As always, my last post in the series deals with the hotel tastings that I do each trip with David Raccah of Kosher Wine Musings. At this stage, while there are still some more big wines to taste (IDS and a couple of Mercier releases primarily), I have already reached conclusions about the ’22 vintage. In a nutshell, and this plays out among the wines represented here – small wines did NOT do well in ’22 – not a disaster like ’21, but really, nothing to write home about. The big wines almost universally did exceptionally well. Certainly the best vintage since ’19. I would even say that in kosher it was better than ’18 and ’20, which were both hot ripe years as well. I think the key here is that France is learning to manage the climate change.  The wineries are more and more prepared for what G-d has planned, and therefore those wineries with staff on hand throughout the growing season who decided to pick early and then continue picking each plot as it reached its optimum maturity, did well. On the small wines, where grapes are simply picked once for the most part – I think you ended up with some anemic wines – likely because some plots ripened VERY early due to the heat. But this is just my conjecture. And honestly, the “why” is of much less import. The bottom line is that the big wines did very well – and quite frankly I am very excited to taste the rest of the ’22’s on my next trip in May. On top of that we got our first real taste of ’23. So far – it’s an “OK” vintage. Nothing as bad as ’21. Maybe in line with ’17 quality wise.

This trip in addition to standard tastings we also received barrel samples of the 2023 Domaine de Montille Burgundies. As they were barrel samples, I will not give notes here, but I will say that the whites showed well, while the reds were likely bottle shocked – so we’ll have to wait for the real releases. The ’23 Marchand Burgundies were the real deal and will be included below. ’23 in Burgundy seems to have real potential. Anyhow, enough chitter chatter, this post is long and a good four months late, so here are the notes: