One Week of Festivities, One Great Winery If you have a chance, don’t miss the 30th Anniversary celebration for the Golan Heights Winery (Yarden, Gamla & Golan labels) being observed the next week at the port on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv. It’s free to just show up and mingle and hear the music as […]
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 […]
Previously, I had tasted Tabor wines on several occasions at festivals and a few times at the winery and each time I was politely presented their wines by an assistant winemaker or someone from their marketing department yet on my latest opportunity I finally got to sit a bit with the senior winemaker, which to […]
Lately, I’ve written about the Tulip Winery, the Kfar Tikvah based winery relying on Galilee & Judean Hills vineyards. It’s inspirational story, which I’ll omit here, can overshadow how good their wines are leaving a writer limited by a word count deciding whether to focus more on the story than on their wines. My most […]
One of the best Israeli examples of my belief that wine can be called “philosophy in a bottle” is from the Recanati Winery. Israeli born and UC Davis trained Gil Shatsberg took over as the chief winemaker in 2008 and since then, he and his associate Ido Lewinsohn (who trained at the University of Milan […]
As someone who first started studying wine as a Geography student in college, I’m fond of wines that give homage to their terroir whether its the emphasis of a single vineyard from where the grapes are harvested or the altitude of the vineyard or in the case of the Ella Valley Winery’s new release, its […]
Recently, I participated in an unprecedented tasting of Israeli Cabernet Sauvignon wines in Tel Aviv in the garden of Chef Alon Gonen’s home. We had all been invited by wine writer Rani Rogel of Food & Beverage/Israel. Three panels of wine writers, enthusiasts and wine makers sampled 37 wines so each panel averaged about 12 […]
by Amos Ravid Amos Ravid is Wine Education Manager of Carmel Winery. This article first appeared in Wine, Gourmet & Alcohol and Wines Israel. Although Israel has a long history of winemaking, the country does not have its own indigenous grape varieties. The Ottomans, when in control of Palestine, virtually only permitted the planting of […]
There are millions of wines from around the world. Even the best critics don’t know about most wines. Yet, very few of them are in the top 100. However, according to this year’s Wine Spectator, an Israeli wine has made their list of the best 100 wines. Along with the best old world French chateaus, […]
I’ve never had the Segal (I’m scared away from them because of their low-end stuff), but will be looking out for this wine shortly due to Gary V’s review. I strongly enjoy the Yiron myself, and just picked up the Yiron-Syrah last week (a different wine) but yet to open. Carmel still has to get […]
This weekend, I opened up a bottle of the 2006 Galil Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. Unusually, Rogov says that it is best starting in 2009. Yet, like most people, I am not going to store this wine until 2009 – as the wine is still good and I lack adequate storage solutions. For those who don’t […]
Just watched the WLTV clip. Gary gives a shoutout to my favorite wine critic – Daniel Rogov, the guru of Israeli wine and the only wine critic in Israel writing in English and for a foreign (and local) audience. It seems that Gary very much enjoyed the Yarden 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m not surprised as […]
