During the last five years, I’ve attended dozens of Israeli wine festivals. Now I even consult for a few festivals. Before I moved to Israel I helped start a wine festival for San Diego County’s wineries. After years of offering free advice, I found often that the only way to get people to listen to you is to charge for your advice. Sadly most people seem to put value on advice depending how much they pay. Some doctors and lawyers have told me similar tales where plenty of friends ask them for free advice or consultations which are often ignored but if they charge they’re more apt to listen to the exact same advice. So I might be spinning my wheels writing this article but at least I can send it out en masse instead of wasting my time over and over again. It’s not in my best interest commercially doing so but I didn’t move to Israel to further my self-interests. I moved here to spread the word about the rapidly improving quality of Israeli wines and raise the culture of wine appreciation and wine tourism. Wine festivals are a great tool to do both but only if the festivals serve the interests of all involved. So who are all the parties served by and supporting wine festivals. First are the wineries. Typically 20 to 30 Israeli wineries (out of approximately 300) attend and they are often complemented by imported wines (which I feel help put the Israeli wines into context), gourmet Israeli cheeses, olive oils, chocolates and a wide array of treats that guests attending would be likely to enjoy and purchase. The wineries though are the focus and most often they pay hundreds if not thousands of NIS to attend typically two to four evenings. Sometimes the organizers are wine shops that offest the costs of booths by purchasing wines from the wineries attending but either way the wineries have to pay for staff to pour or for small wineries the winemaker or their family is behind the counter. And they pour (and are not compensated for) dozens if not hundreds of bottles depending on the size of their booth, how many wines they pour and how many thousands of people attend and stick out their glass for a taste. Larger wineries can better afford to attend more often than the smaller wineries but often their marketing people are taxed to attend as many festivals that have recetly popped up. Key people including the winemakers do enjoy attending, I’ve found, but not so often as many are on salary and its extra work they don’t get compensated for so often the swelling amount of wine festivals is too much of a good thing for wineries. It’s a great opportunity to be exposed to the public but you can be overexposed and overtaxed and if a winery has a budget of how much wine they pour for free in a year (3-5% is an industry standard in some countries) then a small winery can exhaust that easily at a few festivals and not have enough samples to pour for their own tastings at their visitor center or even to satisfy demands of retail or wholesale customers. Festivals that focus on promoting a theme (for instance white wine or kosher wine or promote wines from a different wine region) are a nice way to differentiate one festival from another and help the wineries reach different market segment that the same festival over and over again might attract. Additionally, as it gets later each evening of a festival (typically after 8 or 9PM for events starting at 6 ot 7PM resopectfully) people stop tasting and start drinking. It’s heartbreaking for winemakers and owners who often to put their hearts and souls into their wines so see people belly up to their stand and stick out their glass and request red or white not caring which winery is pouring what wine whether its a NIS 33 bottle or NIS 150 bottle. It’s the most common complaint I’ve heard from wine insiders that too many people ahow up for a cheap drunk. I think when organizers print out a list of all the wines it helps people be a little more contmeplative. Giving tasting tickets out is one remedy but it typically punishes everyone for the behavior of wine neophytes who don’t realize is wine is best savored and not tossed back. Festivals who’ve switched to tickets have typically floundered for doing so. The only thing the wineries dislike nmore than spending a lot of money to pour a lot of wine is pouring a lot of wine for hardly anyone. It’s hard to find a happy medium. I thin the wineries could do a better job preparing for festivals they attend to. They could help market the festival to their e-mail lists not so much to attract people to their own wines (these people are already on their e-mail list) but to draw people to the festival who have shown an interest in wine. Each winery doing this would help the overall type of crowd the festival attracted and made sure new festivals were less apt to struggle establishing themselves. Additionally, some pouring people need to better trained. At a recent event I attended the pourer for one of the top ten wineries (who I have seen pouring many times in the past the same wines) couldn’t tell me some basic information of the three wines at his table. Only three wines and you don’t know everything about a wine you’ve poured multiple times? Worst yet his manager didn’t seem to care either. Don’t blame the attendees for not caring much about what wine they’re drinking if the wineries aren’t showing they care what they’re pouring. Information in Hebrew (and English for tourists) that can be handed out when lines are long are a good idea or even laminated fact cards that people can read while a pourer is pre-occupied is something I’ve seen work effectively at festivals and busy winery visitor centers. So there’s no point of the wineries having a rewarding experience if the people paying to attend don’t have an overall positive experience,too, right? So what makes it pleasant for everyone. A nice location is a start. Scenery sets the stage just like the atmosphere in a nice restaurant. Jerusalem and Ramat Aviv have festivals in gardend behind museums and seaside events in Tel Aviv, Herzilya and now Hadera offer inviting venues to highlight the wines. Ra’anana offers up its beautific city park and Rosh Pina its multi-tiered Rothschild Gardens. So the festival has a nice venue, what’s next? How about a good selection of good wines. As a writer I often attend festivals multiple nights but most people only come one night and the best festivals often have more wines than most could hope to taste in one evening. If 20-30 wineries offered 100-120 wines and you tasted all of them and you only tasted 1 oz/ of each that would be four to five bottles of wine and most people don’t spit out what they are tasting. If you only tasted one or two wines at each booth its still like drinking one or two bottles of wine. It’s a lot of wine especially if you don’t drink much that often. So there’s plenty of wine typically so if the organizers make sure that there’s quality wine in the mix it helps some drink less to help savoir what’s being pured and attract the type of people who will come early to ask questions when the staff at each booth isn’t overwhelmed. What else makes for a good experience? Good music can set the mood. Jazz and Reggae and even some Classic Rock or Folk music provide for a nice relaxed vibe. It should be at either end of the festival so people can talk over it at the stands and ask questions and hear the answers other wise the wineries might as well just pour money down the drain, in my opinion. Having an area set aside to that people can wander over to and listen is better than the music encompassing every nook and crannie of the event. Additionally, since people are drinking believeit or not some people will get drunk. It happens even to the pros. Sometimes, at a certain point the evening I decide its either time to go home and type up my notes or stick around and have fun. I taste so often professionally that if I never let loose occassionally I would never have fun around wine if I didn’t stay “after work.” Festivals are a much better venue to let yourself go than after an industry event but you know what as a journalist I’m writing not jsut for myself but my readers so how do I empathize with my readers if I’m never getting a bit silly, not sloppy but a little silly. That being the case public transportation close the festival for me (and thousands of others) is a good idea. If there is no nearby bus or train within a few minutes walk I suggest a shuttle bus or buses to help people get to or from the closest train or bus station before and after the event. Publicizing what buses and trains are available will help fewer poeple drive home drunk and help avoid anyone getting hurt coming home from what should be a good time. Having a designated driver program wouldn’t be a bad idea as well. Alerting taxi companies ahead of time would make them aware to be availble when the event is winding down for those less apt to take public transportatiobn or going somewhere off the beaten track. Since the idea is to taste wine, smoking cigarettes and worse yet cigars shouldn’t be allowed unless FAR away from the event in an outside area. It can ruin the experience for serious tasters. Of course there are worse things than smelling tobacco. One recent festival I attended on a kibbutz offered some of the best wines in Israel under an open air tent which allowed the eye-tearing scent of the nearby dairy farm to engulf the whole event. Considering their lighting kept going on and off, I was wondering what other of my senses would be assaulted or deprived that evening. So if the wineries are happy and the guests are happy, who else is left to please? Well, I will make a special appeal that at least one evening preerbly the first wine writers and other journalists and bloggers be allowed to arrive two hours early to be able to write about what’s offered and to taste the wines in less distracting circumstances. Its better for the guests too since winemakers can be a bit demanding and get in the way of the experience of the public once they arrive. It’s such a good opportunity for a wine writer to taste a lot of wines in one or two nights that would take them weeks or months to taste on their own travelling to wineries all around the country or attending winery sponsored events that writers are under pressure to make the most of each opportunity that offers up dozens of wineries and possibly over 100 wines they haven’t tasted before or at least their newest vintage. Last of all is the organizer of the event. As someone who hosted literally hundreds of parties big and small. I’m not sure event planners in Israel always get this. Even though they need to make it worth their while and at least cover expenses (unless someone like the municipality is hosting it knowing they may not cover costs), an event planner should make sure everyone is happy first. Unsatisfied wineries + unsatisfied guests= an unstainable wine festival that will either not be repeated or have a different organizer the following year. One too many organizers sabotage their own events by starting too late to plan and promote their event putting pressure on everyone who might help them (often for free) if they had started two, three six months (or even a year in advance as is often the case overseas). Lots of free press in publications with deadlines are missed because of a late start. Lots of international guests might make travel plans taking the festival in account if they knew far enough in advance to buy tickets at the best rates as well as schedule their vacation time accordingly.
Chances are as long as I’m writing about wine, I will still attend these events as they are a great opportunity for me to taste wines, network with wine insiders (many who I count as friends) and meet my readers (many who have become freinds as well) yet its hard for me to communicate much enthusiasm for an event when the organizers don’t seem “organized”. I’ll still attend to get the most out of the opportunity but I’m far less convincing to wineries and consumers to attend when the event doesn’t do a good job convincing me that they cared about putting the together the best experience for all parties involved. What some might say is a win/wine situation but what I like to call a wine/wine situation.
David Rhodes can be reached at [email protected] or in Israel at 052-702-WINE (9463) or 972-52-702-9463 from overseas.
