The BBC has a great profile of Domaine du Castel, a great winery that I discovered several years ago. When you think of the world’s great wine producers Israel is not a name that often crops up. But Eli Ben Zaken is trying to change that. What started as a hobby is now an international business, but as his success has grown so too has the competition in the hills around Jerusalem. So is there enough business to go around? […]
One of the most important stories of the Israeli wine world is the quality revolution that took place (and is continuing with continuing improvements) at Carmel Wineries. Carmel Wineries, founded in 1882, is one of Israel’s oldest producers of wine (and, I suspect, oldest producer of table wines) and certainly the most famous Israeli wine. In fact, it’s fair to say that the story of Carmel is the story of Israel (with several Prime Ministers, including David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, […]
Israel’s Upper Galilee is one of the best areas to make wine. Dalton Winery was founded in 1993 by Mat Haruni and is consistently making high quality wines at reasonable prices. In fact, Daniel Rogov writes that “Dalton has earned a consistently good name for high quality wines, providing excellent value for money.” It is also unique in Israel for having a female winemaker, Na’ama Mualem, who trained in Australia and California. Last Sunday, I traveled up north from Jerusalem […]
From the IsraelWines.co.il site: The Wine Advocate’s first generic tasting of Israeli wines resulted in a resounding success, which will encourage the whole industry. The Wine Advocate is the mouthpiece of Robert Parker, the world’s most powerful and influential wine critic. No less than 14 wines scored over 90 points. This has always been the mythical barrier between a good international class and a world class wine. Much to the frustration of Israeli wineries, the Wine Spectator magazine has only […]
Tom Stevenson’s 2009 World Wine Report has just been released in the UK (and is available at amazon.co.uk) and will be available in the United States at the end of the month. In addition to ranking wines from around the world, it has a great section about Israel written by Daniel Rogov and Tom Stevenson’s choices of “most exciting” wines. This year, of Stevenson’s 100 “most exciting” wines, five came from Israel. This is particularly noteworthy given the relatively small […]
Carmel Winery is well known to all of the readers of this site and anyone who knows anything about Israeli wine. Carmel Winery is one of Israel’s oldest wineries and the wineries in Rishon L’Tzion and Zichron Ya’akov are among Israel’s oldest buildings. In the past few years Carmel has made major investments in its […] I first wrote about Jezreel Valley Winery, one of Israel’s newest wineries founded by high-tech entrepreneur Jacob Ner-David & Yehuda Nahar with Californian Ari […]
There is much discussion between “New World” (Australia, South Africa, etc.) and “Old World” (France, etc.) wine and also where Israel fits in. Well, the reality is that Israel is the new old world wine. From IsraelWines.co.il – An exhibition on the subject of wine-making in Ancient Israel has been displayed in the Agur Winery during the recent Judean Hills Wine Route Festival (November 2007). The excellence of the region’s wines was renowned in ancient times throughout the Mediterranean and […]
I’m still a newbie to the wine blogging world and so I missed Wine Blogging Wednesday. Apparently, last week’s WBW#40 was for people to blog about Petit Sirah – a varietal in which there are a few good Israeli choices. This is extra unique as Israel doesn’t yet have a ton of varietals (most table wine is Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay, although there is also new Pinotage, Barbera, Viognier, Shiraz, and, of course, Petit Sirah, among a few other […]
Carmel Winery’s quality reputation continues. As it continues to get higher and higher rated wines, increasing in quality, one of Israel’s largest wineries are also making branding changes. Marketing and wine branding are close to my heart, as my background is in international marketing and communications, so I was thrilled to see that Carmel Winery has introduced new labels for its Single Vineyard series of wines.
I’ve written about Israeli wine from Biblical Times until the 1990s. Here’s Israeli wine from the last decade: Now is the time to look back at the 2000’s, as the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close. It was a very good decade for Israeli wines. The boutique boom that began in the 1990’s continued. There are now hundreds of small wineries making wine on a domestic basis. Israel received third party recognition for improved quality at […]
