Being the only winemaker at a winery making a million bottles of wine a year is enough work for any one man. For instance, one Israeli winery of a similar size employs three winemakers. Yet, Golan Tishbi likes challenges and keeping himself busy whether its building pizza ovens for the winery’s visitor center or tinkering on his own car or one of their delivery trucks, Golan like his father, Jonathan, is a hands on type of guy. Even as a grandfather of seven, founder Jonathan Tishbi can be seen driving a forklift around the winery and he and Golan regularly ride bicycles around the winery or to neighboring vineyards. Golan has also taken the lead role for the winery associating with Valrhona Chocolates from France, one of the world’s iconic brands in premium chocolates maybe not as well known with the masses, chocolate connoisseurs and pastry chefs often salivate at the mere utterance of Valrhona. The Tishbi’s are Valrhona’s representatives and distributors in Israel and have about 30 different types of chocolates on tap available as bars, chips or powders for baking each sourced from specific tropical locales from Africa, South America and the Caribbean. The chocolate-wine connection isn’t just a joining of unrelated gourmet products. A key stage of making chocolate includes fermentation of the beans. The Tishbi’s offers a unique chocolate and wine tasting at the winery’s visitor center pairing many of Valrhona chocolates with Tishbi wines for NIS 30 for 6 wines and 6 chocolates with the pairings selected by a representative of Valrhona. On my most recent visit, Valrhona Caramél which features a rich expressive toffee taste was paired with the 2011 Tishbi Chardonnay Estate 88 points (55 NIS). This unaoked Chardonnay is reminiscent of some other Israeli Chardonnays leaning towards Chablis roots and displayed notes of apricot, lemon custard, flint and golden delicious apples. Golan served the wine in two different Reidel glasses to display how a glass can affect a wine. One was designed in a more bulbous bowl designed with unoaked Burgundy whites in mind that allowed the wine to open up and display more fruit and also seemed to grant the wine more body and silkiness while the other designed to showcase Sauvignon Blanc was a narrower tulip shaped glass that with the same wine was tighter with the fruit notes subdued, and more crisply acidic mimicking a Sauvignon Blanc. We then got an advanced tasting of Tishbi’s next red special reserve wine. Their last two (from their 2004 & 2007 harvests) hailed from their Sde Boker vineyards in the Negev and were Bordeaux style blends. This new red wine is from their 2010 vintage is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon enhanced with Ruby Cabernet grapes from vineyards in the Judean Hills. This wine promises to be a star and will likely be released when the 2007 Sde Boker is sold out (which might be quite soon) though it’s already bottled and ready for drinking. There’s an abundance of fruit in this wine showing notes of dark and red plums and cassis on the nose with black raspberry, tobacco, honey, roasted nuts, coffee and cigar box bringing a smooth and velvety texture in the mouth through the middle and finish with American oak aging that was apparent but not overbearing. Integrated yet firm tannins with the abundance of fruit indicate this wine could age for at least age a decade and over the course of a few hours this wine showed more and more character without any loss of vigor. A spicy dark chocolate from Grenada, Valrhona Kalingo, paired well with Tishbi’s new flagship red. The wine has no official name yet but I’d give it 93-94 points awaiting to see or rather taste what appears under what label.
At this point, Golan wanted to show off his new menu at the visitor center that he worked on with master Chef Gunther Biedermann who previously was the Executive Chef at the Hilton Tel Aviv. We tasted the 2012 Tisbhi Estate Sauvignon Blanc 90 points (55 NIS) to accompany the meal. Its crisp acidity, citric noted and herbaceous highlights matched an onslaught of expertly crafted dishes that came one after the other that were as stimulating to look at as to sample including a chocolate and cheese souffle served with marinated strawberries, the lightest yet scrumptious potato gnocchi I ever tasted and a “tuna wellington” pastry that was savory yet delicate. Golan admires the precision and consistency that Gunther delivers with each dish. Even the bread served to start with some side sauces and their Oshra Tishbi Cabernet and Onion Wine Jelly (that I would pair with an onion bagel, salmon or a steak) were worth the trip as their new pastry chef, Asaf Ben Moshe, makes all the bread from scratch including their sour dough and served us an array of decadent yet balanced desserts that might even make Willy Wonka turn as green as an Oompa Loompa with envy.
This visit was an opportunity for Golan to demonstrate that he’s transforming his visitor center into a culinary center, still featuring a restaurant capable of hosting hundreds of local and foreign tourists yet evolving to include the addition of a Valrhona Chocolate School in the next eighteen months which will be only the second such school outside France (the other is in Tokyo). Already planting the groundwork, Tishbi has sent chefs from Israel to study for a three day course in France and eleven chefs in Israel are operating now as exclusive “Circle V” certified chefs including Asaf.
So whether you’re a foodie or a wino or just have a discriminating sweet tooth, the Tishbi’s have a treasure trove of tempting treats awaiting you at their winery’s visitor center in Binyamina which now is open as late as midnight on Thursday nights and until 3PM the rest of the week except Saturday since the winery is closed on the Sabbath and holidays. The Visitor Center will be open during Chol HaMoed (the days of Passover between the festive days everything is closed in Israel).
