Sometimes a trip winds up being rather different from the one you thought you were taking.

This one was supposed to be relatively straightforward. There would be a lot of wine, obviously. There would be a quick stop in New Jersey, some family time in Israel, and then France, where a rather ridiculous number of bottles were waiting for me. There were wines I specifically wanted to taste, wines I needed to retaste, new releases, old friends, some surprises, and—as always—more bottles than any sane person should attempt to get through in a few days. Those things did happen; wines were tasted, scored, and documented.

But this trip felt a little different. It didn’t really hit me until much later. Essentially, it didn’t really hit me until I was sitting in the lounge in France on my way home. Something was very different about this trip, and I think, for me, things will be different going forward.

Maybe some of that follows from my recent trip through South America. Maybe I am simply getting older. Who knows. But somewhere along the way, I seem to have become a little better at enjoying the moments surrounding the wine rather than constantly worrying about getting to the next bottle, the next appointment, or the next item on the list. Whether that was a bottle to taste, a Monet/Van Gogh to see, or a moment spent on a walk.

Don’t worry, folks, I write about wine, but you may see a different attitude or a different approach, and I think that will be good for everyone involved. This is predominantly still a wine/food blog. There will be plenty of wine below.

But there were also some wonderful people, a museum I had visited before but somehow experienced differently this time, family, pastries, a kosher IKEA, absurd weather on two continents, and one box of wine that provided a rather fitting ending to the whole thing.

Starting in New Jersey

This trip started in New Jersey with my good friend Avi Davidovitz. Normally, Avi and I would have made our way to France in May, but for a variety of family reasons, that trip never happened this year. That left us with a substantial backlog of wines we wanted to taste. Avi was in NJ to help his parents move, for good, to Israel, and it was a huge drain and strain on him. It also meant that the ONLY REAL chance we had to taste some Royal Wines together was for me to change my already happily booked and set trip to Israel to include a stopover in NJ. So instead of France, at least initially, we met in New Jersey.

I landed that morning, picked up the rental car, met Avi, and we started collecting wines. Some were things we specifically wanted to try; others were simply bottles that had accumulated on the list. As always, some proved worthwhile and some decidedly less so. Those details belong in the tasting notes below.

The real event of the day was our tasting at Royal Wine.

Royal Wine: More Than Just the Bottles

With the help of Gabriel Geller (GG), Avi and I sat down to work through roughly 54 wines, including several bottles we had not expected to taste. GG and Royal were, as always, extraordinarily generous with both their time and the wines they poured, and what could easily have become one of those classic tastings—taste, spit, write, repeat—turned into something far more enjoyable.

At the start of the tasting, we were joined by the warehouse manager, Yitzchok Goldberger, and David Herzog, chairman of the board of Royal Wine Corp. I had expected him perhaps to stop by, say hello, taste a wine or two, and get on with his day. Instead, he stayed for a substantial portion of the tasting. That was a gift.

David has decades of experience in this business, and the opportunity to sit around a table tasting wine while hearing that history firsthand was fascinating. There was plenty to learn from what was in the glasses, but there was at least as much to learn from the people sitting around them. The sheer number of stories was incredible, and while most of them are better left around the tasting table, it was awesome to hear the background and history behind so many wines we simply take for granted today.

That became something of a recurring theme on this trip. I certainly wasn’t paying any less attention to the wine—I have the ridiculous pile of tasting notes to prove otherwise—but I found myself paying considerably more attention to the people.

We tasted, talked, laughed, opened a few things we hadn’t planned on opening, and generally had a terrific time. It was professional when it needed to be, serious about the wines when appropriate, but never so serious that it stopped being fun.

Many thanks to GG, David Herzog, Avi, and everyone at Royal Wine who made it possible. Mordy Herzog, CEO of Royal Wine Corp., also stopped by to say hello, which was very much appreciated.

Disclaimer: Below, you will only find 28 wine notes. That is because the other 26 wines were previously tasted, and I added Avi’s score to the search engine. This means that there were 28 new wines that neither Avi nor I had tasted previously.

Wine, YR, and the Heavens Opening

From Royal, we headed back to the home of Avi’s childhood friend YR in Teaneck, where we had left another collection of wines earlier in the day. YR and his wife were incredibly gracious about letting us invade their home with bottles, glasses, and the usual paraphernalia that follows Avi and me around when we’re supposedly having a relaxing day.

We worked through those nine wines in a much more relaxed setting, and somewhere in the middle of it, the heavens opened. We are talking about crazy RAIN!

PLEASE NOTE: Below, you’ll see only 8 new wines we scored. The reason is that one of those wines was one I had had before, and all I did was add Avi’s score to the existing note. I did this above for many of the wines we tasted at Royal Wines as well.

Within a remarkably short period of time, an enormous amount of water came down over Teaneck. Lightning, thunder, flooded streets—the whole shebang. Some of the underpasses became impassable, which made getting anywhere afterward considerably more entertaining than it should have been.

The strangest part was speaking with my brother afterward, who had been in Lakewood, maybe a 1-hour drive away, maybe less, and had experienced none of it, essentially. Apparently, the storm had simply selected our particular patch of New Jersey to abuse. Totally insane, but another moment to enjoy and realize it was far more about the journey than the next stop.

Eventually, the rain subsided; we managed to escape, grabbed a thoroughly forgettable dinner that doesn’t deserve either praise or abuse here, said our goodbyes, and called it a night. Many thanks to YR and his wife for their hospitality—and for providing shelter while Teaneck fought to stay afloat!