Greetings! It’s my favorite time of year. The days get shorter, the nights are longer, and every evening seems like the perfect occasion to have a hearty, slow cooked meal with the perfect bottle of wine. This quarter, we might as well have included a recipe guide with this fabulous assortment of wine that just begs for rustic, roasty meals with full bodied and generously flavored wines. I am happy to present a trio of French wines that are as individual as they are excellent. From three different appellations and three different vintages, this assortment truly captures the essence of the region. Presenting the Fall CELLAR Club Box featuring the 2016 Echo Roses Camille, 2018 Clos Lavaud, and 2020 Château Meilhan. These are all small production, exclusive kosher wines, produced entirely from family owned and operated wineries.
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Echo Roses Camille is a perennial Liquid Kosher favorite. Now on our fifth vintage of this wine, it’s exciting to taste the effect vintage is having on this high quality Vineyard. With the warmer weather in 2016, this is immediately evident by the delicious and more approachable fruit flavors. Some people have the mistaken understanding that Echo is a “lower” version of the Domaine wine (the famous Domaine Roses Camille). This couldn’t be further from the truth, as each wine comes from a separate vineyard with distinct terroir and winemaking regimen. With custom toasted French oak barrels, you can taste how the Echo certainly gets the royal treatment. By far the most approachable and precocious vintage we have seen, the wine is drinkable now (after all it is already six years aged), and will continue to develop in the bottle for another decade plus.
Clos Lavaud remains a real hidden treat among the Liquid Kosher offerings. This wine is a small production blend to begin with, and is promptly gobbled up by savvy wine drinkers with an eye towards value. This is only the fourth vintage of this wine ever produced, and the second that we’ve been able to offer our club members. Lalande de Pomerol is a very small “neither here nor there” appellation, carved out of Pomerol proper by a narrow stream, more comparable to one of the many satellite regions of St Emilion. But there is just something about Lavaud that makes it so appealing and delicious, it just begs to be opened now. A bit lighter than Pomerol, and more refined than the St Emilion wines, this one always lands at being “just right.”
If you liked the Vieux Chantre from last quarter, you’ll be pleased to meet its companion wine from across the river, from Château Meilhan. A nice association I have with this wine is tasting it with my friends at Timbre Winery, and comparing the style of this Cabernet-based Bordeaux with some of the other California red blends that we were experimenting with. This is certainly a textbook example of class and quality, with a delicious and familiar Cabernet backbone. Despite the entry-level price point, this one certainly has the ability to develop further in the cellar. This wine from the rich 2020 harvest is amazingly elegant and fleshy, well rounded and delicious.
I hope you will take the opportunity to try all these wines in close proximity to each other, which would truly give you a mini wine country experience of drinking through Bordeaux. Of course, mixing in some of our previous releases will only enhance this important experiment! As the weather cools, I hope you and yours will find some light and warmth in these delicious wines.
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