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Mony Syrah 2010

On opening this wine comes at you like a heavyweight champ at the ring of the bell. But Sam Saroka, winemaker at Mony Vineyard since 2009, advised me to decant this wine well

before drinking. Not having a decanter, I poured the wine into glasses a full 45 minutes before drinking at dinner with grilled chorizo sausages (Israeli beef).

To my delight, the wine had lost its rough edges and evolved into a pleasurable accompaniment to dinner. I am a fan of Rhone varieties here in Israel. The Mony Syrah has dark fruit aromas with black pepper. Aged with toasted staves perhaps a bit longer than required, this is what gives the wine it’s aggressive opening.

At a price of 60NIS/$17, I wasn’t expecting greatness, but definitely received VFM and a nice wine with dinner.

Am even enjoying a second glass on its own instead of desert.

Only in Israel: Mony Vineyard at the Deir Rafat Monastery, is privately owned by the Artoul family, Christian Arabs from the Galilee village of Maghar. Mony Vinyard’s wines have been Kosher since 2005.

Le’Chaim!

Sphera Winery-A Holistic Approach to White Wines

I’m a firm believer in networking and cooperation in developing my wine tours. Today I had a couple of very positive meetings which I believe will be a great help in promoting wine tourism in Israel. But the best part of my day was my visit to the new Sphera Winery with owner and winemaker Doron Rav Hon. Sphera Winery is located on Kibbutz Gat in the Southern Shephela Region. Doron was trained in Burgundy and worked as the winemaker at Ella Valley Vineyards from its inception through the 2011 vintage.

When he started out on his own, Doron wanted to make only white wines. The name “Sphera” reflects his holistic approach to white winemaking. Everything in the winery was planned to enable Doron to make quality white wines. Doron chose his press for its suitability for white wines; the fermentation tanks are almost as wide as they are tall, again optimized for white wines.

Sphera’s branding and graphics reflect the minimalistic, exact approach that Doron has to his wines. Sphera wines were born with the 2012 vintage. Doron decided to limit his wines to four labels-three in the White Concepts series and one in the White Signature label. Each harvest Doron will choose what wines will be issued in each label.

Doron currently sources his grapes from eight different vineyards. Three are under his complete control with long-term contracts. He controls another two, and is constantly searching for additional vineyards for quality white wine.

One of the more interesting varieties and vineyards that Doron has found is the Pinot Gris in Latrun. As far as Doron and I know, no one else is using Pinot Gris in Israel. The vineyard belongs to the Trapist Monastery in Latrun, perhaps not so great winemakers, but with these old vines, great vignerons.

With Doron, I tasted two of his wines, the White Concepts Chardonnay 2012 and White Concepts First Page 2012.

White Concepts Chardonnay 2012 is produced from grapes from four different vineyards. Most of the grapes see no oak; only 20% are aged in mostly old barriques for six months. The White Concepts Chardonnay is surprisingly aromatic with a subtle and harmonious touch of wood. Like all of Doron’s wine, the Chardonnay did not undergo secondary malolactic fermentation.

White Concepts First Page 2012 is a blend of Pinot Gris (40%), Riesling (40%) and Semillon (20%). The First Page is a virtual bouquet of aromas: floral, citrus and white fruit. 60% of the wines in this blend were aged in barriques.

In order to ensure good acidity, aromas and low alcohol (12%) Doron harvests his grapes relatively early. Most of the grapes are batch presses with the exception of the Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc whose stems would add too much greenness and bitterness to the wine. The result is a welcome addition to the Israeli wine scene-elegant, balanced white wines whose quality reflect the quality of the fruit and the talent of the winemaker.

What do we have to look forward to from Doron Rav Hon and Sphera Winery? First of all, the upcoming release of the Signature Labelwine. Each year the Signature Label will represent the best wine from Sphera Winery. The first Signature Label wine will be a blend of Chardonnay, Semillon and Riesling. Doron has no rules for his Signature Label except the best of the best. If in the future, a single variety will produce the exceptional wine of that vintage then it will be released in the Signature Label. Another wine to look forward to in future vintages will be a sparkling wine produced in the traditional methode champenoise.

http://www.spherawinery.com

Wine Grapes

Jancis Robinson MW, a well-known wine writer has outdid herself with the book Wine Grapes. Along with her co-authors Julia Harding and Jose Vouillamoz she has written a book impressive on all levels.

The first thing you notice when you pick up this tome is its weight, this is a substantial book as it should be to contain detailed information on 1368 different grape varieties. Each entry contains information based on DNA for each grape variety and the variety’s origins based on scientific evidence and not legend that is so common in the wine world.

BEERS 2013 Hot Entries

Last week on one of the stormiest days in recent years, Israel’s third annual Beer Expo, BEERS 2013 opened at the Nokia Arena.

BEERS 2013 was open from 2:00-5:00 PM to the trade, and from 5:00-11:00 PM to the general public with a modest entrance fee of 60 NIS ($16.00) for a tasting glass and coupons for 5 tastings. Coupons for an additional 5 tastings were 30 NIS ($8.00).

Craft breweries, while a new arrival in Israel, are growing in number and produce great beers. I want to share two beers, one by the oldest microbrewery in Israel and another by one of the youngest. What these two beers have in common is hot peppers. Both beers are brewed with hot peppers, a popular ingredient in Middle Eastern cuisine.

The first beer is Dancing Camel‘s Leche Del Diablo or “Devil’s Milk”. Dancing Camel is Israel’s oldest microbrewery founded by David Cohen, a transported American in Tel Aviv’s commercial Hamasger district. David Cohen left behind an accounting practice in New Jersey in to pursue a passion for brewing beer and to fulfill his long-time dream of living in Israel.

Dancing Camel’s Leche Del Diablo is based on a Belgin Helf-Wit wheat beer supercharged with chili peppers. I’m not a big fan of wheat beers, but I love spicy food. The Leche Del Diablo goes down smoothly and only after swallowing does the chili pepper slap you in the face. The hotness of this beer is not overwhelming though, and if you like spicy foods, you’ll enjoy this beer! 5% Alcohol.

Hadubim (The Bears) is a young brand founded by brothers Dagan and Rotem Bar-Ilan in 2011 when they opened HaAm (the People’s) Brewery in a modern facility in the Tel Aviv suburb of Even Yehudah. In addition to their line of five beers, they offer a “One a Month” special edition. Recently the Bar-Ilan brothers opened with a partner , the Beer Market in the Old Jaffa Port’s new food market. Beer Market sells only Israeli craft beers and has hosted events for launching new beers. The Beer Market rotates two different Israeli craft beers on tap and sells a full range in bottles.

Esh or “Fire” is the Dubbim‘s hot pepper beer. Esh with it’s fire fighters on the label, is a pale ale brewed from three varieties of American hops with a mild bitterness and a pronounced aroma of hops. During the fermentation shata peppers were added to the batch to achieve the hot spicy effect. The sweetness and bitterness of the pale ale is felt in the mouth and the spicy hotness of the shata peppers hits you in the throat. Hadubbim‘s Esh is the hotter of the two chili beers at BEERS 2013. 4.7% Alcohol.

Both beers are available in bottles at the Jaffa Port Beer Market.

Ella Valley Vineyard’s New Relaeases

This past Friday, Ella Valley Vineyards hosted members of their Wine Club to the release of three new wines: Ella Valley Chardonnay 2011, Ella Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 and Vineyard’s Choice 32/35 2008.

After a cold and stormy week, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the crowds that arrived at this event on the first sunny day this week.

Vineyard’s Choice is the premium label of the Ella Valley Wineries. In addition to varietial wines released in the VC label, Ella Valley Vineyards also releases special wines that are may be one-time releases.

Vineyard’s Choice 32/35 2008 is the last wine by the former winemaker Doron Rav-Hon to be released in the Vineyard’s Choice label. VC 32/35 is a blend of Syrah, Petite Sirah and Merlot aged for 20 months in oak barrels. Ella Valley Vineyards usually releases wines later than most other wineries, allowing for additional aging in the bottle in the winery. This allows their aging worthy wines to be enjoyed upon release. This wine was already in bottles when Lin Gold, the current winemaker arrived at Ella Valley Vineyards.

Ella Valley Vineyards is the largest estate winery in Israel with all of its grapes coming from their three vineyards all located close to the winery. Part of their philosophy is to make wines that are true to their terroir. The choice of the name 32/35 reflects this philosophy as these numbers are the geographic coordinates of the vineyards. The VC 32/35 is an elegant wine with the Syrah dominant but softened by the Merlot. Israel’s hot climate is especially suitable to the Southern Rhone varieties Syrah and Petit Sirah (AKA Durif). The wine is a deep garnet and filled with dark fruit-berries and plum as well as spices and pepper.

Ella Valley Vineyard’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 has no surprises and this is good. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widely planted grape variety in Israel, close to a quarter of all wine grapes in Israel are Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a full-bodied elegant wine, true to the Ella Valley tradition and true to the variety with ripe dark fruit flavors. With a long finish, this wine will be a great accompaniment to a steak dinner.

Udi Kaplan, CEO of Ella Valley Vineyards is an avid mountain biker who enjoys riding the trails in the rolling Judean Hills. The large attendance at this event and the lines at the cash register kept Udi smiling.

Ilan Bezalel, VP of Ella Valley Vineyards has introduced new marketing cooperation with the importers of Ferrari, Volvo and Landrover. As a triathlete it’s almost natural that this cooperation would include Caspi Bicycle, importer of high-end bicycles.

Road bikes on display at Ella Valley Vineyards.

Best for Last

Ella Valley Vineyard’s Chardonnay 2011 is the third wine that the winemaker Lin Gold is totally responsible for from the harvest through bottling.

Ella Valley Chardonnay 2011 is made from 100% Chardonnay grapes. One of the highlights of the New Release Event for me , was my discussion with winemaker Lin Gold on the making of the Chardonnay 2011.

Ella Valley’s white wine grapes are grown in its Nes Harim vineyard at an altitude of 650 meters above Sea Level. While this wine is 100% Chardonnay, Lin used a variety of methods in both fermenting and aging the components of this wine to arrive at a Chardonnay that is elegant and refined without bombastic fruits and just a hint of butter.

Some of the grapes were fermented on wild yeasts, which is a bit of a risk at a winery of this size. Half the wine was aged in oak for 13 months, again half in new barrels. The other half remained in stainless steel. Line kept the temperatures low during fermentation and only half the wine underwent malolactic fermentation.

All of this together produced a wine that is loyal to Ella Valley Vineyard’s tradition of producing quality wines that reflect the terroir.

Yaffo Winery in the Elah Valley

On a crisp winter day, I headed to visit with winemaker Stephan Celniker at Yaffo Winery at the winery located in Moshav Neve Michael at the eastern extent of the Elah Valley.

Stephen, the son of Moshe and Ann who started the winery in 1998 has a degree in agriculture from the Hebrew University and studied wine-making in Burgoyne.

Yaffo Winery is located in a row of abandoned chicken coops, a victim of Israel’s ridiculous zoning laws which define wineries as industrial rather than agricultural and prevent building beautiful wineries in the vineyards.

Yaffo Winery produces about 25,000 bottles of wine a year and is Kosher. The winery started in the basement of Moshe and Ann Celniker in Jaffa (hence the winery’s name) and moved to its current location near the vineyards in 2007.

Stefan opened a bottle of Syrah Merlot 2010.

Yaffo Syrah Merlot 2010 aged 13 months in French and American oak barrels. On opening the Syrah was dominant with dark fruit and plums with spices dominating. After opening up, the Merlot steps in to mellow out the wine a bit.

The Syarah Merlow has gentle tannins and a long smooth finish.

Next Stefan asked Yishai Mualem , the winery’s Kashrut Supervisor to pull some Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 from the vat to taste.One of the requirements of Kosher wine is that only Sabbath observant Jews can contact the wine from the time the grapes are pressed until the bottle is sealed.

The CS 2011 will be bottled next week. It is young and fruity, will grow in time but definitely approachable now. While Israel is at the Southern edge of the Northern Hemisphere’s wine growing region and is known for “hot” wines, Stephan tries to add Old World influences to his wines by lower temperature fermentation and by limiting the amount of time the wine spends on the skins.

http://yaffowinery.co.il/

Off-road Tour in the Judean Desert

Just west of the Central Mountain Ridge of Judah, where the cities of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron sit, lies the Judean Desert. Due to its proximity to the cities of Judah and its harsh desert terrain, the Judean Desert has been a place of refuge and escape throughout history. It’s to the Judean Desert that David flees King Saul, where survivors of Jerusalem’s siege flee the Roman Legions following the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem and where hundreds of Monks seek solitude in the Byzantine Era. Continue reading →

A Real “Killer” Wine

Assaf Winery’s Shiraz Caesarea Reserve 2008

To be perfectly honest, I am not objective when it comes to Israeli Syrah/Shiraz wines. I believe that being at the southern fringe of the Northern hemisphere’s wine growing region gives the various Israeli terroirs a tremendous adventage with this Southern Rhone variety. This is a lovely Shiraz with a deep purple/garnet color, red berries and spices with a nice balance and long finish.

The late Daniel Rogov, who is sorely missed as Isreal’s leading wine critic, writing and scoring thousands of Israeli wines wrote tasting notes for this wine before it was released. His review appears in the Israel Wines website: Assaf, Shiraz, Caesaria, 2008 (Advance Tasting): Oak-aged for 20 months but showing a gentle influence of the wood, a full-bodied, round and soft wine, with a generous array of plum, wild berry and raspberry fruits, those supported nicely by notes of saddle leather and earthy minerals. Generous and elegant. Best from 2012-2017. Score 90. (Tasted 8 Nov 2010)

We tasted this wine at the new visitors’ center opened by Assaf Winery as the beginning of the Kedem family’s “Wine Village” to include the winery, a visitors’ center with tasting rooms, a gourmet restaurant and a Bed & Breakfast. The “Wine Village” is located next to Moshav Kidmat Tzvi on the Golan Heights, home to the Kedem family.

The New Visitors’ Center

The New Winery

Assaf Winery was founded by Assaf Kedem in 1997 after raising grapes for other vineyards since 1990. Assaf Kedem has served as the winemaker at other vineyards and currently provides laboratory services and consults other wineries. Recently Assaf’s son Oren has joined the winery as winemaker and manager.

Assaf and Oren Kedem

So What Makes the Shiraz Caesarea a “Killer Wine”?

Assaf Kedem named the wine “Caesarea” to honor his father who served for many years as a warrior for the Mossad‘s Casarea’s unit which is tasked with “planning and carrying out special operations beyond Israel’s borders”.

The Caesarea unit purchases Shiraz Casarea wine and reportedly gives everyone who finishes their training course a bottle. Bottles are also given as gifts from the unit as appreciation for help and services. And bottles are opened and members of the unit toast “Le’haim” , “To Life” following successful missions.

Casarea’s Appreciation to Assaf for His Father’s Service and the Wine

A big thanks to Assaf and Oren Kedem for a great wine. And a special great thanks to the unsung warriors of Caesarea who allow us to sleep better at night and make the world a better place by helping evil people meet their maker earlier than they planned.

www.assafwinery.com

Yehuda Wine Festival

: Ronen Perlmutter tasting wine

: Shaike Lender of Zafririm Winery

: Uri Ran, Managing Partner at Tzora Vineyards

: Stephan Celnicker, winmaker at Yaffo Winery

: The Ben-Zaken Family of Castel Winery

: Yossi Katz, owner and winemaker Katz Winery

: Danny Rubin and Me

: Ronen Perlmutter and David Perlmutter, the connection is WINE!

Behind the Green Door-Negev Brewery

Negev Brewery

Hidden away in the sleepy industrial zone of the Southern city of Kiryat Gat I encountered this Green Door at the end of a dead end street that is otherwise deserted.

Entrance to Negev Brewery

I came here to see Inga at work. Inga is a forty-year old German, big and noisy as well as hard to please if everything isn’t just right.

Inga

Inga is a mechanical wonder, a fully mechanical beer-bottling machine that needs to be greased more than a battle tank in order to work. Inga needs hours of set-up before going to work and is a real pleasure to see when everything is right.

Gilad Dror

And once Inga is ready, bottling is beauty in motion!

Negev Brewery bottling line

Negev Brewery, one of Israel’s leading microbreweries, bought Inga used in Germany mostly because of the low cost, but also due to her allure. Negev Brewery opened it’s current facility in 2010, but its history begins in far away Alaska. In the early 2000’s Yochai Kudler was on his almost obligatory post-army trip in Alaska where when not working he was introduced to home-brewing beer. Yocahi’s next stop was Colorado where he worked for a while in a local brewery to see if this is really what he wanted to do.

Yochai Kudler

Yocahi returned home to Kibbutz Orim in the Negev Desert and continued brewing beer, at first on a rather small scale for friends before expanding and founding Negev Brewery in 2009. Wanting to expand and build a modern facility, Yochai found an empty building in the industrial zone of Kiryat Gat where he opened in 2010. In the summer of 2011 Norman Premium, an Israeli importer and distributor of premium beers purchased Negev Brewery.

Today Negev Brewery is run by CEO Sagiv Karlboim, Gilad Dror and Tomer Ronen. Gilad is responsible for brewing the beer, but all three pitch in with the physical work involved in making and packaging the beer.

Sagiv Karlboim

Negev Brewery is environmentally conscious with the waste water collected to irrigate the garden which is being developed to host tastings of their wonderful beers.

Negev Brewery produces three beers: Amber Ale, Porter Alon and Passion Fruit. Like most microbreweries Negev does not filter their beers or add preservatives. This means that the beer is best when fresh and don’t think that sediment in the bottom of your glass is anything but a positive indication of unfiltered beer.

Negev Amber Ale is a nice traditional amber ale with an amber to brown hue. The flavor is fruity with malt, overall nicely balanced and a great beer for a hot Israeli summer. 5% alcohol.

Negev Porter Alon is a classic English Porter beer aged with oak chips to give it a creamy texture and rich flavor, with hints of chocolate, coffee and vanilla. The Porter Alon has a nice dark color and is my favorite. The international web site ratebeer.com rates the Negev Porter Alon as the number one beer in Israel. 5% alcohol.

Negev Passion Fruit beer is brewed with a generous amount of fresh passion fruit from a nearby farm to produce a beer rich in tropical fruit flavors. This is a special beer and quite often a favorite. 4.9% alcohol.

Negev Brewery http://www.negevbrewery.co.il/