wine is unique, it is not a wine that everyone will love, it has a bit of oxidation, which is common with more Natural wines, and it is a more old world style wine with funk and more dry/tart fruit.

Fun notes of yeasty, earthy aromas, hints of oxidation, with tart grapefruit and quince. The mouth of nice and balanced shows really fun acidity and great fruit focus, but also old school, with more herbal/grassy notes, with lovely yeast, tart cherry, pear, and strawberry. The finish is really fun, earthy, and richly mineral focused, with red fruit galore, unique and fun.

2017 Hajdu Rose – Score: 90
This wine is a blend of Grenache, Sangiovese, and Barbera, The nose on this nice wine shows cherry, strawberry, and rich ripe summer fruit with lovely fruity notes, with ripe melon and sweet quince. The mouth on this wine is rich and full, with fun saline, with good balance, not over the top with good acid, nice complexity, with earthy and classic rose notes of strawberry and pink grapefruit. The finish is long and dry with great mineral, slate, and lingering red fruit.

2017 Herzog Lineage Rose – Score: 88 (mevushal)
This wine is a Saignée of the Herzog Lineage Coreograph field blend. The nose on this wine is unique, showing lovely dry fruit notes, mint, with menthol, pink grapefruit, cherry, and ethereal notes, lovely! Sadly, the mouth for me is not at the same level as the nose, with a slight lack of balance, showing very ripe fruit, pomegranate, guava, really ripe plum, and even pineapple, with orange notes, and acid that exists but not in balance. The finish is long and cooked in nature, more like a confiture than a true fruit focused rose.

Well, after the first post I stated that I would be doing this rose wine post a few times. The subsequent posts would have the original content, and the newly revised or added rose wines as well. Well, this is part 3, and I hope this is the last one! My schedule was insane, but it is now slowing down, thankfully, so I hope to be adding more posts as well!

It is still officially Summer, which means it is Rose time! Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!

Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 50 dry-ish kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 9 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?

Wine Color

What is a rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.

White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of a dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.

The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine).

Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.

The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature.

Rose wines are the in-between story – hence the chameleon term I used above.

Rose Wine

Rose wine is made in one of three ways. I will list the most dominant manners and leave the last one for last.

Limited Maceration:

This is the first step of the first two options and the only difference is what you do with the rest of the juice after you remove it? You see, as we stated above, the color of the juice from red grapes is clear to green and for one to get the lovely red hues we all love from red wine, it requires the juice to lie on the grape skins – AKA maceration.

The rose hue depends on how long the juice macerates. I have heard winemakers say 20 minutes gives them the color they like, and some say almost half a day or longer. The longer the juice macerates the darker the color. While the wine is macerating, the skins are contributing color by leaching phenolics – such as anthocyanins and tannins, and flavor components. The other important characteristic that the skins leach into the rose is – antioxidants that protect the wine from degrading. Sadly, because rose wines macerate for such a short period of time, the color and flavor components are less stable and as such, they lack shelf life – a VERY IMPORTANT fact we will talk about later. Either way, drinking rose wine early – like within the year – is a great approach for enjoying rose wine at its best!

Now once you remove the liquid, after letting it macerate for the desired length of time, the skins that are left are thrown out or placed in the field to feed organic material into the vines. This is a very expensive approach indeed because the grapes are being thrown away, instead of doing the Saignée process which is described in option #2. This approach is mostly used in regions where rose wine is as important as red wines, like Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon. Mind you, the grapes used in this method are most often picked early, as they are being solely used for making the rose.

Many producers, especially those in Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon, take a more traditional approach when making rosé wine. Grapes are grown and selected exclusively for rosé production, as stated above, and then often crushed as whole clusters, and then gently pressed until the juice reaches a desirable pale color.

Most think that Saignee wines would have a higher alcohol level, as the fruit used to make that wine is picked later, but actually, that is not always correct, as winemakers can water back the rose juice and get what they want, at least here in the USA. When you taste the wine, look for the acid, is the acid natural or out of place?

Saignée:

The second approach for how Rose wine is made, is essentially the same as maceration – the only difference is that they do not remove all the juice. In the second method for making Rose wine, the Rose is the afterthought – in DRASTIC contrast to the first approach, where the rose is primary.

Now, many winemakers may take affront to this statement, and one did actually, but that is my opinion. When the juice is removed to fortify the red wine, the rose wine, again IMHO, is an afterthought. That DOES NOT mean, that the winemaker does not take the rose wine seriously. Any decent winemaker that makes a wine, should be doing it with 100% focus. My point is that if the rose was important to you, you would pull the fruit earlier, but hey that is my opinion, and yeah, I am not a winemaker.

So in places like California and Rhone in France, winemakers will pick the grapes when they reach their appropriate phenolics. Then to concentrate the wine, the winemaker will bleed some of the juice – hence the term Saignée in French which means bleed. By removing this juice, after the juice has macerated long enough, the resulting wine is further intensified, because there is less juice lying on the same amount of grape skin surface.

The interesting thing here is that the grapes used to make this kind of rose are normally one with higher Brix, as the grapes are destined for red wine. So, when you bleed the juice out of the must, what is being pulled out is juice at a higher alcohol level than Rose wines made using the first method (as explained above). So what do you do when you have a wine that is too high in alcohol so early in the game – well that is simple you water it down! Now remember this wine is already low on phenolics and color, so if you know that your rose will be high in alcohol when all is said and done, you have lots of options here. You can leave the juice to macerate for longer, yes the juice you finally pull out may well be darker than you desire. However, you will be watering it down, so it is all a question of numbers and winemakers who make these kinds of wines, are used to it and know how to handle it.

Now you ask what is wrong with high alcohol rose? Well, a rose is normally meant to be light and fruity wine, and well watered back roses are less so, but I have also enjoyed a few Saignee wines, like the 2017 Shirah Rose, which 100% shocked me when I found that out!

Blending Method:

Finally, what do you get when you mix some white wine with some red wine – a rose by George a rose! This last method is the least common method for creating still rose wines. That said, it is very common in the world of Champagne and sparkling wines. Next time you enjoy sparkling rose wine, you can almost be sure that it is a blend of Chardonnay (white wine) and either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier (red wine).

As stated before, in the pure rose still wine market, there really is very little of this kind of rose being made.

State of kosher rose wines

Types of Rose made:

1. Red Rose wines: There are truly few examples of this, but they have been made and they are not a rose wine. They are billed as a rose at times, but to me, they are essentially a light red wine, much like a Gamay
2. Sweet Rose wines: Sweet wines are created because either the winemaker could not get the wine to completely finish primary fermentation or because they stopped it. Sweet rose wines sometimes lack balance because they lack the screaming acid needed to make it all work. That said, sweeter rose wines are the gateway wines to get people to try drier wines. The best of the sweet wines IMHO is the 2017 Dalton estate rose, or Kna’an as it is called in Israel.
3. Dry rose wines: Dry is not a subjective concept it is measurable in a lab and can be tasted as well. That said, what we as humans can perceive does seem to be subjective. Some of us will think a Sauvignon Blanc is sweet unless it is a Sancerre – you know who you are JR! Dr. Vinny was asked this question here, and essentially we can start perceiving sweetness at 0.5% residual sugar, but as the Doc says, sometimes a bone-dry wine can be perceived as sweet because of its ripeness and/or lack of balancing acidity.
4. Dark rose wines: Color in any rose or red wine is defined by the amount of maceration the wine goes through, as described above. Some people like that salmon color and some like that darker rose color. The 2017 Recanati Rose (not the Gris de Marselan which is lovely and light colored) is a dark rose – and OK, I guess. There are so many colors in the rose spectrum, and no, the darker roses are not based on what grape is used in the making of the wine, unless it is based on a Teinturier grape – which I have yet to see.

So where does that leave us? To recap IMHO, rose wine is meant to be light, refreshing, tart, and low in alcohol. It can have a varying rose hue, from Gris (gray in French – light color) to Salmon, to rose, and all the way up to dark red. Yes, there have been wineries who tried making heavier rose wines, that were essentially red wines, whom I will not mention and they have all been epic disasters. If you want a red wine – make a Gamay and leave me alone! Rose is about summer, tart and refreshing wine.

White and Rose wine education

Royal Wines has done a great job of bringing in white and roses wines, but I must stress – we need more education! Any wine distributor today can sell a Cabernet Sauvignon in its sleep! Why? Because the kosher wine drinking public is programmed to drink big bold red wines! Nothing light and lithe, only sledgehammers! Now, who am I to disagree with what someone likes – if you like a wine enjoy it! What I would like to see is people finding a way to expand their palate – by doing so they will learn more about wines and maybe they will actually see why they like and dislike a wine more – education is the answer! Now to those who say – why bother, if they like it let them enjoy it? To that answer I say – sure, when u were three years old you liked mud, and you really liked spreading it all over your sister’s new white dress! Should we have let you enjoy it forever?? Of course not!

Now your reply will be, come on we are talking about wine – not personal growth and their humanity! Of course but like everything in this world – we should want to strive and learn more about what makes us happy and why! If you like a Monet painting – you owe it to yourself to learn why? What grabs you when you see 100+-year-old paint on a canvas? So what he painted a haystack – good for him? What makes you want to stare at it for hours? The answer is inside of you – and you need to learn the answer. I hope we can all find the answers to what makes us tick, why we all love some things and why we hate other things. That is called human evolution – it makes us what we are – human! Anyway, I am off my soapbox now, but I hope we can agree that growth is good – no matter the subject.

I beg distributors and wineries to get out and teach! Get out and go to wine stores and pour wines – pour wine to anyone that wants to taste or even to those that do not! Education is the foundation of this industry – and without it, we are doomed to stasis – something that terrifies me!

The temperature to enjoy Rose

Please do yourself a favor and enjoy rose wine at 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Meaning if you leave a bottle of wine in your refrigerator and pull it out after half a day of fridge time or more, it will probably be at the refrigerator’s frigid temperature of 37 or so degrees Farenight – which is HORRIBLE for rose. Rose at room temperature of 70 or so degrees is also not fun. It needs to be a bit cold, but not over the top. Please do not think that it needs to be iced down in an ice bucket either, that is for sparkling wines.

Drink the rose at the beginning of the meal

Rose is NOT a long-term drinking animal. It is not meant to be enjoyed for more than a meal. Why? Because as we explained above once it is fully oxygenated, it will go bad – really bad fast. The tart fruit notes and the acid will dissipate faster than air leaves a punctured tire. It is simply the life of Rose, drink it very young and fast. Never stock up on Rose, there is no purpose in that! Go to the store and buy a rose and drink it, if they have none, then no worries drink something else.

White and Rose wine drinking in the kosher wine world

I find that white and rose wines just do not sell to the kosher market. Sadly, they do not see the joy that I and much of Israel now sees. Eight years ago, if you had said that Israel would be making nice white and rose wines and not so many great reds, wine aficionados would have looked at you askance. Well, that is exactly where we are today! Much of what Israel makes in the red wine world, is not very good, especially from the larger wineries. There are the usual suspects that are continuing to impress vintage after vintage, but the vast majority have sold out to the sweet-toothed date drinkers. However, they are creating wonderful white and rose wines! What is more – is that they are selling much of it in ISRAEL! Yes, that is right, Israelis are drinking far more white and rose wine than ever and the craze we are seeing here in the non-kosher world for Rose is happening in the kosher world in Israel!

Now, the rose madness is here for sure, even in the kosher market. This year the wines have arrived earlier and are available as we speak. More will be arriving soon, and some are only available at wineries, like the Hagafen rose, which is nice.  Sadly, my community has not come to appreciate rose or most whites wines. If I open one I would need to drink the bottle on my own, because few in my community drink white wines. The exception is Four Gates Chardonnay, which to be fair is a great wine and it is so rich and intoxicating that it appeals to red wine drinkers.

I really hope that articles like this can start to pique people’s interest. Rose and tart refreshing white wines have so much to offer. They are meant to be lithe and refreshing, but also complex and unique. They go well with so many great summer foods and yet, when summer comes around folks just continue drinking heavy reds or beer. Now, I like beer like most people, but between a lovely rose or beer, I choose rose!

The good news is that kosher wine drinkers are finally getting the message, but they are only buying the stuff over the summer months. Outside of those, NYC/east coast drinkers of kosher wine could care less. Which means white and rose wines from 2014, 2015 and 2016 can still be found all around shops and stores. DO NOT buy rose wine from any vintage other than 2017! SIMPLE!!

State of affairs with 2017 roses

So where are we in 2018 with Rose wines? Well, as I stated kosher wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark. Why? Because there are MANY wine shops, even on the hallowed grounds of NYC, that still have Rose wines on their shelves, from the 2015 vintage, and even older lying around. Why is that a problem? As stated above, Rose wines are NOT meant for aging. Rose wines should NEVER be sold after their drink by date, which is the summer after the wine’s vintage. So, 2017 wines should be sold out by the summer of 2018 – simple! Sadly, I still see 2015 wines being sold all around! There is simply too much older rose lying around and too much new 2017 Rose wines coming in. The outcome is that someone is going to eat a lot of rose wines, or they will push them on to the unsuspecting public, who really do not understand roses at all.

I BEG the manufacturers to work with the stores and merchants to eat the 2015 and 2016 wines, one way or the other, and get them OFF the shelves. Please DO NOT attempt to put them on sale, they are not wines that should be pushed to consumers, as it only ends up hurting the wineries and the companies selling them. Please remove them and figure out how to handle the loss. No one will be drinking Rose wines for Rosh Hashanah. That means there is a LOT of wine to sell in a very short period of time – PLEASE help yourselves – start selling the 2017 wines already and walk away from the 2015/2016 wines!

One part that is better than last year is that many of the rose wines are here and more coming very soon. I wish they would have all been here in March, but it is MUCH better than last year. Sadly, Netofa is still not here in the USA! Very sad! I went to Netofa on my last trip to Israel, and I will post that soon enough, some really fun wines that are showing beautifully.

Best rose so far in 2018

Well, let’s hold up here for a second. I have not tasted all the roses out there yet. I have tasted LOTS of them, like 30 plus of them so far and the Israeli 2017 roses are all “sweet”. And after a month or more, I have now tasted even more roses, which are added below. Now be careful here, when I say sweet – I mean I perceive sweetness. These roses are ripe, big in the mouth, and leave a perception of sweetness. There are a few roses from Israel that are lithe in nature, with a core focus of acid while being complex, and those are my preferred options so far, from what I have had the chance to enjoy.

So with that said, here are the winners for me so far, with a few more European roses I have yet to taste. The best Israeli roses – in order of preference:

1. 2017 Netofa Latour Rosado
2. 2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan (this is now state-side)
3. 2017 Covenant Blue C Rose. Nice – best of the “sweet perceived wines” (here in the USA as well)
4. 2017 Netofa Rose – QPR 
5. 2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – QPR winner so far in Israel (In the USA)
6. 2017 Dalton Kna’an: SHOCK! QPR Nice – SWEET! Great gateway rose (In the USA)

The best California Rose is the just released 2017 Shirah Rose – really fun, and that is followed by the 2017 Hajdu Rose. The 2017 Hajdu is far better than the 2016 and I really enjoyed it, but still, a slight step behind the 2017 Shirah rose. A very special note as well to the Herzog Rose of Pinot Noir, that was made by Josh Goodman, who has been cellar master at Herzog for years. It was a fun wine and well worth you finding it at the winery.

The best European Rose so far is the 2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – and so far it is the overall QPR winner. Though the 2017 Chateau Roubine, La Vie en Rose is right up there, with the same score, but not as bone dry and tart as the Rothschild. After tasting them all, I still think the best one was the 2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose.

Blind Tasting in Jerusalem

A bit more than a week before Passover, I was in Israel, and I had the chance to hang with my French/American crazy wine friends, AD, MB, JK, AS, AS, AO, MB, and others. The tasting entailed 65+ wines, most of them were rose or white, with a few reds thrown in at the end. It was a long night, and very enjoyable, including some crazy moments, but overall very enjoyable and my many thanks to JK’s office – where the madness took place.

At the event, we tasted over 20 roses. Besides that, I have been tasting roses for the past couple of months now. Like, in the past, some of the wine notes are really light on data some are longer, and some are just one word, like No, or boring.

Overall, as I stated Israeli roses from 2017 are mostly too sweet for me, but many are well balanced and I think will work for others. As stated above, to me at this point I will stick with the European roses from for 2017 until I taste an Israeli rose that makes me take notice, though the Netofa Latour rose is really close, sadly it is not available in the USA. That said, they do ship here from Israel!

The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2017 Shirah Rose – Score: 90 to 91 (QPR)
This wine is a blend of 66% Grenache, almost 33% Nebbiolo, with a bit of Zinfandel. This wine is a Saignee wine, though it does not show that way in style or body – lovely!
This wine is really fun bravo, the color, and style is totally Gris – bravo! The nose is lovely and really mineral with nice acid, showing quince, dried fruit, straw, and earth, so much fun! The mouth is really nice with great acid, and lovely mineral, showing nice tart and juicy strawberry, rich dried cherry, grapefruit, and lovely mineral with great slate and rich citrus and floral notes. The finish is rich and acidic and citrus-driven, with rich mineral. Bravo!!

2017 Timbre Rosé (by La Fenetre), Opening Act – Score: 87 (tasted again)
The wine shows a nice and interesting nose of cherry, watermelon, with hints of blueberry, with some slate. The mouth is sweet, and nice enough with strawberry, it shows zesty fruit, but too much sweetness, but with time the wine has settled a bit and is showing a bit better than last time. The finish is long, sweet, and tart, with floral notes, and rosehip.

2017 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – Score: 91 (QPR)
This wine is actually a bit better than last year’s rose, with the only aspect of last year’s showing cool charcoal that this one does not have. The nose on this wine is rich and redolent, with ripping pink grapefruit, lovely tart strawberry, mineral, and lovely floral notes with lemongrass. The mouth on this medium bodied wine shows a nice weight, with good fruit focus, showing more fruit than last year, with good acidity, showing sweet but truly tart passion fruit, and a lovely mineral core, with earth, and crazy tart citrus lingering long. The finish is long and tart, with ripping acid, great balance, lovely mineral, and pith lingering long. Lovely!

2017 Amos Winery Rose – Score: No
What can I say this wine is just too strange. It was based upon Muscat and though it had acid, it is one of the many roses from Israel this year that are sweet bombs covered with layers of acid. Not my cup of tea.

2017 Carmel Rose, Appellation – 88 to 89 (QPR)
Another Israeli tropical fruit bomb rose for 2017. The nose is ripe with guava, pineapple, cotton candy, extra ripe strawberry and creme, and candied ripe fig. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ok, it has nice acid, but man is it sweet, with clear residual sugar showing passion fruit, guava, and more tropical notes. The finish is long, it lingers very well, and while it is sweet, it is very well balanced. This is a great entry level rose for those wanting to get to more dry rose. Till then, I would not buy this one again, but nice work on balancing a sweet wine with basic fruit structure and freshness. This may well be the best QPR for under 15 dollars in Israel. The Dalton Kannan is right behind it.

2017 Yatir Rose – Score: 85
The nose on this wine is nice enough but too tropical with intense pineapple, super sweet strawberry with creme, with some mineral, and spice. Well, another year and another rose from Yatir that is pith and fruit and no acid. Sad, really sad. With more time, it open to show a bit more acid, but that is it, flat and boring, still sad.

2017 Bat Shlomo Rose – Score: 87
OK, so the one redeeming fact of this wine is its nose, the rest falls apart quickly. The nose on this wine is lovely, I wish it carried to the mouth, with rich salinely, lovely mineral, and red fruit. The mouth is where things fall apart, yes there is acid, but it is all over the place with far too much sweet fruit and not enough structure and coherence in the mouth. The finish is sweet with mineral and pith, but really what lingers is the sweet fruit, candied quince, peach, guava, and tropical notes with citrus. Sad. Another year of unbalanced rose.

2017 Domaine du Castel Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of 60% Merlot, 20% Malbec, and 20% Cabernet Franc
I tasted this blind at the event and then again at the winery, and the tasting was better at the winery but not overly impressive. The nose is nice, that part is clear, showing nice citrus, strawberry, and ripe plum. The mouth shows acid, with a good fruit structure, but too round and sweet, with a makeup that is missing stuff. The finish is long and round with good pith, nice acid, saline, and citrus.

2017 Domaine Netofa Rose – Score: 89
This wine is a blend of 50% Syrah, 30% Grenache, and 20% Mourvedre. The nose on this wine is lovely but sweet, with rosehip, ripe strawberry, and grapefruit, with cherry and raspberry. The mouth is medium bodied with great acidity and with lovely currant and quince that works great with dry fruit, that is richly saline and mineral but sweeter, than the Netofa Latour. The finish is sweet and yet nicely balance with mineral, slate, and pith. Nice!

2017 Domaine Netofa Latour, Rosado – Score: 91
This and the Recanati Gris de Marselan are the only two Israeli roses that I really liked, and are leaner and not tropical or fruit bombs. This wine is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Grenache. The nose on the first ever “reserve” rose from Netofa wine is more refined than the baseline Netofa rose, with rosehip again, but now with quince, raspberry, and strawberry creme. The mouth is not the screaming acid bomb that the Domaine rose is, but this is perfectly balanced with good pith and slate, showing more refinement and elegance with more citrus and grapefruit and less of the sweet currant fruit, with lovely slate and floral notes. The finish is green and red with pith and spice. Love it. Bravo!

2017 Tabor Adama Rose – Score: 89 (QPR)
The nose starts off with lovely gooseberry, followed by big, bright, and juicy strawberry and really lovely cherry. The mouth is sweet, yet well balanced with tart fruit, great acid, bright and tart with great acid, with good balance, and lovely pith. Solid!

2017 Psagot Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine starts off really nice, with rosehip, cranberry, really ripe strawberry, green notes, and ripe quince and peach. This wine is nice and round, again another ripe Israeli rose, with OK acid, gooseberry and grapefruit round out the palate with tart fruit and acid. Pith and slate linger.

2017 Tulip White Franc – Score: 75
The wine is Bubblegum and sweet fruit, boring – sorry.

2017 Shiran Rose, Conductor – Score: NO
I will say this the wine must have been spoiled or something really wrong. That said, not my cup of tea still, sweet and off.

2017 Teperberg Rose, Impression – Score: 88
Nice nose of sweet notes, with rose, currant, and sour cherry. The mouth is round and has dried/tart stone fruit, with enough acid, showing some peach, and quince, grapefruit galore, nice weight.

2017 Shiloh Rose – Score: 75
Nice nose with good fruit, slate, and grapefruit, with citrus and stone fruit. The mouth is where the wine falls apart, sadly it was flat and dead.

2017 Covenant Blue C Rose – Score: 89
This is the second time I have tasted this wine and it is nice. Rosehip and sweet notes are a theme of the 2017 Israeli roses, no idea why, this wine has them in spades, with mineral, cotton candy, sweet candied fruit, watermelon, but balanced nose. The mouth is well balanced with good fruit, grapefruit, dark cherry, slate, and ripe juicy strawberry. Nice!

2017 Dalton Kna’an (AKA Dalton Estate in the USA) Rose – Score:  89 (QPR WINNER)
Ok, first off the SAME wine is sold under two labels. It is marketed in Israel as Kna’an Rose, but here in the USA, it has kept its old Dalton Estate label. The wine is really fun in its nose, nice, with slate and mineral, good fruit, with quince, and dried cranberry. The mouth is well balanced, really nice, fun, but it is RIPE and sweet, literally, there must be some residual sugar in there, showing great balance, with slate, and nice peach, passion fruit, and graphite. Nice! Good overall body. To me, this is the perfect gateway rose to get people into the rose game!

2017 Kerem Ben Zira Rose – Score: 70
No

2017 Vitkin Israeli Journey Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Grenache Noir and Carignan. Nice rose and sweet wine, fun with candied grapefruit, bubblegum, with sweet strawberry, and guava. The mouth is tart, really acidic, with tropical fruit, hints of floral notes, and more sweet fruit. The finish is long and sweet, but balanced enough.

2017 Galil Rose – Score: 83
Ripe, sweet, and not as fun, boring flat dead.

2017 Gvaot Rose – Score: 88
Even Gvaot could not keep the tropical notes and guava juice madness out of their rose. This wine is like many of the 2017 Israeli roses, nice enough nose with candied fruit, cranberry, watermelon, and stone fruit. The mouth is round, ripe, and tropical in nature, with some mineral, with good balance, nice stone fruit, and pith.

2017 Recanati Rose – Score: 89
This may well have been the darkest colored rose at the tasting. The nose is classic Recanati rose – Cotton candy, candied fruit, raspberry, and sweet strawberry. That said, the extreme sweet notes and all are a good gateway wine for many, it is tart, showing saline, sweet notes galore, with good acid, and candied strawberry, with hints of saline. Nice!

2017 Flam Rose  – Score: 88
Nice nose, mineral, with slate, fewer sweet notes but still ripe, and ripe strawberry. The mouth is round, ripe, with stone fruit galore, no tropical notes, but very ripe with candied fruit galore, balanced, nice enough, with good acid.

2017 Recanati Gris de Marselan – Score: 91
So far only one of the two Israeli roses I have tasted this year that is not a fruit bomb. Nice nose with good funk, flint madness, with good structure, properly made, nice! The mouth is dripping with great acid, balanced, with tart and juicy fruit, balanced but rich and saline based, with ripping mineral, and grapefruit, and dried and tart peach and hints of guava. Bravo!

2017 Kishor Rose – Score: 88
This wine is a blend of Cabernet Franc and Grenache. The nose on this wine is ripe and tart with lovely notes of strawberry, gooseberry, hints of raspberry and floral notes with rock and herb. The mouth is weightier than most, with good acid, but the wine shows a hole that fills with time, with saline but showed poorly at the tasting. Maybe a bad bottle, but overall a nice enough wine.

2017 Herzberg Rose – Score: NO
I think this along with the Shiran Rose were DOA, but what we had was not enjoyable at all.

2017 Borgo Reale Rose – Score: 86
Last year this wine was really much better, this year it is very akin to the Israeli roses, a fruit bomb, with not enough acid to bring it all together. In the end, nice enough but lacking the acid.

2017 Hayotzer Rose – Score: 75
Oak on rose, with strawberry and spice, and OK acid, but in the end the wine is out of balance with oak, fruit and not enough acid to bring that oak around.

2017 100 Tropez Rose – Score: 89
This wine is nice enough but for the money, not a wine I would buy. The nose on this wine shows lovely strawberry and floral notes galore with raspberry and citrus. Lovely mouth with nice acidity, great flint, a bit ripe nectarines, and candied fruit and good mineral. Nice enough!

2017 Don Ernesto Hagafen Rose – Score: 89 (mevushal)
The wine is only available at the winery. The wine is like past years, very ripe, and this year the acid shows well but overall the sweet to tropical notes do really start to stick out like a sore thumb. Still, a very nice mevushal rose options. (only available at the winery)

—————- Rose wines added in my second post ——————-

2016 Sainte Beatrice Instant B Rose – Score: 84 (I tasted the 2016 and not 2017)
I was supposed to tase the 2017 Instant B, but they sent me the 2016 vintage! Go figure! I only noticed it was the 2016 vintage after I wrote my notes and saw how poor it was. Also, the 2017 vintage of the Instant B is mevushal and this one had no mevushal sign anywhere!
The nose is muted to start but comes out with vigorous movement to show nice dry notes of strawberry creme, with raspberry, and lemon. The mouth on this wine is flat, sadly, not showing the acid punch needed, the fruit is not flabby, but the lack of acid makes the wine feel like it is rose-colored water. The finish is long and has a bit of punch, but overall a disappointment, with nice pith, and grapefruit notes.

2017 Jezreel Rose – Score: 88
This is another rose wine that is using a white wine to add the needed acid punch to a rose. This wine is a blend of 45% Carignan, 40% Syrah, and 15% Sauvignon Blanc. The nose is nice enough with bubblegum notes, watermelon, pink notes, with dark plum, and grapefruit. The mouth on this dark colored rose is actually nice, with good acidity, not an overly ripe mouth, showing nice strawberry, with good acid, pomegranate, and fun overall tart notes. This is not a fun, tart, refreshing wine, as much as it is a big bold, rose wine that is well balanced, with good acidity, pith galore, with nice restraint, and balance. Nice! This is the perfect rose wine for date juice lovers, it is a classical sledgehammer of fruity notes that date juice lovers will pick up and enjoy.

2017 Vina Encina Rosado – Score: 89 (mevushal) (QPR)
This wine is made from 100% Tempranillo fruit. This nose on this wine is popping with candied fruit, cotton candy, nice floral notes of rose, big bright and sweet strawberry, raspberry, and mineral. The mouth on this wine is popping with sweet notes but well balanced with tart fruit, gooseberry, tart pink grapefruit, and great acid, with a middle of sweet cherry/currant lifesaver candy. The finish is long and sweet, but again well balanced, tart with more candied lifesaver notes, pith galore, and quince. Nice.

2017 Ramon Cardova Rosado – Score: 90 (QPR)
This wine is a blend of 80% Garnacha and 20% Viura. This is the second year that Royal has made a rose from Ramon Cardova and once again they are using white fruit along with the red fruit. The nose on this wine is mineral-based with rosehips and rose water, followed by candied cherry. The mouth on this wine is sweet, and the sweetness shows far more in the mouth than in the nose, with watermelon, sweet pomegranate, hints of sweet quince, with candied grapefruit, and red fruit that gives way to good acidity and sweet fruit focus. The finish is long and sweet, with tart fruit, pith galore, and nice mineral, rock, slate. Nice.

2017 Chateau Roubine, La Vie en Rose – Score: 91 (QPR)
This is the second year that Royal has made the La Vie Rose from Chateau Roubine. The nose is sweeter than last year, with lovely white fruit notes of grapefruit, followed by a cacophony of red fruit notes, strawberry, raspberry, and sweet passion fruit notes. The mouth on this rose is sweet, not as sweet as the Spanish roses, but sweeter than I had hoped, and showing far more mineral, but still not as good as the Rothschild rose, with sweet raspberry, gooseberry, and ripe red fruit, that is well balanced with good acid, nice pith, and fun fruit focus. The finish is long, and tart, with good acidity, lovely mineral, slate, and pith galore.

2017 Covenant Wines, Red C, Rose – Score: 88
Lovely nose of rose hip and gooseberry, ripe fruit, with strawberry notes. The mouth on this wine is ripe and sweet in style, with clear leanings toward cherry and plum lifesaver candies, with lemonade and less acid than I was hoping for. The mouth is round and ripe and nice, balanced enough with fun red fruit and lingering notes of red tea and grapefruit.

2017 Camuna Cellars Rose – Score: 90 (tasted this again and raised score)
This wine is made by Eli Silins, one of the wine hands at Covenant Winery, and it is made of 100% Barbera fruit. The wine is as natural as you are going to get in the kosher wine world, though it did have a bit of sulfite added to it somewhere in the process, from what I understood. I will say that this wine is unique, it is not a wine that everyone will love, it has a bit of oxidation, which is common with more Natural wines, and it is a more old world style wine with funk and more dry/tart fruit.

Fun notes of yeasty, earthy aromas, hints of oxidation, with tart grapefruit and quince. The mouth of nice and balanced shows really fun acidity and great fruit focus, but also old school, with more herbal/grassy notes, with lovely yeast, tart cherry, pear, and strawberry. The finish is really fun, earthy, and richly mineral focused, with red fruit galore, unique and fun.

2017 Hajdu Rose – Score: 90
This wine is a blend of Grenache, Sangiovese, and Barbera, The nose on this nice wine shows cherry, strawberry, and rich ripe summer fruit with lovely fruity notes, with ripe melon and sweet quince. The mouth on this wine is rich and full, with fun saline, with good balance, not over the top with good acid, nice complexity, with earthy and classic rose notes of strawberry and pink grapefruit. The finish is long and dry with great mineral, slate, and lingering red fruit.

2017 Herzog Lineage Rose – Score: 88 (mevushal)
This wine is a Saignée of the Herzog Lineage Coreograph field blend. The nose on this wine is unique, showing lovely dry fruit notes, mint, with menthol, pink grapefruit, cherry, and ethereal notes, lovely! Sadly, the mouth for me is not at the same level as the nose, with a slight lack of balance, showing very ripe fruit, pomegranate, guava, really ripe plum, and even pineapple, with orange notes, and acid that exists but not in balance. The finish is long and cooked in nature, more like a confiture than a true fruit focused rose.

—————- Rose wines added in my third post ——————-

2017 Herzog Rose, Pinot Noir, Tasting Room Reserve, Clarksburg – Score: 90
This wine is fun, it has done so much right with things that could go so wrong. Sadly, I have been asked to taste horrible oak driven roses, or acid-free disasters, or dark roses that make me wonder why the word rose is on the bottle.
This wine has so many things that may make me wonder if I was being punished yet again, but thankfully this wine is truly fun, yes it has oak, but in lovely control, followed by a darker than normal color for a rose but hey not everyone loves Gris, finally the wine is well balanced with fruit, and it is not a tropical fruit bomb – bravo!
The nose on this wine shows lovely smoky oak notes, with lemongrass, ripe strawberry, with hints of passion fruit, and lovely summer fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is really fun, it shows a great acid core, followed by more oak, nice salinity, pink grapefruit, that gives way to flint, smoke, and green notes. The finish is long, sweet, with hints of oak, rich vanilla, and lovely tart fruit that lingers long, with flint. Lovely – Bravo! Drink Now.

2017 Chateau Roubine – Score: 89
Well, another French rose and another disappointment in comparison to the Chateau Rothschild. So far nothing in 2017 rose land beats it. Still, this is nice enough, not as good as it better sibling, the Chateau Roubine La Vie, with the nicer bottle shape as well.
The nose is sweet, yeah, this is a BIG theme in the 2017 land of roses and it is NOT fun. This is not Israeli 2017 sweet, it is still French sweet with ripe fruit and nice floral notes, with bright pink sweet grapefruit, rose, sweet guava, and green notes. Tasting this blind, this wine does not taste like it is French, it is far too ripe for that, showing ripe quince, with gooseberry, sweet peach, nectarines, and nice mineral and green notes. The finish is long, well balanced with good acid, bracing pith, and nice sweet peach tea lingering long with orange pith, and herb.

2017 Nadiv Rose, Reshit – Score: 88
This wine is 100% Tempranillo. The nose is clean, almost clinical, with strawberry notes, yet well controlled, with mineral, and clean notes. The mouth on this wine is nice, drier than the Roubine, but sadly it is too uni-dimensional, it has the right balance, the good acid, nice elegance, but it stops there, it needs more complexity, showing a still sweet mouth of cranberry, candied quince, and raspberry. The finish is long, tart, with grapefruit pith, and nice control.

2017 Capcanes Peraj Petita – Score: 86
This wine is made of 100% Grenache. While I like Capcanes wine, I have really yet to enjoy a Rose from Capcanes, and this one does not break that streak, sadly. The wine is far too ripe for me, it is the most alcoholic of the group, showing up at 13.5%, also the acid seems fake, it shows like it was added late and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
The nose on this wine is bright, almost too bright, with really ripe strawberry, juicy fruit, and candied lifesaver, with pink grapefruit. The mouth on this rose is ripe, pushed, with enough balance, but the acid seems out of place, with mounds of pith and not much else. There is a bit of mineral, but the balance is too off for me.

2017 Dalton Alma Rose, Coral – Score: 89 to 90
To me this was the winner of the tasting, a lovely new-world rose, that was well restrained and minerally in style, with great balance and lovely funk. The nose on this wine is really fun, with rich funk, mineral, flint madness, with rosehip, pink grapefruit, strawberry, and heady spice. The mouth on this well-balanced wine is tart, with great balance, showing lovely minerality, nice saline, but still ripe, with tart, yet juicy raspberry, nice lemon, citrus, followed by tart currant, that gives way to rich sweet notes of peach. The finish is long and sweet, yet well balanced with tart red fruit, mineral, slate, and tea. Bravo!

As the weather starts to warm up, it is time to start enjoying the white and rose wines that come from Israel. With that said, there is a lot of buzz recently that 2018 is the new year for white and rose Israeli wines, well I can personally attest that the noise is a red herring and a gross over exaggeration.

Are there a few more wines that work in 2018 than in 2017, 2016, or 2015? Yes, but the 2018 vintage is NOTHING like the epic 2014 vintage for Israeli white and rose wines. Still, I am happy to say that there are a few wines that I have enjoyed and I am posting them here.

I had a large tasting with the Israeli/French/American wine tasting group in Jerusalem, and there were a few winners. I am posting here wines that I tasted with them, along with a few that I have tasted before and after the event. Also, since we had many wines, we did not write long notes for wines I disliked and some wines I liked elsewhere are either missing notes or I cannot find them, but I do my best to describe those as well.

Thanks to Avi Davidowitz of Kosher Wine Unfiltered, and the rest of the French wine group on Facebook for helping with the tasting, and a big shout out to Joel and his company for letting us have the tasting at his office.

Finally, as always! PLEASE only drink 2018 roses and finish them by October 2018 or so. Also, if you wish to read how rose wine is made, please read this post from last year. Same can be said for many of these simple white wines, other than where I give an actual drinking window.

The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2018 Tabor Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 90
The nose on this wine is pure gooseberry, slate, mineral, lemon, and cat pee. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice, dry, and very good, with floral notes, of orange blossom, and lovely control with good acidity, fruit focus, and lovely passion fruit. The finish is long, green, and slate, with good salinity, and blossom. Nice!

2018 Segal Chardonnay, Wild Fermentation – Score: 80
The nose on this wine is boring and closed, with bits of peach, orange blossom, and not much else. The front and middle of this wine are flat as a crepe, with hints of hay and slate, with a bit of acidity on the end.

2018 Shiran Semillon – Score: NA
The nose is 100% apple juice, and not much else. The mouth is offensive. Candied quince with lemon juice, all over the place and nasty.

2018 Yarden Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 90
This is a nice wine, yay, it is a nice SB, nice gooseberry, passion fruit, and citrus. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice, really acidic, well balanced, with good fruit structure, with nice weight and structure, showing peach, hints apricot, and nice hay, and orange blossom, and orange pith, with good structure and balance. Nice! Pith, acidity, salinity, and nice ripe but balanced fruit linger long.

2018 Flam Blanc – Score: 86
The nose on this wine is boring, flat, no life, with hints of orange, blossom, and not much else. The mouth on this wine is pure lemon/lime/orange juice, and not much else, very little complexity, but nice acidity. Nice enough.

2018 Ramat Negev Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 70
This is another bummer wine, big pass. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is acidic quince juice. Boring, move on.

2018 Vitkin Gewurztraminer – Score: 91 to 92
This wine is dry and lovely pineapple, with ripe melon, and green notes and lychee galore, with funk and hints of soap, incredible aromas, white pepper, smoke, flint, and redolence. The mouth on this wine is lovely, with grapefruit, citrus, lovely pith, with apple, pith galore, followed by complexity and bitter notes of melon, yellow Apple, lovely weight, slight tannin, with sweet notes honeysuckle, sweet pineapple, and balance. The finish is long and green and sweet and mineral balanced. Bravo! Drink by 2021.

2017 Amos Mont Blanc – Score: NA
The nose on this wine starts off with horrible rotten eggs, and if you swirl enough if blows off. The nose is closed off horribly as well.

2018 Vitkin Riesling – Score: 91 to 92
Lovely nose, great bright fruit, incredible honeysuckle, with heather and rich mineral galore. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is really fun, and really fun funk and petrol, with great mineral and saline backbone, followed by citrus, lemon, and rich complexity, with great blossom, litchi, and rich green notes that come together with mineral, ribbons of funk, and slate galore. Wow with mineral, saline, slate, and citrus and funk lingering long. Drink by 2023.

2018 Yaffo Sauvage, White – Score: NA
Another wine with no nose, hints of gooseberry, and orange. Quince, orange juice, with no finish.

2018 Dalton Chardonnay, Estate, unoaked – Score: 85
Orange blossom, sweet notes. The mouth is brighter, with nice enough acidity, but the sweet notes, with lots of RS, but it has a nice weight, round, with ok acidity, nothing exciting, but the finish is long with acid, and nectarines, and pith.

2018 Shiran Triada – Score: NA
Oxidized, clearly an off bottle.

2018 Psagot Gewurtztraminer – Score: 90
This wine is a bit off-dry, which breaks the rule of the evening, but nice, with classic Gewurztraminer style, with sweet pineapple, orange, tropical notes, nice spices, and loads of fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fruity, and it starts to show a lot of RS (Residual Sugar), but with air that calms down and the spice comes out, it is balanced well, with crazy salinity, acidity, and guava, and melon, are a bit too much, but nice. The finish is super long, crazy acid, saline, and a load of slate. Nice. Solid! Drink now.

2018 Tabor Chardonnay, Har – Score: 70
Average chardonnay, nothing interesting here, too many tropical notes, too ripe.

2018 Domaine Netofa, White – 90 to 91
I have had this wine 4 times now. Some shows like pineapple juice and others show beautiful like this one here. What can I do, I think this wine has a deep-rooted tropical backbone, but the mineral up front is so good that it hides the backbone.
The nose on this wine shows a lovely nose of straight up hay, mineral, and fruit, with apple and quince galore, and lovely fruit and blossom. The mouth on this wine is crazy good, with a clear ripe backbone, yet steely tart and bright with crazy saline and herb, with mineral galore, with crazy apple, and rich quince, with an incredible tension between the ripeness and the tart/dry fruit and minerality. The finish is long and green, with slate, more hay, and lovely freshness and minerality! Bravo! Drink by 2021.

2018 Domaine du Castel La Vie, White – Score: 89
Interesting peach and apricot notes, with sweet notes, showing pineapple, and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine opened slowly, with a nice solid round mouth, but with a great core of acidity, with slate, orange, nectarines, and good citrus bringing it all together.

2018 Teperberg Famitage, Inspire – Score: 83
The nose is nice, pineapple juice, with citrus, and mineral. The mouth is medium, hollow in the middle, nice acidity in the front, and boring.

2018 Dalton Pinot Gris – Score: 89 to 90
The nose on this nose is boring. The mouth on this wine, is really alive, acidity, crazy mango, guava, and passion fruit, with more pineapple, and nice fruit overall, with a good mouthfeel, and fruit focus. The finish is long, ripe, well made, and overall a dry-tropical fruit punch, loads of slate and pith. Nice.

2018 Recanati Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 87
This is nice, a solid SB! The nose smells of gooseberry, cats pee, hay, straw, and lovely passion fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice, well made, solid acidity, and not sweet, but the finish is short.

2018 Galil Mountain White – Score: NA
Sweet pineapple and quince juice, pass. Unbalanced

2018 Dalton Kna’an White – Score: NA
This wine has the true honor of being called the worst wine of the night, non-spoiled. Pure white wine date juice.

2018 Tabor Roussanne – Score: 89 to 90
Nice nose of dirt, gooseberry, straw, hay, and citrus galore. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice, with great acidity, nice pith, hints of nectarines, with lemon, lime, and herb. The finish is long, green, gooseberry, with sweet notes that takes it a bit off course, with peach, and nice slate, and more pith.

2018 Covenant Viognier, Blue C, Israel – Score: 84
After last year’s epic Viognier, I had huge expectations for this wine, sadly, the 2018 vintage is not even close to 2017. The nose is closed, and when it does open, it has little peach, though it is there with more apricot, and other sweet notes, that were not there on the 2017 vintage. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is really not that exciting, with notes that show average acidity, more apricot, a bit of peach, loads of apple, and sadly not much else.

2018 Teperberg Pinot Gris, Essence – Score: 88
The nose on this wine is sweet, with yellow Apple, melon, lychee, and sweet tropical fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is sweeter than the Dalton with tropical fruit with nice salinity and acidity with good fruit and slate. The tropical notes linger long with loads of sweet fruit and nice mineral.

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2018 Teperberg Rose, Essence – Score: 88
50% Mourvedre, 25% Grenache, and Barbera. Nice balance on the nose, with great bright fruit, strawberry, stone fruit, peach, and cherry. Nice overall wine, weighty, and overall well balanced, with fruit, and not much more.

2018 Covenant Rose, Israeli Blue C – Score: 89
The nose on this wine is fun with funk, quince, red fruit, with sweet fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice with sweet and juicy strawberry, quince, with good acidity, balance, and a bit too much sweet notes, with cotton candy and watermelon. The finish is long, sweet, strawberry, melon, and acidity.

2018 Dalton Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine is cotton candy, with sweet notes, cherry, juicy strawberry. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is sweet, with nice acidity, but it is sweeter than last year, with juicy fruit, and sweetness. The finish is long and tart yet sweet with more cotton candy and sweet pear and apple.

2018 Borgo Reale Rose – Score: 89
Nice rose again. The nose is controlled, well made with good tart and bright fruit, with raspberry, apple, and green note, and nice citrus, with orange blossom and hints of rose hip. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fun, tart, and sweet with good balance, acidity, and fun citrus, orange, nectarines, and strawberry. The finish is long, sweet, tart, and balanced, nice,

2018 Flam Rose – Score: 87
The nose on this wine is rich with bright fruit, lovely grapefruit, and sweet notes of gooseberry and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is sweet and yet tart, with nice control, but it is sweet, with good acidity,  and the crazy grapefruit and bitter lemon and pith that helps to temper the sweetness.

2018 Nadiv Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine is straight up cotton candy, sweet, strawberry with rose hip and blossom. The mouth is ok, it needs more acid, shows good fruit and structure.

2018 Gush Eztion Rose – Score: 88 to 89
This is good, the nose is funky, with strawberry, cotton candy, watermelon, and citrus. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has flavors that are austere, with a rounding/flat mouthfeel in the middle, with good balance, that comes together with time, opening to sweet notes, but nice saline, acidity, strawberry, lemongrass, tart quince, and herb. Nice.

2018 Twin Suns Rose – Score: 89 to 90
This wine was a shocker! I was not expecting this from the twin sun label. The nose on this wine is classical in nature, showing lovely raspberry, strawberry, with lemon, and mineral. The mouth on this weighty but lithe rose is fun, with tart fruit, fresh and bright, with little sweetness, showing tart and juicy balance, with good mineral, and slate. Nice!

2018 Timbre Rose – Score: 89 to 90
Another wine I was not expecting based upon the previous history. The nose is a bit closed to start, with time it opens to sweet notes, balanced well with hay, and floral notes. The mouth on this wine is balanced, nice, with great acid, gooseberry, hints of passion fruit, with cherry, strawberry, and lovely red fruit balanced by tart fruit, great acidity, with spice and slate galore. Nice!

2018 Ella Valley Ever Rose – Score: NA
Closed, with cherry, strawberry, and fruit. RS pass.

2018 Five Stones Rose, D vs G – Score: 89
The nose is clean, good bright fruit, with lemongrass, nice red fruit, citrus, and tart fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is solid, well balanced, with great acidity that is well balanced with sweet cherry and strawberry but balanced well with slate, peach, and apricot, nice. The finish is long, tart, and green, but fruity and has clear RS.

2018 Amos Rose, La Rose – Score: 60
Sweet, Sweet, and sweeter. Bubblegum and cotton candy. Big pass.

2018 Recanati Rose, Gris de Marselan – Score: 91
Lovely nose of gooseberry, sweet honeysuckle, pineapple, sweet apple, and creamy strawberry. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is balanced, with great acidity, lovely salinity, all wrapped in a nice mouthfeel, showing strawberry, quince, sweet apple, tart gooseberry, pink grapefruit, and acid galore. The finish is long, green, tart, with slate, and nice tart grapefruit and pith lingering long. Nice!

2018 Tabor Rose, Barbera – Score: 90
The nose on this wine is nice, with sweet notes, showing ripe strawberry, quince, apple and loads of melon and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe but well balanced with red berry, tart gooseberry, citrus, and grapefruit, with nice acidity, mineral, and good mouthfeel, with tart fruit, cotton candy, sweet notes, and lovely mineral and acidity and citrus notes lingering long.

2018 Domaine Castel Rose du Castel – Score: 87 to 88
I have had this wine two times now, and while I like it flinty and lithe nature, I find it too lithe to stand up to food. The nose on this rose is lithe and lovely, it is how rose should be, with mineral, slate, and nice gooseberry, white fruit, and melon. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has ripeness to it, but it is well balanced, with great minerality, salinity, and light red fruit notes, with tart strawberry hiding the riper strawberry notes, with lovely grapefruit, lime, and lemon Fraiche, with lovely citrus pith, slate, rock, and mineral, straw, lingering long with core acidity, and lovely pith. Nice!

2018 Tanya Rose – Score: NA
Tropical notes, bubble gum, too sweet. This wine has fake acid and crazy sweet notes, hot and boring.

2018 Teperberg Rose, Impression – Score: 80
Classic strawberry creme, with raspberry, and candied fruit. The mouth on this wine is over the top, too much, like 2017 BS, there is little to no fruit, with saline, acid, and not much else. 80

2018 Domaine Netofa Rose, GSM – Score: 90
Lovely nose of strawberry, raspberry, and rich citrus. The mouth on this wine is nice with good acidity, though I would love to have more, with lovely fresh fruit, tart with hints of bitter notes, loads of mineral, saline, and great bite on the finish, with slate, rock and more raspberry and strawberry with grapefruit and citrus. Drink now.

2018 Domaine Netofa Rose, Latour Rosado – Score: 91
The nose on this wine is tart and really fun with juicy and tart raspberry with citrus galore, showing bright gooseberry and slate. The mouth on this wine is elegant, balanced and lovely, with great saline and lovely limoncello, ripe and juicy strawberry, with dried quince, lovely lime, and citrus that lingers long with slate, rock, orange blossom. Lovely!

2018 Dalton Kna’an Rose – Score: 70
The nose is nice, with good red fruit, apple, yellow notes, and slate. The mouth is residual sugar and fruit city, ripe fruit, no balance, boring.

2018 Peraj Petita Rose – Score: 82
The color of this wine is fluorescent and psychedelic, with glistening raspberry color, and fruit galore. The mouth is all over the place, with acidity, saline, and fruit, not much going on.

Galil Mountain Rose – Score: 89
Nice nose of raspberry and strawberry jam. The mouth on this is nice, all around, with solid acid, good saline, balance, and a little of RS, with peach, and cranberry. Nice, the acid, pith, and slate are nice. 88

2018 Bat Shlomo Rose – Score: 80
Peach, apricot, and red fruit nose. The mouth on this wine is hollow, short finish and fake acid galore, with red fruit, strawberry, and not much else.

2018 Matar Rose – Score: 90
The nose on this is funky, with earth, mineral, and red fruit galore. The mouth on this wine is nice, it has RS in the front, with sweet orange, nectarines, but well balanced, with raspberry, strawberry, with good balance, with good acidity, bitter notes, and slate galore. Nice!

2018 Vitkin Rose – Score: 90
To me, this is the best rose that Vitkin has released since it has gone kosher. The nose on this lovely Gris style wine shows lovely dark cherry, tart, and juicy strawberry, raspberry, with rich saline and grapefruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fun, tart and rich, with crazy saline and acid, showing rich lemon and lime, with notes of mineral and earth, with slate. The finish is fun, showing lemongrass and rich tart fruit. Bravo!

2018 Kishor Rose – Score: 80
Floral rose water, floral madness, with barely and fruit. Rosewater, with jasmine, barely any fruit, with acid. Boring.

2018 Gvaot Rose – Score: 91
The nose is closed with peach and lemon. The mouth on this wine is old-school, with no RS, with lovely funk, earth, mineral galore, acidity that is not fake, with lemon, grapefruit, and quince, showing well all around. The finish is long, tart, well balanced, impressive, and slate/saline/pith – solid!

2018 Ramat Negev Rose – Score: NA
Winner of the worst rose of the tasting award!

It is not yet summer and here in NorCal, it feels more like winter with these strange May storms with thunder and hail. Sorry, but in NorCal, we do not get thunder, it is very strange indeed! Anyway, enough with my meteorologist fanboy moment, the weather was not conducive for my last tasting here in San Jose with a group of folks, but Rose was on the docket so rose it was.

Rose wine in the non-kosher market is exploding – especially Rose wine from Provence; a wine region of France. Sadly, in the kosher wine market – that is not quite the case. I did not stress my previous statement with a suffix of AT ALL, even though I am not allowed to open a bottle of rose on my Shabbos table with guests – why? Well, that is simple – no one will drink it!!

Even worse, is that wine manufacturers may well have jumped the shark! There will be some 60+ kosher roses available in the USA this year! That may not sound like a lot, but when all you had was Herzog White Zinfandel 10 years ago – it is insane. The first high-end rose was Castel’s 2009 rose and that was only 10 years ago. Back then, there were few to no real Rose wine options, other than a handful of Israeli wines and almost no French Rose made it here. Now we will have tons of Rose, and I really think the real question here is will people drink it all?

Also, I want to bring up a topic I rarely talk about – price! Yeah, I hear you, Avi Davidowitz, of KosherWineUnfiltered, please quiet down, gloating does not suit you – (smiley face inserted here). The prices of Rose wines have gotten out of control. QPR (Quality to Price Ratio) has become nonexistent, essentially here in the USA, for the kosher rose market. Finally, I am sorry, but I really feel that wineries were either horribly hampered in some way with the 2018 rose vintage, or honestly, they just threw in the towel, The 2018 vintage is the worst one in the last 10 years. We have hit Peak Rose, we really have. Peak X is when X becomes so default within the construct of our lives, and the quality and quantity of X peaks. Clearly, calling peak kosher rose is a subjective call, but look around. The roses of 2018 feel commodity at best, they feel rushed, no real care, rhyme, or reason. They feel like we have peaked. They are nowhere near 2017, and 2017 was nowhere near 2016, and so on. I am sure next year may be another peak rose, and to be honest, many have called for Peak Oil and Peak TV, so maybe I am just projecting what I see around me, but this year’s crop of roses feel half-hearted pure cash cows, and really without love behind them.

As always, I will be chastised for my opinions, my pronouncements, and I am fine with that. This is wakeup post, there may be ONE or two roses I would buy, but respectfully, given the prices, I would rather buy, the 2018 Covenant Sauvignon Blanc, 2017 O’dwyers Sauvignon Blanc, the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, and so on. Throw in the 2018 Tabor Sauvignon Blanc and the 2018 Or Haganuz Amuka Blanc Blend, and really who cares about a rose?

I was thinking about going with the title: 2018 kosher roses, thanks, but who cares? Because that is how I feel. This vintage is a massive letdown, prices are too high, quality has hit rock bottom, and overall professionalism, IMHO, has gone along with the quality. Wineries have been getting away with less and less quality for years, raising prices, and this is the worst I have seen in the rose market overall. So, yeah, who cares?

Wine Color

What is rose wine? Well, simply said, a rose is a wine that can best be defined as the wine world’s chameleon. Where white wine is a pretty simple concept – take white grapes, squeeze them, and you get clear to green colored juice. Yes, the white grape juice is clear – well so is red grape juice, but more on that in a bit.

White wine is not about color – almost all color in a white wine comes from some oak influence of some sort. So, an unoaked Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Gris can sometimes look almost clear, depending on the region and how the wine was handled. Now oaked Chardonnay, of course, is what most people use as an example of dark white wine. As the Wine Folly linked above states, different wine regions oak their Chardonnay differently and as such, they are sold with different hues from the start. With age, the wine changes color and the light gold moves to darker gold shades.

The only real exception to the stated rule above – that white grape juice without the influence of oak is somewhere in the clear to the green color spectrum, is – orange wines. We have spoken about orange wines – mostly thanks to Yaacov Oryah. Outside of Yaacov’s work there really is no orange wine in the kosher world to speak about. Orange wine is made exactly like red wine, which means that the clear grape juice is left to sit on the yellowish to dark yellow grape skins (depending upon what varietal is used to make the orange wine). Another name for them is skin macerated white wines or extended skin macerated white wines.

Red wine juice – straight from the grape comes out the same color as white grapes. You see the juice from grapes is mostly clear to greenish in color. The red wine color comes from macerating the juice on the grape skins. The longer the juice sits on the grape skins (wine must) the redder in color the wine becomes until it reaches its maximum red color potential.

The only real exception to the rule of a grape’s juice color is the Teinturier varieties. The grapes are called Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain. The list of grapes whose juice is actually red colored is long – but the list of kosher wine options that is a wine made from these grapes – is the Herzog Alicante Bouschet. The Gamay de Bouze is not a normal Gamay grape, it is one of those grape mutations that are very red in nature.

Rose wines are the in-between story – hence the chameleon term I used above.

Rose Wine

Rose wine is made in one of three ways. I will list the most dominant manners and leave the last one for last.

Limited Maceration:

This is the first step of the first two options and the only difference is what you do with the rest of the juice after you remove it? You see, as we stated above, the color of the juice from red grapes is clear to green and for one to get the lovely red hues we all love from red wine, it requires the juice to lie on the grape skins – AKA maceration.

The rose hue depends on how long the juice macerates. I have heard winemakers say 20 minutes gives them the color they like, and some say almost half a day or longer. The longer the juice macerates the darker the color. While the wine is macerating, the skins are contributing color by leaching phenolics – such as anthocyanins and tannins, and flavor components. The other important characteristic that the skins leach into the rose is – antioxidants that protect the wine from degrading. Sadly, because rose wines macerate for such a short period of time, the color and flavor components are less stable and as such, they lack shelf life – a VERY IMPORTANT fact we will talk about later. Either way, drinking rose wine early – like within the year – is a great approach for enjoying rose wine at its best!

Now once you remove the liquid, after letting it macerate for the desired length of time, the skins that are left are thrown out or placed in the field to feed organic material into the vines. This is a very expensive approach indeed because the grapes are being thrown away, instead of doing the Saignée process which is described in option #2. This approach is mostly used in regions where rose wine is as important as red wines, like Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon. Mind you, the grapes used in this method are most often picked early, as they are being solely used for making the rose.

Many producers, especially those in Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon, take a more traditional approach when making rosé wine. Grapes are grown and selected exclusively for rosé production, as stated above, and then often crushed as whole clusters, and then gently pressed until the juice reaches a desirable pale color.

Most think that Saignee wines would have a higher alcohol level, as the fruit used to make that wine is picked later, but actually, that is not always correct, as winemakers can water back the rose juice and get what they want, at least here in the USA. When you taste the wine, look for the acid, is the acid natural or out of place?

Saignée:

The second approach for how Rose wine is made, is essentially the same as maceration – the only difference is that they do not remove all the juice. In the second method for making Rose wine, the Rose is the afterthought – in DRASTIC contrast to the first approach, where the rose is primary.

Now, many winemakers may take affront to this statement, and one did actually, but that is my opinion. When the juice is removed to fortify the red wine, the rose wine, again IMHO, is an afterthought. That DOES NOT mean, that the winemaker does not take the rose wine seriously. Any decent winemaker that makes wine, should be doing it with 100% focus. My point is that if the rose was important to you, you would pull the fruit earlier, but hey that is my opinion, and yeah, I am not a winemaker.

So in places like California and Rhone in France, winemakers will pick the grapes when they reach their appropriate phenolics. Then to concentrate the wine, the winemaker will bleed some of the juice – hence the term Saignée in French which means bleed. By removing this juice, after the juice has macerated long enough, the resulting wine is further intensified, because there is less juice lying on the same amount of grape skin surface.

The interesting thing here is that the grapes used to make this kind of rose are normally one with higher Brix, as the grapes are destined for red wine. So, when you bleed the juice out of the must, what is being pulled out is juice at a higher alcohol level than Rose wines made using the first method (as explained above). So what do you do when you have a wine that is too high in alcohol so early in the game – well that is simple you water it down! Now remember this wine is already low on phenolics and color, so if you know that your rose will be high in alcohol when all is said and done, you have lots of options here. You can leave the juice to macerate for longer, yes the juice you finally pull out may well be darker than you desire. However, you will be watering it down, so it is all a question of numbers and winemakers who make these kinds of wines, are used to it and know how to handle it.

Now you ask what is wrong with high alcohol rose? Well, a rose is normally meant to be light and fruity wine, and well watered back roses are less so, but I have also enjoyed a few Saignee wines, like the 2018 Shirah Rose.

Blending Method:

Finally, what do you get when you mix some white wine with some red wine – a rose by George a rose! This last method is the least common method for creating still rose wines. That said, it is very common in the world of Champagne and sparkling wines. Next time you enjoy sparkling rose wine, you can almost be sure that it is a blend of Chardonnay (white wine) and either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier (red wine).

As stated before, in the pure rose still wine market, there really is very little of this kind of rose wine being made.

State of kosher rose wines

Types of Rose made:

1. Red Rose wines: There are truly few examples of this, but they have been made and they are not a rose wine. They are billed as a rose at times, but to me, they are essentially a light red wine, much like a Gamay
2. Sweet/Ripe Rose wines: Sweet wines are created because either the winemaker could not get the wine to completely finish primary fermentation or because they stopped it. Sweet rose wines sometimes lack balance because they lack the screaming acid needed to make it all work. This year, the vast majority of the kosher roses were ripe, sweet, or unbalanced messes. Yes, Chateau Roubine this year was ripe, it was not tart, nor was the Matar. There were a few truly dry roses, but they were the vast minority.
   That said, sweeter rose wines are the gateway wines to get people to try drier wines. The best of the sweet/ripe rose this year if that is even a statement that makes sense, would be the 2018 Twin Suns Rose.
3. Dry rose wines: Dry is not a subjective concept it is measurable in a lab and can be tasted as well. That said, what we as humans can perceive does seem to be subjective. Some of us will think a Sauvignon Blanc is sweet unless it is a Sancerre – you know who you are JR! Dr. Vinny was asked this question here, and essentially we can start perceiving sweetness at 0.5% residual sugar, but as the Doc says, sometimes a bone-dry wine can be perceived as sweet because of its ripeness and/or lack of acidity to balance it. To me, that was where the Chateau Roubine was this year. The Roubine La Vie Rose was dry and nice.
4. Dark rose wines: Color in any rose or red wine is defined by the amount of maceration the wine goes through, as described above. Some people like that salmon color and some like that darker rose color. The 2018 Recanati Rose (not the Gris de Marselan which is lovely and light colored) is a dark rose, along with the Camuna Rose. There are so many colors in the rose spectrum, and no, the darker roses are not based on what grape is used in the making of the wine, unless it is based on a Teinturier grape – which I have yet to see.

So where does that leave us? To recap IMHO, rose wine is meant to be light, refreshing, tart, and low in alcohol. It can have a varying rose hue, from Gris (gray in French – light color) to Salmon, to rose, and all the way up to dark red. Yes, there have been wineries who tried making heavier rose wines, that were essentially red wines, whom I will not mention and they have all been epic disasters. If you want a red wine – make a Gamay and leave me alone! Rose is about summer, tart and refreshing wine.

White and Rose wine education

Royal Wines has done a great job of bringing in white and roses wines, but I must stress – we need more education! Any wine distributor today can sell a Cabernet Sauvignon in its sleep! Why? Because the kosher wine drinking public is programmed to drink big bold red wines! Nothing light and lithe, only sledgehammers! Now, who am I to disagree with what someone likes – if you like a particular wine great! What I would like to see is people finding a way to expand their palate – by doing so they will learn more about wines and maybe they will actually see why they like and dislike a wine more – education is the answer! Now to those who say – why bother, if they like it let them enjoy it? To that answer I say – sure, when u were three years old you liked mud, and you really liked spreading it all over your sister’s new white dress! Should we have let you enjoy it forever?? Of course not!

Now your reply will be, come on we are talking about wine – not about personal growth and their humanity! Of course, but like everything in this world – we should want to strive and learn more about what makes us happy and why! Are you still eating mac&cheese for dinner? What about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch? Nothing against, P&J – I actually like them, but I have grown out of them which is the point here!

If you like a Monet painting – you owe it to yourself to learn why? What grabs you when you see 100+-year-old paint on a canvas? So what he painted a haystack – good for him? What makes you want to stare at it for hours? The answer is inside of you – and you need to learn the answer. I hope we can all find the answers to what makes us tick, why we all love some things and why we hate other things. That is called human evolution – it makes us what we are – human! Anyway, I am off my soapbox now, but I hope we can agree that growth is good – no matter the subject.

I beg distributors and wineries to get out and teach! Get out and go to wine stores and pour wines – pour wine to anyone that wants to taste or even to those that do not! Education is the foundation of this industry – and without it, we are doomed to stasis – something that terrifies me!

The temperature to enjoy Rose

Please do yourself a favor and enjoy rose wine at 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Meaning if you leave a bottle of wine in your refrigerator and pull it out after half a day of fridge time or more, it will probably be at the refrigerator’s frigid temperature of 37 or so degrees Farenight – which is HORRIBLE for a rose. Rose at room temperature of 70 or so degrees is also not fun. It needs to be a bit cold, but not over the top. Please do not think that it needs to be iced down in an ice bucket either, that is for sparkling wines.

Drink the rose at the beginning of the meal

Rose is NOT a long-term drinking animal. It is not meant to be enjoyed for more than a meal. Why? Because as we explained above once it is fully oxygenated, it will go bad – really bad fast. The tart fruit notes and the acid will dissipate faster than air leaves a punctured tire. It is simply the life of Rose, drink it very young and fast. Never stock up on Rose, there is no purpose in that! Go to the store and buy a rose and drink it, if they have none, then no worries drink something else.

White and Rose wine drinking in the kosher wine world

The good news is that white wine is selling better than it ever has. There is a large number of very good, solid, white wines from Israel, California, and Europe that are reasonably priced and very enjoyable. Of course, there are also higher end white wines that are even more fascinating, but overall the good news is that white wine consumption and availability has been on the rise in the kosher wine market, just not where I live, LOL! I still cannot pour white wine on my table, though in the end, who cares, I will enjoy it and the guests can drink more red wine, win-win.

The very sad state of affairs with the 2018 roses

So where are we in 2019 with kosher Rose wines? Well, last year I thought kosher roses jumped the shark, this year, I think it is peak rose. Why? Because there are MANY wine shops, even on the hallowed grounds of NYC, that still have Rose wines on their shelves, from the 2016 and 2017 vintages. Why is that a problem? As stated above, Rose wines are NOT meant for aging. Rose wines should NEVER be sold after their drink by date, which is the summer after the wine’s vintage. So, 2018 wines should be sold out by the summer of 2019 – simple! Sadly, I still see 2017 wines being sold all around! There is simply too much older rose lying around and too much new 2018 Rose wines coming in. The outcome is that someone is going to eat a lot of rose wines, or they will push them on to the unsuspecting public, who really do not understand roses at all.

I BEG the manufacturers to work with the stores and merchants to eat the older wines, one way or the other, and get them OFF the shelves. Please DO NOT attempt to put them on sale, they are not wines that should be pushed to consumers, as it only ends up hurting the wineries and the companies selling them. Please remove them and figure out how to handle the loss. No one will be drinking Rose wines for Rosh Hashanah.

One part that is better than last year is that many of the rose wines are here. I wish they would have all been here in March, but it is MUCH better than last year. Please dump the old roses and move on!

Best rose so far in 2019

Well, let’s hold up here for a second. I have not tasted all the roses out there yet. I have tasted LOTS of them, like 50 or so of them so far and the Israeli 2018 roses are all “sweet” or ripe. Now be careful here, when I say sweet – I mean I perceive sweetness. These roses are ripe, big in the mouth, and leave a perception of sweetness. There are a few roses from Israel that are lithe in nature, with a core focus of acid while being complex, and those are my preferred options so far, from what I have had the chance to enjoy.

So with that said, here are the “winners” for me so far, with a couple of Elvi roses to taste and a couple of Israel roses to taste. The best roses – in order of preference:

1. 2018 Chateau Sainte Marguerite – winner of 2018 roses
2. 2018 Yaacov Oryah Rose, Pretty as the Moon
3. 2018 Netofa Latour Rosado
4. 2018 Recanati Gris de Marselan 
5. 2018 Gvaot Rose
6. 2018 Chateau Roubine La Vie en Rose
7. 2018 Vitkin Rose, Israeli Journey
8. 2018 Domaine Netofa Rose

The best European Rose and the best rose overall is the 2018 Chateau Sainte Marguerite. Though the 2018 Chateau Roubine, La Vie en Rose a good step behind, is nice, at half the price. The best California Rose is a tossup between the 2018 Twin Suns Rose, the 2018 Shirah Rose, and the 2018 Hajdu Rose. Finally, the best Israeli rose is Yaacov Oryah’s Pretty as the moon, which should have been called Pretty in Pink, but sadly that name is trademarked.

To me, QPR does not exist in the rose section this year. Sorry. These wines are too boring and too expensive. All the wines are 19.99 or higher! For a rose! Move on. At the end of the day, rose is meant to be fun to enjoy, and 20 dollars for a fun wine, I would either grab a 6 pack, or a bunch of FAR better white options at that price. Elvi’s Vina Encina white, 2016 Koening Riesling, 2018 Yarden Sauvignon Blanc (NOT the 2017 vintage), 2017 O’Dwyer Creek Sauvignon Blanc, 2018 Or Haganuz Amuka White Blend (2017 is a dead vintage already), 2018 Tabor Sauvignon Blanc (2017 is flat), 2017 Chateau Lacaussade, Koenig Brut, 2016 Jacques Capsouto Cuvee Eva Blanc (drink up), 2017 Herzog Lineage Chardonnay (best vintage so far), Gilgal Brut, 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, 2017 Ramon Cardova Albarino. All of those can be found below 20 dollars and I would enjoy those any day before the roses below 20 dollars. Sorry, but this year, there can be no QPR. Maybe in Israel, if you must, the 2018 Vitkin Rose, Israeli Journey and the 2018 Domaine Netofa rose could be considered QPR, if you can get them low enough. But, still, why? I would enjoy the 2018 Domaine Netofa white more and other Israeli whites more. In the end, roses are not that great this year and the prices are too high, end of the story.

Blind Tasting in Jerusalem and large tasting in San Jose

A bit more than a week before Passover, I was in Israel, and I had the chance to hang with my French/American crazy wine friends, the notes for the roses and whites are already posted here. Last week Thursday night a bunch of folks from San Jose hung out and we tasted another 20 or so roses from all over and all of those along with others I tasted at home and around all come together into this posting.

My feelings are clear and to the point above, so, I will leave you to them. The wine notes follow below – the explanation of my “scores” can be found here:

2018 Teperberg Rose, Essence – Score: 88
50% Mourvedre, 25% Grenache, and Barbera. Nice balance on the nose, with great bright fruit, strawberry, stone fruit, peach, and cherry. Nice overall wine, weighty, and overall well balanced, with fruit, and not much more.

2018 Covenant Rose, Israeli Blue C – Score: 89
The nose on this wine is fun with funk, quince, red fruit, with sweet fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice with sweet and juicy strawberry, quince, with good acidity, balance, and a bit too much sweet notes, with cotton candy and watermelon. The finish is long, sweet, strawberry, melon, and acidity.

2018 Dalton Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine is cotton candy, with sweet notes, cherry, juicy strawberry. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is sweet, with nice acidity, but it is sweeter than last year, with juicy fruit, and sweetness. The finish is long and tart yet sweet with more cotton candy and sweet pear and apple.

2018 Borgo Reale Rose – Score: 89
Nice rose again. The nose is controlled, well made with good tart and bright fruit, with raspberry, apple, and green note, and nice citrus, with orange blossom and hints of rose hip. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fun, tart, and sweet with good balance, acidity, and fun citrus, orange, nectarines, and strawberry. The finish is long, sweet, tart, and balanced, nice,

2018 Flam Rose – Score: 87
The nose on this wine is rich with bright fruit, lovely grapefruit, and sweet notes of gooseberry and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is sweet and yet tart, with nice control, but it is sweet, with good acidity,  and the crazy grapefruit and bitter lemon and pith that helps to temper the sweetness.

2018 Nadiv Rose – Score: 88
The nose on this wine is straight up cotton candy, sweet, strawberry with rose hip and blossom. The mouth is ok, it needs more acid, shows good fruit and structure.

2018 Gush Eztion Rose – Score: 88 to 89
This is good, the nose is funky, with strawberry, cotton candy, watermelon, and citrus. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has flavors that are austere, with a rounding/flat mouthfeel in the middle, with good balance, that comes together with time, opening to sweet notes, but nice saline, acidity, strawberry, lemongrass, tart quince, and herb. Nice.

2018 Timbre Rose – Score: 89 to 90
Another wine I was not expecting based upon the previous history. The nose is a bit closed to start, with time it opens to sweet notes, balanced well with hay, and floral notes. The mouth on this wine is balanced, nice, with great acid, gooseberry, hints of passion fruit, with cherry, strawberry, and lovely red fruit balanced by tart fruit, great acidity, with spice and slate galore. Nice!

2018 Ella Valley Ever Rose – Score: NA
Closed, with cherry, strawberry, and fruit. RS pass.

2018 Five Stones Rose, D vs G – Score: 89
The nose is clean, good bright fruit, with lemongrass, nice red fruit, citrus, and tart fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is solid, well balanced, with great acidity that is well balanced with sweet cherry and strawberry but balanced well with slate, peach, and apricot, nice. The finish is long, tart, and green, but fruity and has clear RS.

2018 Amos Rose, La Rose – Score: 60
Sweet, Sweet, and sweeter. Bubblegum and cotton candy. Big pass.

2018 Tanya Rose – Score: NA
Tropical notes, bubble gum, too sweet. This wine has fake acid and crazy sweet notes, hot and boring.

2018 Teperberg Rose, Impression – Score: 80
Classic strawberry creme, with raspberry, and candied fruit. The mouth on this wine is over the top, too much, like 2017 BS, there is little to no fruit, with saline, acid, and not much else. 80

2018 Domaine Netofa Rose, GSM – Score: 90
Lovely nose of strawberry, raspberry, and rich citrus. The mouth on this wine is nice with good acidity, though I would love to have more, with lovely fresh fruit, tart with hints of bitter notes, loads of mineral, saline, and great bite on the finish, with slate, rock and more raspberry and strawberry with grapefruit and citrus. Drink now.

2018 Domaine Netofa Rose, Latour Rosado – Score: 91
The nose on this wine is tart and really fun with juicy and tart raspberry with citrus galore, showing bright gooseberry and slate. The mouth on this wine is elegant, balanced and lovely, with great saline and lovely limoncello, ripe and juicy strawberry, with dried quince, lovely lime, and citrus that lingers long with slate, rock, orange blossom. Lovely!

2018 Dalton Kna’an Rose – Score: 70
The nose is nice, with good red fruit, apple, yellow notes, and slate. The mouth is residual sugar and fruit city, ripe fruit, no balance, boring.

2018 Peraj Petita Rose – Score: 82
The color of this wine is fluorescent and psychedelic, with glistening raspberry color, and fruit galore. The mouth is all over the place, with acidity, saline, and fruit, not much going on.

2018 Galil Mountain Rose – Score: 89
Nice nose of raspberry and strawberry jam. The mouth on this is nice, all around, with solid acid, good saline, balance, and a little of RS, with peach, and cranberry. Nice, the acid, pith, and slate are nice. 88

2018 Bat Shlomo Rose – Score: 80
Peach, apricot, and red fruit nose. The mouth on this wine is hollow, short finish and fake acid galore, with red fruit, strawberry, and not much else.

2018 Matar Rose – Score: 90
The nose on this is funky, with earth, mineral, and red fruit galore. The mouth on this wine is nice, it has RS in the front, with sweet orange, nectarines, but well balanced, with raspberry, strawberry, with good balance, with good acidity, bitter notes, and slate galore. Nice!

2018 Vitkin Rose – Score: 90
To me, this is the best rose that Vitkin has released since it has gone kosher. The nose on this lovely Gris style wine shows lovely dark cherry, tart, and juicy strawberry, raspberry, with rich saline and grapefruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fun, tart and rich, with crazy saline and acid, showing rich lemon and lime, with notes of mineral and earth, with slate. The finish is fun, showing lemongrass and rich tart fruit. Bravo!

2018 Kishor Rose – Score: 80
Floral rose water, floral madness, with barely and fruit. Rosewater, with jasmine, barely any fruit, with acid. Boring.

2018 Gvaot Rose – Score: 91
The nose is closed with peach and lemon. The mouth on this wine is old-school, with no RS, with lovely funk, earth, mineral galore, acidity that is not fake, with lemon, grapefruit, and quince, showing well all around. The finish is long, tart, well balanced, impressive, and slate/saline/pith – solid!

2018 Ramat Negev Rose – Score: NA
Winner of the worst rose of the tasting award!

2018 Yaacov Oryah Pretty as the Moon Rose – Score: 91+
The wine was meant to be another Blanc de Noir, but God had other plans, and so Rose it is! Once it was a rose that was meant to be a white, well we have pretty AS white, get it? White moon. It also plays off the name of one of my favorite John Hugh movies, but that is TMI.
The wine is a blend of 53% Petit Sirah, 29% Mourvedre, and 18% Syrah, another rose or white from Rhone. The wine opens slowly, but with time it opens to cherry, raspberry, rhubarb, and pomegranate. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is awesome, it has a great core acidity, with loads of funk, mad quince, green apple, and lovely pomegranate, with rich salinity, with tart green fruit, with dry apple, and loads of hay and straw. The finish is long, green, apple, quince, and acid core, with salinity madness, and funk, that carries the dry fruit into the long saline driven and slate finish. Drink now.

2018 Recanati Rose, Gris de Marselan – Score: 91
Lovely nose of gooseberry, sweet honeysuckle, pineapple, sweet apple, and creamy strawberry. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is sweet but it is well balanced, with great acidity, lovely salinity, all wrapped in a nice mouthfeel, showing strawberry, quince, sweet apple, tart gooseberry, pink grapefruit, and acid galore. The finish is long, green, tart, with slate, and nice tart grapefruit and pith lingering long. Nice! Drink Now!

2018 Tabor Rose, Barbera – Score: 90
The nose on this wine is nice, with sweet notes, showing ripe strawberry, quince, apple and loads of melon and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe but well balanced with red berry, tart gooseberry, citrus, and grapefruit, with nice acidity, mineral, and good mouthfeel, with tart fruit, cotton candy, sweet notes, and lovely mineral and acidity and citrus notes lingering long. Drink Now.

2018 Castel Rose du Castel – Score: 90
I have had this wine a few times now, and while I like it, the main issue I have with it is that it lacks the weight and focus to cut through most foods. This wine is fun but it is really hard to pair with much other than simple fish dishes.
The nose on this rose is lithe and lovely, it is how rose should be, with mineral, slate, and nice gooseberry, white fruit, and melon. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has ripeness to it, but it is well balanced, with great minerality, salinity, and light red fruit notes, with tart strawberry hiding the riper strawberry notes, with lovely grapefruit, lime, and lemon Fraiche, with lovely citrus pith, slate, rock, and mineral, straw, lingering long with core acidity, and lovely pith. Nice! Drink Now.

2018 Les Lauriers de Rothschild Rose – Score: 88
I was so hoping for another great rose from Les Lauriers de Rothschild, but it is not meant to be. The nose on this wine is nice enough showing red and stone fruit, with mineral and herb. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine has a nice start, with raspberry and strawberry, but after that, it all falls apart, with ok acidity, fruit, and really not much else. The finish is short, with lingering acidity and a bit of mineral. Bummer. Drink now.

2018 Chateau Sainte Marguerite – Score: 91+
This wine is a blend of 40% Grenache, 40% Cinsault, and 20% Syrah. The nose on this wine is lovely, floral, with fresh fruit notes, of citrus, with strawberry, tart raspberry, tart stone fruit, and mineral galore. The mouth on this wine is beautiful, layered, and really rich, with great mineral, slate, orange, and yeasty notes, great acidity that balances the wine, with graphite, rich citrus pith, with lovely nectarines, orange notes, and crazy fruity but rich saline and mineral balance this out well. The finish is long, yeasty, green, earth, mineral, and lovely with spice, garrigue, and tart fruit galore. Bravo! Drink now!

2018 Ramon Cardova Rosado – Score: 85
This wine is 80% Grenache and 20% Viura (white wine). The nose on this wine is funk, with loads of fruit, with loads of nectarines, orange, and floral notes. This wine is unbalanced, and all over the place, nothing really interesting. Drink Now.

2018 Domaine Fontlaure – Score: NA
This wine is a blend of 45% Cinsault, 30% Grenache, and 25% Syrah. The nose on this wine is lavender, soap, and floral notes galore, with fruit, and hops. This wine is soap, beer, and all the wrong things you want in a rose. Drink Now.

2018 Chateau Roubine, Cru Classe – Score: 88 to 89
The nose on this wine is nice but it is hotter and fruitier than the Marguerite, with notes of floral notes, sweet orange marmalade, and flint. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is riper and sweeter than the Marguerite, with pith, sweet notes of papaya, guava, with more orange, citrus, and pith. The wine is not fresh enough, it is not pop-and-go, it is too heavy, sweet, but it is nice enough, with pith, and mineral, and citrus lingering long. Good acidity helps. Drink Now.

2018 Chateau Roubine La Vie en Rose – Score: 89 to 90
This is nicer than the Roubine, but not as good as the Marguerite, with good floral notes, strawberry, citrus, with mineral, raspberry, and nice stone fruit. The mouth on this is nice enough, but it is still too sweet, the fruit is riper, with good acidity, showing nice pith, but lacks salinity, lacks the crazy fruit focus that Marguerite has, with lovely sweet grapefruit, showing nice nectarines, and orange like notes, that are balanced, but still too heavy. The finish is long, sweet, ripe, and tart, with pith, slate, and loads of sour notes and pomelo on the finish. Drink Now.

2018 Sainte Beatrice – Score: 88
The nose is boring, flat, with floral notes, grapefruit, and really not much more. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is boring, sweet/ripe, with some balance, with ripe strawberry, tart raspberry, with nice pith, saline, good earth, and slate. Nice enough.

2018 Psagot Rose – Score: 87 (tasted in Israel)
The nose on this wine is funky, with cranberry, quince, tart fruit, and rich herb. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rhubarb driven, with saline and acid, with sweet and tart fruit, all over the place. Nice enough. Drink now.

NO!

2018 Psagot Rose, Non-Mevushal – Score: NA
NO! Clearly, there is an issue here, as I thought the rose in Israel was OK, not great, but OK. This is horrible.

2018 Carmel Appellation Rose – Score: 86
This wine is a blend of 65% Marselan and 35% Grenache. This is too sweet for a rose, with ripe strawberry, floral notes, ripe raspberry, with kiwi, and tropical notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe, round, but ok, with orange notes, guava, and sweet marmalade kind of wine. The finish is long, sweet, sour, and sweet mandarin/tangerines. Nice, but too sweet, but good acidity. Drink Now.

2018 Jezreel Rose – Score: 70
40% Carignan, 40% Syrah, 15% Sauvignon Blanc. This wine is all over the place, with metallic notes, sweet, tart, sour, no focus, and really a mess. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is pomegranate, strawberry, and raspberry, sweet, ripe, and really not fun. Not a wine I could buy.

2018 Adir Rose, Keren Ben Zimra – Score: 80 (mevushal)
The nose on this wine is nice enough, with tart strawberry, mineral, and fruit notes. The mouth on this medium bodied is all over the place, with loads of acid, too much added-acid, with tannin, sweet notes of raspberry, pomegranate, with grapefruit, nectarines, and citrus galore. Drink Now.

2018 Recanati Rose – Score: 83
This wine is a blend of 70% Barbera and 30% Merlot. The nose is really ripe with pomegranate, strawberry, with sweet lemon, and sour notes. The mouth on this wine is also another over acidified wine, ripe fruit, with crazy added acid, followed by tart lemon, and sweet notes. Not a really fun wine, good enough if you must. Drink Now.

2018 Covenant Rose, USA – Score: 87
The nose on this wine is funk, with sweet strawberry, sweet notes, and ripe fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is super sour, with sour grapefruit, sour candied red fruit, and sweet notes galore. The finish is long, sweet, sour, very tart, with funk, floral notes, and slate galore, with spice, cloves, and acid galore. Drink Now.

2018 Camuna Rose, Barbera – Score: 88 to 89
The nose on this wine is ripe, sweet, with really ripe strawberry, raspberry, not pomegranate, but close, with cherry lifesaver notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is tart, really tart, with acid galore, super sour, like cherry sour candy, with sweet fruit, nice funk, and spice, with straw, hay, and nice slate galore. The finish is long, green, sour, and ripe with red fruit, and lovely citrus, and stone fruit as well. Nice! Drink Now.

2018 Twin Suns Rose – Score: 89
This wine was a shocker! I was not expecting this from the twin sun label. The nose on this wine is classical in nature, showing lovely raspberry, strawberry, with lemon, funk, straw, and mineral. The mouth on this weighty but lithe rose is fun, with tart fruit, fresh and bright, with more sweetness than I was expecting, showing tart and juicy red fruit, with saline, nice spice, good balance, passion fruit, with good mineral, and slate. Nice! Drink Now.

2018 Herzog Rose, Lineage – Score: 72 (mevushal)
The nose on this wine is super sweet, like overripe mango and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is overripe, balanced, but really sweet, ripe, and not really interesting, this is not rose, this is more a sweet white wine with red notes.

2018 Hajdu Rose – Score: 90
The wine is sweet, well balanced, and while the wine starts off with a short finish, after 30 minutes it opens nicely to show a well-balanced wine, with loads of sweet fruit. The nose on this wine shows lovely strawberry, ripe and juicy fruit, with crazy cotton candy, watermelon, and sweet fruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine shows nice weight from the clear residual sugar, but it is well balanced with nice acidity, mineral, grapefruit, and mango, with guava, and tropical fruits galore. The finish is long, tangy, and juicy, and really refreshing and it makes you reach for me, with saline, mineral, and sweet fruit, that is backed by pomegranate, sweet and tangy quince jelly, and sweet pineapple. Nice! Drink before 2020.

2018 Shirah Rose – Score: 89 to 90
This is a nice wine, it is sweet/ripe, with little RS, but loads of tart and ripe fruit, including notes of strawberry, juicy passion fruit, hints of citrus, and watermelon. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe, with sweet notes of candied cherry lifesaver, sweet grapefruit, with raspberry, orange, and hints of nectarines, with a weighty mouthfeel, and an almost oily texture. The finish is long, tart, balanced with good acid, sweet with good pith, more fruit, and acidity. Nice. Drink Now.

Well, the roses from the 2019 vintage, so far, are not inspiring, and initially, I thought the same for the white wines, thankfully, as I tasted through the last 15 bottles of wines things shifted. There is a reason why I have been pushing Price in relation to its quality, AKA QPR (Quality to Price Relationship).

For this tasting, I tasted more than 70 wines, however, I posted only some 49 wine notes here. Rest assured, the others were either not worthy or I did not have detailed enough notes to make it here on this post.

Interestingly, initially, I had zero hope for the white wines, much as I felt about the roses. However, all of this is data-driven and other than my wines notes, the rest is all prices defined by the USA market. The more, I tasted, the more I felt that there are options in the simple white wine category. I was really ready to give up hope, but thankfully, folks like Shirah, Kos Yeshuos, and other Europen wines really pulled their weight. Sadly, of the top 27 wines, there were a total of 11 from 2019. Of them, only two were from Israel. The rest hailed from California, France, and New Zealand. In the end, so far, the vast majority of the Israeli white wines I have tasted from 2019 are also highly uninspiring.

With that said, the median price for the wine category of non-aging white wines is going up! There lies in my over-arching issue, prices keep going up!! The median price for non-aging white wines, here in the USA, is now 24 dollars! Seriously!! COME ON!! This is crazy! As the kids say, total Cray Cray! Turned around, the total number of wines below the median price of 24 dollars that received a 90 or higher was 12, and many of those are our QPR WINNERS. Overall, 2019 is still a dud in Israel, of those that have made their way to the USA, and Califonia is saving the day, so far.

All the wines here are scored both quantitatively, AKA using my classic wine score described here, and using the newly revised QPR score described here. So, yes, there will be more of the QPR discussion that will arise from this post. Thankfully, we have a good number of wines, 7 from my count, that received the QPR score of WINNER, sadly, they are mostly from 2018. Therefore, I repeat again, I am highly unimpressed with how many 2019 white wines I had and how many are subpar. Please be careful with the ones you buy.

Finally, in order of price, the first of the 7 QPR WINNER wines come in at wine #38, sorted by price! That means there are loads of other wines far less interesting than the 2018 Ramon Cardova Albarino, the most expensive of the 7 WINNER QPR wines. This is the kind of data that makes me scream. This is what needs to change! Wineries are willing to produce wines that are more expensive and less interesting, than more than HALF of the wine I tasted! This is what needs to change, kosher wine has gotten out of control, price-wise.

Do yourself a favor, check the price, you do it for everything else you buy! Check the wine, check the price, and then decide!

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 Ramon Cardova Albarino, Rias Baixas – Score: 92 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is just 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 2018 vintage of this Albarino, in its second vintage, shows less tropical and ripe than the first vintage, 2017. This bottle also had the thermal active label, and it shows up when the bottle is at the proper drinking temperature. My only REAL and serious complaint is the cork, why would Royal waste the money and my money of a real cork? Use a Diam or any other amalgamated cork, like almost everyone else is. I really hope I do not hit a bad cork for the wines I have.
The nose on this wine is better than the 2017 vintage, Lovely nose of rich mineral, with loads of straw, with which salinity, and lovely peach and dry pear, with honeysuckle, gooseberry, along with green notes galore. Lovely! The mouth on this lovely green and acid-driven wine has a more oily mouthfeel than the 2017 vintage, showing rich salinity, green olives, with lovely dry quince, green apples, more peach, green apple, but also with lovely lime and grapefruit, no sense of guava or melon-like on the 2017 vintage, with a tinge of orange notes. The overall mouth is lovely and it comes at you in layers. The finish is long, green, with gooseberry, tart fruit, with an incredible freshness, and orange pith, slate, rock, and incredible acidity lingering long. Incredible!! Bravo!! Drink until 2022.

2018 Hagafen Dry Riesling – Score: 91 (Mevushal) (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is below the Median price line, so this wine gets a GREAT score 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 nose on this wine is tropical and sweet fruit-focused, with pineapple, guava, melon, peach, but now THANKFULLY the petrol is in full gear, and it commands your attention, with the tropical fruit still very present, along with some nice mineral. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is fun, tart, nice acidity, with more petrol funk, showing nice balance, with good acidity, still, the mouth is sweet and ripe, the petrol and tart notes help, with green apple, tart grapefruit, tart stone fruit, and slate galore, with waxy notes, and tart pineapple. The finish is long, green, with intense mineral, slate, flint, and lovely petrol that gives way to nice acidity, and hints of tannin. The wine has indeed come around and now petrol is more present and the hole in the middle is gone. Drink until 2024.

2019 Herzog Sauvignon Blanc, Lineage – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is below the Median price line, so this wine gets a GREAT score 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!!!
They finally put it all together with the 2019 vintage and for the price, it is really fun! The nose on this wine is really lovely with aromas of gooseberry, cat piss, and passion fruit, with straw and mineral, and citrus galore, NICE! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is rich and nice with really crazy acidity, lovely honeysuckle, orange blossom, grapefruit, and flint galore. Lovely. The finish is long, green, and lovely with lemongrass, flint, hints of pineapple, lovely! Drink now!

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.

2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 91 (Mevushal) (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!!!
Love the screw tops, we need to embrace screw tops for one-year wines. The nose is classic, with gooseberry, passion fruit, cat pee, and straw with mineral. The mouth on this wine holistic, while the group was nice but lacked this complexity and overall acid structure. The mouth on this wine is crazy fun, really bright, with rich gooseberry, citrus, grapefruit galore, with incredible bright fruit structure, that blends well with the fruit powerful not out of place, with layers of acid, tart ripe tropical fruit, with impressive lemonade and pink grapefruit candy that gives way to tart lemon, fun. The finish is long, green, and crazy tart, with slate, flint, and really fun. Bravo! Drink this year.

2018 Kos Yeshuos California Kid – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is just 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!!!
Ok, so this is the fifth time I have had this wine and it really ready to go. Also, the sweeter side of the wine has moved to a drier side, the orange and nectarines are gone, with more passion fruit, and citrus galore lingering.
This wine is a blend of Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc. The nose on this wine starts to show like a 100% Sauvignon Blanc, showing crazy gooseberry, fresh-cut grass, cat pee, with herbal notes, and nice peach in the background, lemongrass, and really fun and bright citrus notes, with loads of green notes, with peaches and creme in the background! The mouth on this medium plus bodied wine is rich and acidic, with a lovely acid core, followed by more peach, grapefruit, and more lovely gooseberry, with salinity that is off the charts, now the orange and nectarines are gone, and now what we have is more lemongrass, more saline, and hints of melon. The finish is long, green, tiny hint of orange, and tart. Bravo!!! Drink by 2021.

2018 Pacifica Riesling – Score: 91 (QPR: WINNER)
This wine is in the 2nd quintile of quality scoring and it is just 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!!!
This wine has changed a lot since the last time I had it. Second solid showing with lovely notes of sweet fruit, with great bright notes, of sweet guava, sweet peach, apricot, and loads of mango, nice, all well balanced with bright notes, and orange blossom, and hints of petrol. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is well layered, plush and oily, with loads of petrol, lovely sweet notes, lemon/lime sorbet, and great mineral, funk, and good rock. The finish on this lovely wine is super long, with slate, rock, petrol, and sweet fruit that is perfectly balanced, Bravo! The plush and refreshing wine is a true joy! Drink by 2024.

2018 Yaacov Oryah Silent Hunter – Score: 92 to 93 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is LOVELY it is two quintiles higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it should have received a score of POOR for QPR, however, it is in the second quintile for quality as well. Therefore, it is dead even. This is based upon the USA pricing, not the Israel pricing.
The play here is that the Semillon “Hunter is a play on words within the play on words, as Hunter Valley, Australia is home to some of the best Semillon in the world) is silent now behind the Chenin Blanc. The wine is a blend of 60% Semillon and 40% Chenin Blanc. The nose on this wine is lovely, and very unique, with elegant funk, rich mineral, showing great smoke, flint, and slate galore. The mouth on this is lovely with more of the mineral, incredible slate, intense saline, lime, lemon Fraiche, fruit focus, backed well with piercing acidity, screaming rock, and lovely layers upon layers of mineral, grapefruit, citrus, pear, and gooseberry, with passion fruit hiding out. The finish is long, with more slate, mineral, acidic, and crazy tart citrus lingering forever! Bravo!! Drink until 2024.

2019 Kos Yeshuos Pinot Gris – Score: 92 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a VERY nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
This wine is oaked but not heavy oak, no toast, just barrel heads. This wine underwent a multi-day maceration that gives the wine its unique color, though far from a rose, and not an Orange wine, IMHO. This wine is closed to start, but with time shows a unique nose that is closer to a Roussanne than a simple Pinot Gris. The nose on this wine is tight, with time, it opens to show nuts, walnuts, almonds, marzipan, with some lovely apple, pear, yellow plum, crazy hay/straw, and spices, followed by citrus, ginger, and herbs. The mouth on this medium-plus bodied wine is layered and has a nice mouthfeel, with clear oak leanings, showing stone fruit, orange, nectarine, citrus, lemon, with waxy notes, wrapped in sweet oak, with a tannin that emerges from under the sweet but well-balanced summer fruit, and sweet baking spices. The finish is long, green, oaky, with a wonderful mouthfeel, well-textured, fruit-focused, with a nice creme and oak backbone, pear and apple core, mineral of saline and rock, with lovely spices, and lovely honeyed notes, with lovely roasted and dried walnuts and almonds on the long sweet mineral nutty finish. Bravo! Enjoy until 2022.

2019 Kos Yeshuos Viognier – Score: 91 to 92 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
This wine is oaked but not heavy oak, no toast, just barrel heads. This is a higher ABV and this vintage shows more tropical than last year. The nose on this wine is classically Viognier with peach, mango, guava, with less of crazy peach and honeyed perfume, still, this has a nice oak and honey perfume, with apricot, and creme notes. The mouth on this medium-plus bodied wine is ripe, well-balanced, with clear marzipan, almond, coming from the fruit, no oxidation, with lovely acidity, nice pith, oak tannin, showing nice grapefruit, mango, tropical notes, lovely sweet cedar, earth, green notes, and candied pear, all wrapped with a lovely mouthfeel, salinity, with cedar, acid, and almond pith on the long finish. Drink by 2022.

2018 Jean-Pierre Bailly Pouilly-Fume, Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 91 to 92 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is two quintiles higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it should have received a score of POOR for QPR, however, it is in the second quintile for quality as well. Therefore, it is dead even.
The nose and mouth on this wine are more tropical and is a slight step behind the 2017 vintage, which we tasted side-by-side. The nose on this wine shows nicely, but the tropical fruit peeks out with hints of mango, melon while showing nicely with mineral, and chalk, with green apple, and loads of floral notes. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is lovely, layered, rich, and complex, with crazy grapefruit, lovely mineral, slate, and green apple, with Asian pear, but also with a bit too much tropical notes of melon, and hints of pineapple. The finish is long, and green with lemongrass, nice saline, and mineral, but not as much as the 2017 vintage, with stone fruit, more tropical notes, and citrus galore. Bravo!!! Drink until 2022.

2018 Yaacov Oryah Soulmate – Score: 91 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice it is two quintiles higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it should have received a score of POOR for QPR, however, it is in the second quintile for quality as well. Therefore, it is dead even. This is based upon the USA pricing, not the Israel pricing.
This wine is a blend of 55% Chardonnay and 45% Chenin Blanc. The name comes from a play on how the two components truly come together to create a wine that is greater than its parts. The nose on this wine is lovely, showing more chard than Chenin, with green apple, yellow apple, and quince from the Chenin, with lovely yellow blossom, and hints of orange. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is fun, showing good acidity now, mineral galore, with lemon/grapefruit notes, followed by lovely fruit focus and fruit structure that is quite precise and professional. The finish is long, green, and mineral-laden, with slate, saline, with green notes of gooseberry, and lime focus. Bravo!! Drink by 2021.

2019 Shirah Gruner Veltliner – Score: 91 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
Wow, thank goodness for great wines. Bravo to the brothers, this is a return to the Veltliner of old, a wine that embodies weight but also seriously clean lines and funk. Yay! The difference between steel and terra cotta can be felt, lovely, while the 1/6 Hungarian oak is felt as well! To me, the 2/3 terra cotta fermentation added a bit of the fat to the wine while the 1/6 oak, really beefed the wine up, the steel is that steely acid, super clean lines, that give the wine the backbone it craves.
The nose on this wine is tearing at me from two different directions, it is not a pure steel driven attack of citrus and not much else, no, this is a complex blend of two different approaches, with lovely fat notes of melon, guava, and peach, and lovely citrus, with orange blossom, ginger, green notes, and hay, really a joy! The mouth on this weighty medium-bodied wine is lovely, layered, expressive, complex, and still very refreshing, this is not an oak bomb, like a Viognier or what, with a lovely backbone of steely acidity from lemon/lime citrus, with a great fruit focus of grapefruit, more peach, nectarine, and loads of smoke, really nice. I like the interplay of the fruit, acidity, and flint, that plays and changes with time in the glass and as the wine changes temperatures. Look for white pepper, ginger, cloves, and allspice, with cinnamon as well, with flint, rock, and hay. Impressed. Drink by 2022. Bravo guys!!!

2018 Tzora Shoresh, White – Score: 91 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is two quintiles higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it should have received a score of POOR for QPR, however, it is in the second quintile for quality as well. Therefore, it is dead even.
This wine is a blend of 90% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Chardonnay. The nose on this wine has no cat pee, with lovely gooseberry, grapefruit, citrus, apple, and pear. The mouth on this wine medium-bodied is beautiful, elegant, plush, with the nose fruit, followed by screaming acid, mineral, slate, straw, with loam, showing lemongrass, and lemon Fraiche, with nice spice and slate. The finish is long and green, with passion fruit and tart fruit lingering long with mineral and green notes, with gooseberry and grapefruit lingering long. Drink until 2023.

2019 Covenant Sauvignon Blanc, Red C – Score: 91 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
The nose on this wine hits you at first with layers upon layers of cat pee, over time that calms and gives way to aromas that are riper than the Yarden Sauvignon Blanc, it has sweeter fruit, tropical in nature with nectarines, guava, mango, and hints of passion fruit that this wine blew past on its way to tropical land, along with orange and hints of blossoms in the far background. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has a lovely weight, a great fruit focus, and presence about itself that is really serious in nature, showing an on the point approach, with grapefruit, orange, lemon all in a stronger backbone than the Yarden Sauvignon Blanc, backed by the mango, honeydew fruit weight, wrapped in a pith and slate body, nice. The finish is long, slate and orange linger long with hints of lemongrass, more melon, and citrus galore. Nice! Drink now.

2019 Kos Yeshuos Falanghina – Score: 91 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
This may well be the first kosher Falanghina every made in the USA, there were some made in Europe in the past. The nose on this wine is unique and very much akin to a Roussanne and Chenin Blanc, showing green notes, pine, menthol, with waxy notes, showing loads of citrus, with hay, Orange blossom, and ginger. The wine is a very cool acid bomb, none added, all of this is clearly natural, with a clear leaning to lemon/lime, orange notes, with lemongrass, clementines, with great mineral, with the acid overpowering, with chalk and flint, followed by straw. The finish is long, green, crazy tart, with fun notes of almond, honeyed notes of lemon, and more mineral, with citrus acidity still dominating. Drink by 2022

2018 Joseph Mellot Sancerre, La Graveliere – Score: 91 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is two quintiles higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it should have received a score of POOR for QPR, however, it is in the second quintile for quality as well. Therefore, it is dead even. This wine is crazy expensive here in the USA, in France it is far more reasonably priced.
The nose on this wine is pure heaven, honeysuckle, gooseberry, with crazy loads of orange blossom, passion fruit, and rich saline, lovely! The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has lovely weight, showing crazy pith, screaming grapefruit, with citrus and layers of rich slate, spice, nutmeg, and lovely lemon curd, and herbs. The finish is long, green, and mineral-driven, with loads of pith and orange blossoms lingering long Lovely! Drink by 2022.

2017 Les Marronniers Chablis – Score: 91 (Mevushal) (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
The nose is lovely, this is the second vintage and really lovely. The nose is not marred with Oak or yeast, all-natural. The nose is tart and lovely, not round, bright and rich, with peach, apricot, and lovely tart and dry quince. The mouth is not round and filled with good tension and fruit focus with great mineral focus and rich salinity that gives way to great acid and layers of lovely green and yellow apples that are layered in lemongrass and foliage and mineral. The finish is long and tart filled with crazy acid, hints of smoke and flint, and loads of mineral and rock. Bravo! Drink until 2023.

2018 Vitkin Gewurztraminer, Collector’s Edition – Score: 91 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores in the 2nd quality score quintile, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
This nose on this wine is dry and lovely with pineapple, ripe melon, and green notes and lychee galore, with funk and hints of soap, incredible aromas, white pepper, smoke, flint, and redolence. The mouth on this wine is lovely, with grapefruit, citrus, lovely pith, with apple, pith galore, followed by complexity and bitter notes of melon, yellow Apple, lovely weight, slight tannin, with sweet notes honeysuckle, sweet pineapple, and balance. The finish is long and green and sweet and mineral balanced. Bravo! Drink by 2021.

2019 Shirah Vin Blanc de Bro.Deux – Score: 90 (QPR: EVEN)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is sadly expensive, higher than the median, however, it scores a quality score higher than the median for white wines, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
This wine is a blend of 50% Sauvignon Blanc Clone 1, 25% Sauvignon Blanc Musque, and 25% Semillon. The nose on this wine shows almost no notes from Semillon and totally is controlled by classic New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc notes, crazy cat pee, lovely gooseberry, rich and bright notes of passion fruit, with some hay and straw in the background, green notes, and a bush for the cat to pee on. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has a lovely mouthfeel, and while it lacks that upfront and in-your-face acidity that I crave, this wine does not lack from acid, it is just a discussion of acid profile. The acidity is there with loads of gooseberry, tart grapefruit, along with crazy tart Meyer lemon, nectarines, and peach/green apple. The finish is long, green, yet sweet and ripe, with lovely cut grass, lemongrass, and ripe fruit with good acidity lingering long. Bravo!! Drink now.

2019 Goose Bay Pinot Grigio – Score: 90+ (QPR: EVEN)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring it is above the median price for white wines, but the quality score is in the 1st quintile, so the math says the QPR score is EVEN.
The nose on this wine is consistent with what I want from a Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio, AKA the same thing. This wine clocks in at a 13.5% ABV and it shows, with slightly flabby notes of sweetness that comes across as unbalanced, but it is still well hidden behind the facade of tart citrus, lime, orange blossom, honeysuckle, orange, and hay. This wine is fun, refreshing, enjoyable, and while it is fun, it is not very complex, the complexity it does have comes from the salinity and lovely almond pith it has, showing a nice front of acidity, with green apple, nectarines, orange, along with a good weight and an almost oily texture. The finish is long, sweet, with more orange, honeyed notes of honeysuckle, and sweet orange, but well balanced with saline, with sweet and yet tart notes lingering long. Nice! Drink up!

2018 Tzora Judean Hills, White – Score: 90 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it receives a score of EVEN for QPR.
This wine is a blend of 75% Chardonnay and 25% Sauvignon Blanc. The nose on this wine is vanilla driven, with toast, apple and pear, and nice fresh fruit flavors. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is lovely, slightly round, but with be piercing acidity, with a great backbone of mineral, followed lovely fruit structure, with great Asian pear, lovely slate, grapefruit, and rich salinity and precision. Bravo!! Drink until 2021.

2019 Covenant Viognier, Blue C – Score: 90 (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it receives a score of EVEN for QPR.
The nose on this wine is ok, it is sweet with ripe peach cobbler, sweet compote of rose, orange, peach, and apricot, followed by orange blossom and more peach, did I say peach?? The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is less focused than the Sauvignon Blancs from Covenant or Yarden, with good acidity but not much else, though the acidity is incredible, with the neutral oak impacting clearly with both weight and flavor of sweet oak, orange notes, and nectarines behind the wall of peach and apricot, and yeah lots more acid. The finish is long, with oaky notes, orange, orange blossom, and mineral. Drink now!

2019 Yarden Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 90 (QPR: GREAT)
This wine is above the median quality score and it is below the median price line, so this wine gets a score of GREAT for QPR.
This is one of the few 2019 Israeli Sauvignon Blanc that I want to drink, but not enough to make me buy more! The nose on this wine is clean, it is not overly fruity, it has a backbone of citrus, orange blossom, and rose water, followed by lemongrass, and hints of sweet kiwi. The mouth on this nice weighted medium-bodied wine has a great presence, with fruit focus, showing rich saline, mineral, followed by a great backbone of orange/grapefruit/lemon acidity and pith, wrapped in olives and passion fruit, really nice. The finish is long, green, acidic, with more citrus, slate, pith, and lemon core. Nice! Drink now!

2019 Shirah Riesling – Score: 90 (I am sure that score will improve) (QPR: EVEN)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and as such even with a quality score higher than the median it receives a score of EVEN for QPR.
This wine is far too young, truly a shame I opened it, I am sorry to the bottle. Riesling needs time to come into its own when it is done correctly. I can say, this is done correctly, get some, and let it come to you, aromas, and taste-wise.
The nose at this point is all wax, bee’s wax, honeysuckle, honey, with lovely jasmine, citrus galore, with hints of pineapple. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine starts to show some tertiary notes of petrol, it will come, with extremely obvious wax, the wax coats the mouth, with layers of screaming acid from lemon, grapefruit, but all coated with the wax, bitter notes of almond and orange rind, with a lovely refreshingness, with loads of ginger, nectarines, and orange notes, really nice! The finish is long, bitter, waxy, and green, with sweet notes, orange blossom, and more pineapple, and sweet notes. Lovely! Drink until 2024. Right now this wine needs six months to come around, let it lie!!

2019 Domaine De Panquelaine Coteaux Du Giennois Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 90 (Mevushal) (QPR: GREAT)
This wine is above the Median line for quality and it is below the median price, so this lands a GREAT QPR score.
The nose on this wine takes a bit of time to open, but once it does it has lovely notes of minerality, nice pith, flinty notes, with yellow plum, floral notes, lemongrass, and citrus. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is nice, really refreshing, elegant in its simplicity, and that is its only con, yes it is nice, even cool with lovely refreshing notes of flint, solid to really good acidity, lemongrass, grapefruit, hints of peach, yellow plum, with lovely deep-rooted grapefruit/lemon, but it does not have the complexity to take it above the score, and it has a bit of a hollow in the middle. The finish is lovely, again refreshing, a bit fatty/round, with more of that yellow to pink grapefruit, with great flint/rock, smoke, and nice acidity that lingers long, with orange blossom. Nice! Drink now.

2018 Koenig Riesling, Alsace – Score: 90  (Mevushal) (QPR: GREAT)
This wine is above the median quality score and it is below the median price line, so this wine gets a score of GREAT for QPR. This is a MUCH better option than the horrible roses we have in 2020.
The wine has opened now, showing nice notes of orange blossom and honeysuckle, with hints of petrol, flint, peach, with mineral, and gooseberry. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is really nice, it shows a heavier mouthful than 2017, along with more floral notes, with a great balance of acid, truly a nice and refreshing wine, even if it lacks complexity, with nice lime, Meyer lemon, and spice. Drink by 2022.

2017 Carmel Kayoumi Riesling – Score: 90 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice enough wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is right on the median price line, but the quality score is above the median line for white wines, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
The nose on this wine is nice, but nowhere near the greatness of the 2014 vintage. At the opening, this wine is a step behind the 2016 vintage of Carmel, but with time it shows better, but still never eclipses the 2014 Carmel Riseling.
The nose shows a little bit of Petrol, not as much as previous vintages, with more green apple, with more tropical notes than previous vintages, showing almost pineapple, and gooseberry. Like stated above the mouth and the wine is slow to open, I think this wine needs more time. The mouth is nice, well balanced, but showing more tropical notes, with guava, light melon notes, with more petrol, great acidity, and nice mineral, with green apple, peach, and notes of smoke and flint. The finish is long, green, tropical, and sweet, with nice acidity lingering long. Drink from 2020 until 2023.

2019 Shirah Vintage Whites – Score: 89 to 90 (QPR: EVEN)
This is a nice wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is still sadly expensive at 25 dollars as it clocks in higher than the median price for this wine category, also, it scores above the median, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
Of the four white wines in 2019, at least so far, that have been released by Shirah, this is the weakest of them all. The wine is a blend of 80% Grenache Blanc and 20% Viognier – not a conventional blend.
The nose on this wine pulls at me again, but with the Gruner that was a compliment, here not so much. The nose is cool with the classic Grenache notes, but it gets muddled quickly with the absurd viognier notes of peach and intense vanilla, in the end, all I get in Vanilla flavored peach ice cream on a bed of green notes and apples, but disjointed. The mouth is not an improvement, yes, the fruit is controlled on this medium-bodied wine, with more peach, apricot, and hints of Grenache Blanc fruit, with pear and yellow plums, but it is hard to find under all that peach and apricot. While there is acidity, it is more about the almond and orange pith, orange fruit, and more pith that defines the finish. Drink now.

2019 Flam Blanc – Score: 89 (QPR: POOR)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and its score is right on the median quality line, which means this has a POOR score for QPR. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change. Wineries cannot charge such high prices for a wine that is 3x the price of better wines than it, like the 2018 Chateau Riganes or 1.6x the price of the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc.
This wine is a blend of 84% Sauvignon Blanc and 16% Chardonnay. The nose on this wine is very redolent with notes of eucalyptus, mint, along with incredible lemon/lime, along with pineapple, and hints of lychee. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is where the wine loses a step, the mouth feels weighty, with a good start, but then it falls apart, with no real complexity and while the mouth shows fruit notes of orange, lychee, lemon/lime, and orange blossom, it lacks the attention-grabbing component it needs, it does show saline, acidity, and loads of almond/orange pith, it feels uni-dimensional. Drink now!

2018 Yatir Creek, White – Score: 89 (QPR: BAD)
While this wine is nice enough it is in the 2nd quintile in pricing – almost at the tip-top,  and its quality score is right on the median line, so it garners a QPR score of BAD. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change. It cannot charge such high prices for a wine that is 3x the price of better wines than it, like the 2018 Chateau Riganes or 1.6x the price of the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc.
The nose and mouth are aligned and while they are simple enough, there is good acidity and some nice fruit focus. Overall, tart, showing saline, fruit, and well balanced. Drink now.

2017 Pascal Bouchard Chablis, le Classique – Score: 89 (QPR: POOR)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and its score is right on the median quality line, which means this has a POOR score for QPR. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change. Wineries cannot charge such high prices for a wine that is 3x the price of better wines than it, like the 2018 Chateau Riganes or 1.6x the price of the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc.
While this wine is less elegant than the Premier Cru, obviously, it was still nice enough, with smoke, green notes, green apple, and pear. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is nice enough, but the fruit is less focussed and is not as interesting. Drink soon.

2019 Shiran Semillon – Score: 89 (QPR: POOR)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and its score is right on the median quality line, which means this has a POOR score for QPR. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change. Wineries cannot charge such high prices for a wine that is 3x the price of better wines than it, like the 2018 Chateau Riganes or 1.6x the price of the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc.
I had high hopes for this one, and while it showed some life early on, it fell apart very quickly. I cannot “like” a wine that is good for 3 hours, it does not work for me.
The nose is blossom, mineral, slate, citrus, and lemongrass, with funk, and a good mouthfeel, with lovely acidity, for 3 hours. After that it falls apart, it is still around, but now the nose is just lemon, flint, and some floral notes, and not much else. The mouth follows the nose with a bit of pith and sadly the acidity has fallen off. Either way, it is multidimensional and nice enough, if you are a pith or Semillon believer. Drink up!

2019 Five Stones DvsG, White – Score: 89 (QPR: POOR)
While this wine is nice enough it is higher in price than the median and its score is right on the median quality line, which means this has a POOR score for QPR. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change.
The wine is a blend of 82% Chenin Blanc, and 18% Roussanne. The nose shows nice notes of smoke, earth, funk galore, loads of mineral, with green notes, straw, hay, and yellow plum. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, tastes of smoky notes, green apple, grapefruit, with hints of orange, with great mineral notes, loads of pith, and great fruit focus. Nice! It needs more complexity.

2019 Tabor Roussanne, Adama – Score: 89 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice enough wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is right on the median line for white wines, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
The nose on this Roussanne is more round and less bright than previous vintages, with nectarines, Orange, Orange blossom, and flint. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is nice, nothing special, but well-made, with enough acidity to keep you interested, the fruit profile is lemon, grapefruit, tart gooseberry, and orange/nectarines that make the mouthfeel rounder. The finish is long, tart, and bright, with sweet notes of orange, blossom, and flint lingering long. Drink now.

2018 Route Victor Chardonnay – Score: 89 (QPR: GOOD)
This is a nice enough wine, and with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is right on the median line for white wines, so that makes it a GOOD QPR score.
The nose on this wine is clean, floral, with green apple, and tart fruit notes, unoaked, and really interesting. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, with great acidity, showing clear residual sugar but it is still quite nice, well balanced, with screaming tart green apple, pear, quince, and tart gooseberry, with grapefruit pith, and lemon. Nice enough. Drink now.

2018 Domaine Netofa, White – 88 (QPR: EVEN)
Sadly, this wine has slipped in the last few months and while it is still a nice enough wine, with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is below the median line for white wines, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
At this point, the nose on this wine has moved past the mineral and into pure tropical notes, with apple and quince galore, and lovely fruit and blossom. The mouth on this wine has lost a step, with a clear ripe backbone, and the steely backbone is barely keeping it afloat, nice quince, with what used to be an incredible tension between the ripeness and the tart/dry fruit and minerality. The finish is long and green, with slate, more ripeness than I would desire, and minerality! Drink up!

2019 Tabor Sauvignon Blanc, Adama – Score: 88 (QPR: EVEN)
While this is still a nice enough wine, with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is also below the median line for white wines, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
The nose on this is pure cat pee, with loads of gooseberry, passion fruit, and lemon curd, pure happiness. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is nice enough but it lacks the acid needed to bring this all together, thankfully it is not flat or flabby, rather it is still tight, but the mid-palate is lacking, also it lacks almost all complexity has very little to grab your attention, other than its clean lines of fruit that mimics the nose. The finish is long, with pith, green notes, lemongrass, and nice pith. A solid wine with little to offer other than its cleanliness. Drink now!

2019 Twin Suns Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 88 (Mevushal) (QPR: EVEN)
While this is still a nice enough wine, with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is also below the median line for white wines, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
The nose on this wine is nice, it is not round, it is well made with peach, apricot, and citrus notes. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, with a good fruit-focus, showing enough acidity, with tart grapefruit, peach, some tropical notes, but well-balanced with straw, grass, and gooseberry. The finish is long, green, with tropical notes, citrus, lemon, and lime, with slate/chalk, and foliage/herbs. Nice! Drink now.

2019 Barkan Sauvignon Blanc, Classic – Score: 88 (Mevushal) (QPR: GOOD)
This is a wine that is better than the median in regards to price, it is at the 2nd quintile below the price median, but it is below the median for quality, so that gives it a GOOD score for QPR. It is a wine that I would not run after but a perfectly good wine for the price.
This wine starts off smelling and tasting cooked. The nose shows stewed notes of lemon compote and lemongrass. The mouth is even worse, with stewed lemon, quince, apple, and kiwi. Sad and painful. After an hour the nasty aromas blow off and it becomes nice enough. Nothing great, but a nice enough wine. The nose shows notes of gooseberry, lemon, citrus, and hints of kiwi, at 11% ABV this is what I was hoping for. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has more presence than Tabor but less focus and cleanliness, either way, both are boring overall. Still, the Barkan shows enough fruit and mouthfeel to make this wine quite acceptable in a pinch, the acidity and fruit makeup show nicely while having a bit of pith on the finish. Drink now!

2017 Avi Feldstein, White – Score: 88 (QPR: BAD)
While this wine is nice enough it is in the 2nd quintile in pricing – almost at the tip-top,  and its quality score is below on the median line, so it garners a QPR score of BAD. This is the perfect example of a wine that needs to change. The pricing on this wine is crazy, wineries cannot charge such high prices for a wine that is 3x the price of better wines than it, like the 2018 Chateau Riganes or 1.6x the price of the 2018 Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc.
This wine is a blend of 85% Sauvignon Blanc and 15% Roussanne. The nose on this wine is flat, boring, with green notes and mineral, and not much else. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice but has little to show, with peach and apricot and hints of grapefruit, with loads of pith, hay, and rock. The finish is long, green, and pith driven, the best part of the wine by far. It came around a bit more with time but for the price, it is a pass.

2018 Chateau de Cor Bugeaud White – Score: 87 (Mevushal) (QPR: EVEN)
While this is still a nice enough wine, with my new QPR scoring, it is below the median price line, but the quality score is also below the median line for white wines, so that makes it an EVEN QPR score.
This is a fun wine, showing tropical fruit, but overall well made and quite fun. The nose on this wine shows ripe fruit, with lovely mango, followed by tart and juicy citrus, with lovely herb, and mineral, with floral notes. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has enough acidity, followed by tart and juicy fruit, with lovely citrus, orange, grapefruit, and gooseberry galore. It is more round than it is clean. The finish is long, green, passion fruit, with slate, and herb. Drink now!

2019 Shiran Viognier – Score: 86 (QPR: BAD)
This wine’s quality score is below the median for white wines and the price is above the median for white wines, so it gets a BAD score for QPR.
If the 2019 Semillon was a bit of a letdown, the Viognier was off from the start. The nose is pure peach juice, and while I love Viognier, it needs more than just peach to make it go. The mouth on this Viognier is much like the nose, apricot, peach, and loads of pith on the finish. Drink now!

2018 Shiran Triad – Score: 86 (QPR: BAD)
This wine’s quality score is below the median for white wines and the price is above the median for white wines, so it gets a BAD score for QPR.
This is a blend of 50% Chardonnay, 25% Semillon, and 25% Viognier. Another multidimensional wine, and while it shows OK, it really needs acid or something else to liven it up. This one is again dominated by the peach, and the apple (Chardonnay), the Semillon is lost behind the wall of peach and apple, and again loads of pith. Drink now.

2019 Dalton Pinot Gris – Score: 86 (QPR: EVEN)
This wine is below the Median line for quality and it is below the median price, so this lands an EVEN QPR score.
Yet another boring wine from the 2019 Israel white vintage. The nose on this wine is boring and shows green apple, lemon, and really not much else, with hints of floral notes of orange blossom. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied wine is really very uni-dimensional, with not much to show other than its very sprite-like attack with loads of acid, along with orange, apple, and melon, and lemon/lime mix. There is nothing there but a crazy attack of acidity. The finish is insanely long, with absurd acidity, that does not feel artificial, with flint, and more lemon/lime/orange. Drink now.

2018 O’dwyers Creek Sauvignon Blanc – Score: 88 to 89 (Mevushal) (QPR: EVEN)
This wine is below the Median line for quality and it is below the median price, so this lands an EVEN QPR score.
The nose on this wine is far more muted, tasting it side-by-side 2017, showing little gooseberry, slate, flint, citrus, and apple, and pear. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, but what it lacks is the layers/complexity of the 17, with much more restraint of tropical fruit than the 17,  with apple, gooseberry, with a slight hint of hollow in the middle, with nice acid all around, with garrigue, grapefruit, and citrus. The finish is medium with green, slate, and fruit. Drink up! This one is not long for this earth.

2018 Herzog Sauvignon Blanc, Lineage – Score: 85 (QPR:EVEN)
This wine is below the Median line for quality and it is below the median price, so this lands an EVEN QPR score.
The nose on this wine is drier than in previous vintages, with green notes, yellow fruit, peach, lemongrass, and foliage. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is nice, dry, with good green notes, foliage, but not enough acidity, green notes, a bit of passion fruit, with green apple, nutty notes, and smoke. The finish is longer than the 17, with nice floral notes, rose petals, nuts, and tart fruit. Drink up.

2016 Jacques Capsouto Cuvee Eva, Blanc – Score: 85 (QPR: EVEN)
This wine is below the Median line for quality and it is below the median price, so this lands an EVEN QPR score.
The wine is a blend of 60% Grenache Blanc, 20% Clairette, 15% Roussanne, and 5% Marsanne. Sadly, this wine went off the cliff and is now in DRINK YESTERDAY mode.

2016 Jacques Capsouto Cuvee Albert, Grand Vin, Blanc – Score: 85 (QPR: BAD)
This wine’s quality score is below the median for white wines and the price is above the median for white wines, so it gets a BAD score for QPR.
This wine is in its decline, it is still nice, but drink NOW! This wine is a blend of 65% Roussanne, 30% Clairette, and 5% Marsanne. Sadly, this wine went off the cliff and is now in DRINK YESTERDAY mode.

2019 Domaine De Panquelaine Sancerre – Score: 85 (Mevushal) (QPR: POOR)
Sadly, this wine is below the Median line for quality and it is more expensive than the median price, so this lands it as a POOR QPR wine.
This wine is not as fun as the Coteaux Du Giennois. This wine is 100% Sauvignon Blanc like all Sancerre, sadly, this lacks the MOST important aspect of Sancerre, teeth-gnashing acidity, this one barely has any.
The nose on this wine is really lacking, it has a bit of what can only be described as oak, but Sancerre has no oak, followed by lemon and maybe a drop of white peach, but really boring with some minerality. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine follows the nose with a bit of acidity, some peach, and grapefruit, with almond pith and that is about it. This is not evil but really not much there. Drink Now.

2018 Teperberg Famitage, Inspire – Score: 83 (QPR: POOR)
Sadly, this wine is below the Median line for quality and it is more expensive than the median price, so this lands it as a POOR QPR wine.
The nose is nice, pineapple juice, with citrus, and mineral. The mouth is medium, hollow in the middle, nice acidity in the front, and boring.

2019 Segal Chardonnay, Wild Fermentation – Score: 83 (QPR: EVEN)
The fact that this wine sells for 23 dollars and is called EVEN QPR, explains how absurdly expensive these white wines are priced at. This wine should be a POOR QPR, but the score is below the median for white wines and the price is also below the median, so it gets an EVEN score for QPR.
This wine is another example of what a cheap and uninspiring white wine can taste like. This wine is simply put, a pineapple, apple, peach juice wine. Nothing there, other than some bitterness and hints of grapefruit. Sad. Move On.