Right before Pesach, I had the opportunity to partake in a release event for the 2021 Domaine de Montille kosher burgundies. The event was a dinner held at The David Kempinski Hotel in Tel Aviv and was organized by their Israeli importer Shmuel Gottlieb of Geshem Spirits. Just a couple of words about Shmulik and Geshem. Shmuel has put together a boutique distributorship – picking up a number of interesting productions over the years – like the La Tour Blanche, which really didn’t have a home in Israel. He also until recently was distributing all of the M & M Italian wines as well as Cantina Giuliano. I know that the M & M stuff has stopped – not sure what the future is on the Cantina Giuliano – but he has also recently picked up the rights to distribute a good part of the IDS portfolio in Israel (which is really nice as the distribution of the IDS wines in Israel for the last few years has been “iffy”  at best). So he keeps things interesting and at the highest quality – and quite frankly he is a great guy, a mensch, who is super service oriented. Kudos to him for putting this all together. The Chef at the David Kempinski is Mor Cohen, who used to be the Chef at Herbert Samuel in Hertzlia – so my expectations were high, and I was not disappointed. In fact, this was the most professionally run wine tasting I have been to in Israel. The staff and service were both excellent. The room was pristine. The food was understated, yet well prepared, with a menu designed to really let the wines be the star. This was not a pairing dinner with aged wines meant to highlight the food as much as the wines. This was a release event with food meant to accompany the wines in an unobtrusive yet elegant way. Trust me, if you have read my posts about Chef Cohen’s previous wine events at Herbert Samuel in support of Vitkin or Covenant, he is certainly more than capable of executing that kind of menu – but that wasn’t the point here. In any event, I have included some pictures of the food and menu so you can get a feel for what went on. Also, while we were gathering, Shmulik had the Bonnet Ponson champagne poured, which I had not had in a while, so that was an extra added treat.

An interesting fact I learned that evening – Honest Grapes did NOT commission the kosher de Montille wines. The kosher runs were actually initiated by the winery itself. Honest Grapes in the UK is an importer that both deals with a ton of burgundy (non-kosher) AND has a kosher line that they are involved in getting produced – and as such de Montille turned to them for help in creating a match between the winery and a kosher production team. Honest Grapes also then bought the entirety of the initial kosher production (2020) and likely contracted for a significant number of subsequent productions, but they are not the negociant here. I don’t know all of the specifics (nor do I care). And none of this is a negative comment on Honest Grapes, who are really wonderful folks doing a great and professional job. But it is nice to see that the winery itself was interested in producing these wines and are intimately involved in making sure that they live up to the standards of the winery. Now on to the wines.

The de Montille 2020 wines are a tough act to follow. That was, simply put, an OUTSTANDING vintage. 2021 was perhaps not as good as far as vintages were concerned overall – and – to make things more complicated, the Chagim fell out in a way that made it challenging to say the least to produce kosher wines in Burgundy. But I knew all of that going in and so my expectations were not through the roof, and overall I was rather pleased. Also, as it happened, I was able to taste two out of the three whites and the lower end red blind prior to this tasting. The red was exactly as my previous tasting. On the whites, the Bourgogne showed a touch better and the Monthelie a touch worse – but we are talking within a half point on both. I used the higher score in both cases here as I believe that reflects the potential.  Here are my notes: