Amphorae

Our travels along the Israeli wine trail began in the Carmel hills south of Haifa, with a visit to the Amphorae winery.  And even for those who don’t necessarily care for wines, or don’t care enough to schlep all over the north of Israel in search of boutique wineries, Amphorae was worth visiting, just for the gorgeous setting of this little winery. Amphorae is located in an undeveloped valley (they call them wadis over there) in the western Carmel. (The nearest town and mailing address is Zichron Ya’akov, but the winery is actually to the north of there; on the map the closest place is Kerem Maharal.) This year, after an unusually wet winter, the valley was lush and green; in fact, all of the north was greener than I had ever seen before. Amphorae has some kind of organic thing going on, where the waste water is discharged into a series of pools that drain, one into another, and water an organic herb garden. So the stone building that houses the winery is approached as you walk alongside these herb gardens. Very peaceful; very beautiful setting, and as it turn out, one that’s perfectly matched with Amphorae’s carefully hand-crafted wines.  (The vineyards are located elsewhere, in the upper Galil and on the Golan, so all we saw was the winery.)

 

What we noticed about Amphorae was the great attention to detail. They are fussy about everything that goes into their winemaking – from the grapes, which are hand selected after they are picked, to the French oak barrels, to the time they allow their wines to age in the barrel – up to 36 months for many of their wines.

 

After our hostess, Riva, showed all through the winery, and told us all about Amhorae and their philosophy of winemaking, we sat outside in the sun, on a gorgeous spring morning (yes, February is springtime in Israel, even in the north) and tasted a number of their wines. I was most impressed with their red blends. Under the Rhyton label, they offer a Bordeaux style blend, primarily cabernet sauvignon, blended with syrah and merlot. Think left bank Bordeaux.  Then we tasted a couple wines in their Makura collection – the first being a Rhone style blend, with Syrah predominating.  Both of these were big bodied, but not overly tannic – surprisingly mellow for their young age.  However, our favorite was an interesting blend of merlot and barbera, which Riva claimed was unique. Now I don’t know if that means unique in Israel, or unique unique. (I would think that somewhere among the supertuscan producers, another winery is blending those two grapes, but who knows?) None of us claim to be big fans of merlot, although I have to confess that we drank more than one merlot blend that knocked us out. Think right bank Bordeaux here, softer than the other two reds, but big and flavorful nonetheless. I can’t give detailed notes on this wine just yet, but I can report that there are three bottles somewhere in Monroe County, having been shipped to Danny, that will shortly arrive at our domicile. And maybe next summer, when the snow has melted, and the grills are fired up, we’ll crack one of these beautiful blends from the Carmel hills, and report the details.

 

Sitting in the Israeli sunshine, drinking Amphorae’s luscious wines, and munching on artisanal cheeses made somewhere in the Galil, it was fun to think that folks have been drinking wine in this region for thousands of years. I’m not sure it was always as good as Amphorae’s wines were, but it was nice to think of ourselves in that long tradition. And many thanks to Tomar, and to our hostess, Riva, for this gorgeous start to our tour of Israel’s fine wines.