Our synagogue had a virtual Kosher wine tasting last night with a guy named Brad du Plessis from kosherwine.com. We had three wines while Brad discussed them and did a wine 101 (most of the people on the call were not wine experts).
The first wine we had was a 2017 Yarden Gewurztraminer. Not bad for an inexpensive Kosher Gewurz. Fairly rich, not much complexity, a bit rough but a fairly short finish. Other than the bit of roughness, the flavors were fairly pleasant. I would not buy this but it was not bad for what it is. [KW sells it for $18.99.]
The second wine was from Chile, Casa De Cielo Reserve Malbec/Syrah 2017 (which I think is a private label wine for KW). This wine seemed to have pleasant enough fruit and balanced fruit but it was really hard to tell because the fruit was so covered by an offensive charred/burnt aroma and flavor. I cannot imagine heavily charred new oak barrels were used in an inexpensive wine so that they must have used oak staves or something in an effort to intentionally imitate these flavors. It was a horrible failure that IMHO totally marred the wine. [$10.99 at KW]
By contrast, the third wine was the highlight of the tasting. It was a 2018 Syrah from Galil Mountain Winery (which either is owned by Yarden or distributed by Yarden or both, not sure). This wine was pretty simple with no great complexity but it was very pleasant and very well balanced. Very nice fruit flavors, very smooth, just a very pleasant everyday wine. [KW has this for $13.99]
All in all, a fun evening and a good way to spend a Saturday evening safely in January during Covid.