The next four posts will deal with my yearly trip to France with my friend David Raccah of the Kosher Wine Musings blog. I have to say – this was a VERY hard trip to make. Until the day before I left, I was considering canceling due to the situation in Israel and feeling that it was not the right time to leave. That, coupled with the frightening news out of France of rising antisemitism left me with little desire to go. And to be honest, I was feeling fatigued. The news has so bleak and there was so much stress at the time, that I decided the night before, to not cancel my flight and meet David as planned. Luckily, he had not downgraded the room, and everything proceeded mostly as planned.  My flight ended up being delayed by a few hours, and so the plans we had for the first day were trimmed a bit. This trip, unlike all of the trips prior, we decided that it was time for me to see France. Up until now, I had never seen the Louvre or the Arche de triumph or even the Eiffel Tower. All of that got corrected that first day when we packed in as much as we could in the time we had.

But this is not a tourism blog – it is a wine blog. So, let’s get to it. This trip basically consisted of four parts (outside of the touring above): Royal, IDS, Domaine Roses Camile (and all related wines) and the wines we tasted in the hotel. At this stage, I can basically close my thoughts on the 2021 vintage. It was just a big mess in Bordeaux. As noted last year, the small wines were pretty much uniformly disappointing with crazy green jalapeno notes in wines that were more often than not simply unpleasant to drink. Well, while the big wines faired far better, overall, it was still nothing to write home about. 2021 is just a big miss overall. Now, the real question is about 2022. Over the course of the last year, people have been talking about the 2022 vintages as being one of the absolute best. Reading the advance tasting notes of the big Bordeaux producers by the various well-known writers, it seemed that 2022 was universally lauded. So far, only the small wines for 2022 have been released. While Royal makes a few, most of what we tasted was in the hotel and will be covered by my wrap-up post. But – here’s a spoiler – for the small wines, while 2022 was MUCH better than 2021, it was no runaway success. We struggled to find wines that we could classify as winners. But that is for later.

Let’s get started with what is always a highpoint of my trip – our visit with Menachem Israelievitch of Royal wines. It is always a high point because Menachem isn’t only a professional, he is also a HUGE mensch. While presiding over the largest and most professional kosher production in Europe, he is also a warm wonderful down-to-earth guy, who it is a pleasure talking to and spending time with. Simply a pleasure. This year we tasted a staggering number of wines, 37 in all – I think that is a record. Here are the notes: