Posted at 15:26h in Wine industry, Wineries by 0 Comments
Chateau Golan is a small, boutique winery on the Golan Heights. While its modeled after a French chateau, its winemaker was trained in Oregon. Unlike the Franco-phile Domaine du Castel, which is truly making French-style wines, it appears that the Chateau Golan’s decision, with its glorious but, I suspect, expensive façade is a decision of the investors and they want to use the glorious grounds for events … but this speaks nothing of the wine.
Rogov ranks Chateau Golan ninth in its list of top wine producers (behind Golan Heights Winery, Castel, Yatir, and Carmel’s top series). Personally, as someone familiar with Israeli wines, although perhaps its because I am used to the wines of Golan Heights and others, I did not find these wines to be unique or extra special, although they certainly were very good world-class wines. However, the person whom I was escorting, who works for a wine importer in the US which also owns a small winery in California, was strongly impressed with their Syrah as well as their Eliad blend (named for the Moshav in which the grapes were grown). This is not surprising since the winemaker personally likes Syrah and it is suitable for the hot Israeli climate.
Chateau Golan currently produces between 70,000-75,000 bottles annually, with expectations of producing 100,000 bottles in the future. All of their wines are sold out in Israel, and they are not available outside of the country. Incidentally, they lack a formal kashrut certificate, which I will write about later. I asked them why, and they said that the winemaker (Uri Hetz) is not Sabbath-observant and they had no market reason to do so, within the domestic market. But, this has no impact (positive or negative) on the quality of the wines.
