As I have been posting so far, I enjoyed my last trip to Israel and Europe. Last we left off, we had just had a kosher wine tasting at DD house. Instead of posting about the next three wineries we visited, which I will post soon, I wanted to post the other wine tasting, which was also at DD’s house. That man is a gluten for punishment!

There were some winners, a lovely bottle of Carignan from Carmel (another QPR winner), the 2013 Dalton Semillon, Single Vineyard Elkosh – still going nice, but getting close to drink-up. For this tasting, I brought a bottle of the fantastic 2014 Hagafen Riesling, IMHO, every tasting needs a Riesling! Sadly, that was about it. The 2014 Yaacov Oryah Alpha Omega was nice as well. The shockers were once again the pushed nature of the Mia Luce reds. We had all the Mia Luce reds, from 2012, 2014, and 2015 and they did not show well. The last 2012 Mia Luce from the other tasting was corked, so they brought another one, and this was not corked but man was it pushed and overripe at this point. I am not sure – Carignan is not a wine that I am finding can last long in Israel. At least so far from the wines I have tried, either the Recanati Carignan or the Mia Luce Carignan (sourced from the same vineyards).

I did have a horizontal of many Carignan last year, and Mia Luce was the clear winner. They were older bottles and they were lovely, maybe these were bad bottles as well, I do not know. I will be tasting my older ones to double-check soon.

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 Midbar Unoaked Chardonnay: Score: 84 Nice sweet nose of candied melon, peach, dried apple, and straw. The mouth is medium bodied with too much sweetness and not enough balance, with not enough acid, good enough fruit, but no focus, showing more stone fruit, sweet quince, nice grapefruit, with good sweet spices, and herb. The finish is long and spicy with peach, with tart and sweet quince lingering long.

2016 Har Bracha Gewurtztraminer: Score: 75 Wow, this is a sweet and dried fruit disaster, with tons of notes of oxidation and no joy – sorry. Very sweet pass, tropical, and insane melon/guava, dry flower madness, no balance.