Israel's Boutique Wineries

I first had occasion to drink really good Israeli wine several years ago, on one of our prior trips. We were spending a couple nights with Hilla and Boaz in Modi’in, and I wanted to bring a nice bottle of wine to dinner. We stopped in a wine shop near the Namal (the former port, north of downtown Tel Aviv, redone with shops, restaurants, even a few beach bars). As it turned out, the shop was Porto Vino, probably the best wine shop in all of Israel, and a spot that Danny has come to know very well. The owner recommended a bottle of Tulip Syrah; in retrospect, I think it must have been the Reserve Syrah. (More on Tulip in a subsequent posting.) It was excellent, and for the first time, we had the chance to drink Israeli wine that could compare favorably with California, Australia, Argentina. Maybe we weren’t talking Cote Rotie, not just yet, but this Tulip was very impressive.

 

A few years later, Roger Dietz, who was mediating a securities fraud case I was prosecuting, was dining regularly at the Chophouse, and one night he gave us a glass of Zauberman Merlot. Roger introduced it as the best wine in Israel, albeit impossible to find in this country. Now we were talking world class. The Zauberman compared favorably with anyone’s wine, and although we weren’t typically fans of merlot, this Zauberman knocked us out.

 

In the meantime, Danny had become friendly with the proprietor of Porto Vino, and started shipping top flight Israeli wines home for all of us to enjoy. We had occasion to sample Flam, Margalit, and others I can no longer recall. And then, about a year ago, as I arrived home one evening after work, I found a package on my stoop; when I opened it, lo and behold, there were six bottles of Zauberman Merlot. Unbelievable!!

 

So on our most recent trip this past February, the Morgenbergs devoted three days to touring Israeli wineries. We had the good fortune to get introduced to Tomar Solna, who served as our guide for two of those three days, while we drove through the north, and visited several of Israel’s boutique wineries. We wanted to tour places that were not necessarily accustomed to a lot of visitors. We didn’t really want to visit any of the bigger commercial wineries; nor did we want to end up at a tasting with a busload of folks touring the country. So Danny and Tomar settled on four small wineries in the north, two in the Carmel region, and two on the Golan.

 

My biggest regret is that these wines are not more readily available in the US. There is apparently a new website – Israeliwinedirect.com – that intends to make boutique wines available for sale in this country. For now, however, their inventory is quite small, but I guess they need to start somewhere. And we learned that at least one of the wineries – the aforementioned Tulip – intends to begin distributing their product in some of the larger metropolitan areas. Thus, good Israeli wine will be several thousand miles closer to us, even if it’s not quite yet in Western New York.  And while we are all waiting for that to happen, let me tell you about those wines we had the chance to sample on our recent travels. Stay tuned.