Well here it is, my first sole post on this new platform. Just wanted to thank everyone for the support so far. It has been challenging getting this thing off the ground during the current war and even more challenging finding the time to write. As with the other posts from this trip, even though it was a joint trip, the post is written solely in my voice and the notes are mine , though David’s scores are included here as well (current scores of his are provided for the wines we tasted together and scores from previous posts of his for the two 2019 vintage wines).

Usually when I post about the trips David and I take to France, I make sure to include all visits with distinct posts as part of the series and always end with the Hotel post as a wrap up. As we were trying to port everything over to the new site, and David REALLY wanted to do his end of year posts which were late and of course predicated on the Royal and Hotel posts, I decided to hold the other posts till later as for the most part they are about winery visits that we did in Bordeaux and 3 out of 4 of those visits did not include tastings. But, there was one visit which DID include tastings and so I wanted to at least that one out prior to Pesach. This post is about our visit to Domaine Roses Camille in Pomerol. I am going to keep this focused ONLY on that visit and leave the rest to a separate post (or 3, haven’t decided yet). But those will come later as I also have to get my pre-pesach seder post out as well.

We were on a VERY tight schedule when we visited Bordeaux – we had firm appointments at each of the wineries we visited and a train schedule to contend with. As such we ended up having only about an hour for our in Pomerol. Both David and I have written about the wines of Christophe Bardeau many times. We try to taste with him in Paris whenever we are there and he has something new to release. But this was my first time actually visiting the property and tasting with Christophe there. Of course most wineries one visits are either large commercial enterprises or boutique wineries – but all use professional modern equipment to some extent. It is rare that one gets to visit a garagiste winery that is successful – as they tend to ramp up production and get more professional as soon as they achieve any level of success. There are only 2 real examples in the kosher world of proper estate wineries (I am not talking about producers who buy grapes and then produce their wines where they can – even though they too might fall in to the garagiste category) that even though they are wildly successful, have stayed garagiste to the core. The first is Four Gates which I got to visit last summer for the first time (I am just remembering that I never posted about that visit! Will have to fix that…) and now Domaine Roses Camille . Both of these wineries basically are function in tiny spaces. One or two tiny rooms for production and bottling and maybe another for storage and shipping. That’s it.