The wine notes are listed in the order that I tasted them:

2010 Domaine Netofa – White – Score: B++
The nose on this light gold colored wine shows clean and lovely nose of green apple, peach, grapefruit, kiwi, light quince, and rich/nice loamy dirt and mineral. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and balanced with nice minerality, along with nice bright fruit that mingles well in the mouth. The finish is long and spicy with nice quince, tart green apple, grapefruit, and green tea.

2010 Binyamina Chardonnay, Reserve, Unoaked – Score: B
This wine did not show nearly as well as its 2009 sibling, the wine was flat without much to grab your attention. The nose on this straw colored wine has apple, lemon, nice mineral, bright acid, and melon. The mouth is somewhat plush and the finish has citrus to round out the wine.

2010 Binyamina Chardonnay, Reserve – Score: B+
This wine did not show nearly as well as its 2009 sibling, though not as bad as its unoaked twin. The nose on this dark straw colored wine has light oak, brioche, lemon, nice spice, light creme, and honey. The mouth is round with spice, summer fruit, and oak influence.

2011 Tulip White Tulip – Score: B++
This wine is a blend of 70% Gewurztraminer and 30% Sauvignon Blanc with the sweet and floral notes of the Gewurztraminer showing nicely with honey and guava, while the green apple and bright lemon notes from the Sauvignon Blanc blend together in a unique manner. The nose on this straw colored wine hits you with mineral, light honey, bright lemon, green apple, and guava. The mouth is nice and honeyed with light petrol, and citrus. The finish is long with both sweet lemon creme and bright lemon at the same time, along with fig, and tart notes. This is a great wine that would go well with fish or sushi.

2010 Flam Blanc (67% Sauvignon Blanc and 37% Chardonnay) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this straw colored wine is super bright and rich with pear, litchi, tart grapefruit, peach, rich slate or flint, floral notes, lemon rind, and nice citrus pulp. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and tart with more slate, lemon, pear, litchi, peach, and tart grapefruit. The mid palate has restrained yet almost bracing acid, mineral, litchi, and citrus zest. The finish is long and rich with bright acid, slate, citrus zest, and litchi. The citrus zest, litchi, pear, slate, and summer fruit linger long on the palate. The lovely mineral slate combined with the clear Chardonnay fruit is in perfect balance with the lovely Sauvignon Blanc fruit, a lovely example of restraint and Israeli terroir.

Drappier Carte D’Or Champagne (mevushal) – Score: A-
This is the second of two Drappier wines that Royal is releasing. We tasted the other one – Carte Blance and liked that one very much.The wine is a blend of the traditional Champagne grapes: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. The nose on the light gold and salmon colored wine is starts off with yeast, nice mineral, bright lemon, apple, and toast. The mouth on the medium bodied wine starts off with white peach, cherry, brioche, and a lovely mousse of small bubbles. The finish is long and tart with toast lingering.

Laurent Perrier Rose Champagne – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this pink colored wine starts with nice strawberry, lemon, raspberry, toast, and yeast. The mouth is filled with bright lemon, peach, mouth coating mousse of small bubbles, all balanced with tart acidity, berry, and toast finish.

2007 Selection Bokobsa Sancerre - Score: B+
The nose on this straw colored wine has peach, mineral, straw, green apple, bright acidity, floral notes, and gooseberry. The mouth on this light to medium-bodied is lively and round with tart lemon and an attack of ripe summer fruit. The finish lingers with mineral, straw, and a hint of fig.

2010 Carmel White Riesling, Single Vineyard, Kayoumi – Score: B+ to A-
This was not showing as well as it was when I tasted it in Israel a few months ago. The nose on this dark straw colored wine has lovely lemon, light honey, light petrol, good floral notes, mineral, and fig. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is round and mouth filling with bright and sweet summer fruit, honey, and fig.

2009 Goose Bay Viognier – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this straw colored wine is hits you with grapefruit, light floral notes, peach, apple, and honey. The mouth on the medium bodied wine is round with light oak influence and finishes with spicy and honeyed apricot, mineral, and citrus zest. A nice wine that is time to drink up.

2007 Binyamina Reserve Merlot – Score: B+
The nose on this garnet colored wine starts of with dried fruit, along with crushed herb, prune, raspberry, plum, spice, and chocolate. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is balanced with mouth coating tannin and oak. The finish is long and spicy with date, vanilla, and licorice.

2009 Binyamina Reserve Carignan – Score: A-
The nose purple to black colored wine is rich with classic black pepper notes, along with blackcurrant, black plum, blackberry, and chocolate. The mouth on this full bodied wine is focused and concentrated with date, lemon zest, integrated tannin, and spice all coming together into a massive and mouth coating delight. The finish is long and spicy with expressive espresso coffee and cedar. This is a really nice and unique Carignan.

2006 Shiloh Merlot/Shiraz, Shor – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is filled with blackberry, cassis, and black pepper. The mouth on this full bodied wine is massive, with inky structure, and mouth coating tannin that has yet to integrate, along with blackcurrant that makes the mouth feel more Shiraz than Merlot. The finish is long and lovely with black fruit, vanilla, leather, date, and chocolate.

I must say that I really enjoyed the three non-mevushal Baron de Rothschilds Haut Medoc. The toasted and almost burnt oak was very clear on all three them, but the wine was big enough to match the toast. The 2006 and 2007 are very similar in nature, both red and mineral based, while the 2008 is more black and richer.

2006 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Haut Medoc (mevushal) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine starts with heavy spice, crushed herb, mineral, bright aromas, and light chocolate. The mouth is medium-bodied with mouth coating (almost drying) and integrating tannin, raspberry, plum, currant, cloves, and spice. The finish is long and spicy with olives and graphite on the end.

2007 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Haut Medoc (mevushal) – Score: A-
The nose light garnet colored wine starts off with graphite, spice, cloves, raspberry, a hint of chocolate, and heavy toasted oak. The mouth on this full bodied wine has big mouth drying tannin that has yet to integrate, plum, and mineral. The wine has yet to start to come together, but as it does look for butterscotch. The finish is long and spicy with more toasty oak.

2008 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Haut Medoc (mevushal) – Score: A-
The nose on this light garnet colored wine starts off with lovely cinnamon and continues with chocolate, blackberry, and raspberry. The mouth on this massive and full bodied wine is crazy rich with mouth coating and almost drying tannin, crushed herb, black plum, ripe raspberry, and lemon zest all coming together slowly into a mouth filling wine. The finish is long and spicy with more tannin, chocolate, leather, and graphite.

2010 Chateau Thenac- Fleur du Perigord (mevushal) – Score: A-
The nose on this purple colored wine is expressive with ripe black fruit, blackberry, black plum, chocolate, and graphite. The mouth is rich with mouth coating and drying tannin, raspberry, nice oak, and lemon zest. The finish is long and spicy with more rich and not integrated tannin, leather, crushed herb, pepper, and cherry.

2007 Chateau Fourcas Dupre (mevushal) – Score: A-
Another French wine winner with more heavy toasted oak, plum, and graphite. The mouth is rich but approachable with more oak, raspberry, nice integrated tannin, all coming together into a nice mouthfeel. The finish is long with nice acid, crushed herb, mineral, and spice.

2007 Chateau D’Aryveyres – Score: B+
This Merlot driven wine starts with toasty oak, crushed herbs, espresso coffee, and butterscotch on the nose while progressing to a mouth of raspberry, plum, heavy tannin, currant, boysenberry, and kirsch cherry. The wine finishes up with dirt, herbal and chocolate flavors. A uniquely flavored Merlot, but not one with enough complexity to keep your attention.

2009 Herzog Chardonnay, Reserve, Russian River (mevushal) – Score: B+ to A-
This wine has always reminded me of Paula Deen as it is normally very buttery. This vintage shows off a slimmer butter profile, lemon, green apple, melon, and herb. The mouth is round and shows clear toasty oak influence, along with nice spice, and quince. The finish is long with lovely vanilla bringing up the rear.

2008 Herzog Cabernet, Reserve, Alexander Valley (mevushal) – Score: A-
The wine starts off with rich chocolate, nice oak, blackcurrant, raspberry, crushed herb, and tobacco. The mouth is rich and full with mouth coating tannin, citrus zest, blackberry, all coming together with oak influence and crushed herb. The finish is long and spicy with bramble, vanilla, and mineral. Quite a nice and reliable Cabernet that is almost always pleasing.

2007 Herzog Cabernet, Reserve, Napa Valley (mevushal) – Score: B++ to A-
Notes can be found here

2008 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Special Edition, Warnecke Vineyard Chalk Hill – Score: B+ to A-
I will admit that to many this wine is a very good one. Further, it has received far higher reviews in the past, but I cannot say the same myself, as the wine was simply not showing well. So these are the notes that I perceived and I cannot say much more than that. The nose was bright and red with chocolate, graphite, and tobacco. The mouth shows raspberry, currant, and nice mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and spicy with rich oak.

2008 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Clone Six Edition, Chalk Hill – Score: A-
The wine starts with lovely red and black fruit, raspberry, black plum, chocolate, and bramble. The mouth is rich and spicy with big mouth coating tannin, good extraction, concentrated and focused fruit, and graphite, all coming together into a lovely wine. The finish is long with spicy wood, mounds of vanilla, and mineral.

2008 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Oak Knoll, Single Vineyard – Score: A- to A
This is the second incarnation of Herzog’s Single Vineyard line of wines, and one that Joe Hurliman is truly passionate about making, as that is the wine he presides over at the pourings since the 2010 IFWF, when it was the 2007 Haystack. This is a wine that continues to impress and show well, with raspberry, blackberry, plum, chocolate, blackcurrant, and pencil shavings. The mouth is full-bodied with heavy spice, huge extraction, massive and mouth coating tannin, along with ripe but not overripe fruit, all just starting to come together into something very special. The finish is long and spicy with mounds of vanilla and chocolate.

2009 Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Veeder, Single Vineyard – Score: A-
This is the third incarnation of Herzog’s Single Vineyard line of wines, and one that Joe Hurliman is truly passionate about making, as that is the wine he presides over at the pourings since the 2010 IFWF, when it was the 2007 Haystack. The wine starts with lots of oak, followed by chocolate, blackberry, currant, and bramble. The mouth is massive, black, and full bodied with mouth coating tannin, crushed herb, raspberry, and graphite. The fruit is ripe and lays on a bed of date, mint, mineral, and vanilla. Quite a nice wine but this one may well have been a bit too overripe, but quite nice none the less.

2010 Weinstock Cellar Select Petite Sirah – Score: A-
The wine starts with rich coffee, then flows into blueberry, boysenberry, citrus, floral notes, and bing cherry. The mouth hits you with massive mouth coating tannin that is just starting to integrate, along with nice extraction, good oak, all comes together into a truly enjoyable mouth. The wine is expressive but balanced given the good fruit and structure. The finish is long with leather, spice, and coffee. Get this and enjoy it for the next few years.

2008 Weinstock Cellar Select Cabernet, Napa Valley – Score: B+ to A-
The wine starts off with blackberry, ripe plum, crushed herb, and graphite. The mouth is full with cassis, not yet integrating tannin, heavy toasted oak, and extraction. The finish is rich with chocolate, mineral, black fruit, and vanilla.

2007 Carmel Cabernet Sauvignon, Single Vineyard, Kayoumi – Score: A-
This may well be the first Kayoumi Cabernet that I really liked, I have always been impressed by the Kayoumi Shiraz. The wine starts off with a rich black nose, along with blackberry, cassis, chocolate, graphite, and hints of lovely green notes. The mouth is full bodied, layered and rich with massive mouth coating tannin, nice extraction, ripe date, crushed herbs, and cedar that brings the entire package together. The finish is long with black fruit and vanilla. A prototypical Cabernet Sauvignon styled wine with oak constraint – quite lovely.

2007 Carmel Shiraz, Single Vineyard, Kayoumi – Score: A-
This is another incarnation of the richly extracted and successful Shiraz wines that Carmel has been producing from the killer vineyard. The wine starts off with mortar full of crushed black pepper, along with crazy ripe nose of blackberry, black plum, insane date notes, and tobacco. The mouth is massive and sweet with mouth coating tannin, heavy toasted oak, and black fruit creating a complex and attention grabbing wine. The finish is long and spicy with more tannin, chocolate, nice acid, and spice.

2007 Yatir Forest – Score: A- to A
This is the flagship wine from Yatir and one of the very best wines made in Israel. This vintage keeps the name and reputation alive with a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 36% Petit Verdot and 7% each of Malbec and Merlot, all aged in oak for 16 months causing an influence of cedar and heavy extraction. The wine hits you hard with tobacco, along with sweet date, blackberry, blackcurrant, cassis, chocolate, dirt, and alcohol. The mouth shows heavy cedar, more extraction, crushed herb, along with a concentration of focused black fruit, and impressive balance for such a big wine, that brings the entire package together quite nicely. The finish is long with vanilla, olives, and nice spice.

2007 Yatir Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: A-
This is a wine that was not initially exported to the US, I am so happy that this has been rectified as the wine is good example of ripe fruit Cabernet that is not so new-world that dates take over the wine. The wine starts off with nice mineral and graphite aromas, followed by classic Cabernet aromas of blackberry and cassis. The mouth is rich and layered with concentrated and ripe and sweet black fruit, raspberry, and black plum. The finish is long and sweet with chocolate, ripe fruit, all coming together into a richly black finish with nice mineral.

2009 Psagot Merlot – Score: A-
The wine starts with date, followed by rich blackberry, plum, raspberry, and tobacco. The mouth is full with mouth coating tannin, ripe fruit, crushed herb, all coming together nicely. The finish is long with nice fruit, heavy tobacco, lots of cedar, black pepper, and spice.

2009 Psagot Edom – Score: A-
The wine is a Bordeaux blend of 61% Cabernet, 17% Cabernet Franc, 15% Merlot and 7% Petite Verdot. The wine is aromatic with crushed herbs, black cherry, candied raspbery, date, nice chocolate, and cedar. The mouth is full bodied and layered with soft mouth coating and integrating tannin, along with good extraction. The finish is long with nice fruit and vanilla.

2006 Elvi Wines EL26 – Score: A-
This wine is a lovely blend of 35% Grenache, 35% Syrah, and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. It starts with an aromatic nose of chocolate, along with ripe blackberry, black pepper, raspberry, and plum. The mouth is full and concentrated with mouth coating tannin, nice dirt, graphite, ripe fruit, with spicy wood all coming together into a nice mouth. Finish is long with spice and mineral. This is a massive and extracted wine with ripe fruit and one that balances well with the oak and spice.

2010 Capcanes Flor de Flor – Score: A- to A
This is a wine that only recently became kosher, a cuvee of the winery’s Cabrida wine. The wine is made entirely from old vine Grenache that are said to be 80 to 1110 years old. Capcanes did not release a 2008 or 2009 vintage of this wine, as the quality was not good enough to make a single varietal wine from them. The 2007 vintage was lovely and still intensely rich with massive tannin and toasty oak. The 2010 vintage is equally massive with toasty and semi-charred oak.

The nose on this garnet colored wine is explosive with rich espresso coffee, heavy burnt toast, raspberry, candied cranberry, and plum. The mouth on this rich and layered wine starts with a nice concentration of of red candied fruit, massive mouth coating tannin, crushed herbs, and spice that all leads into a mouth that makes you stand up and take notice. The finish is long and spicy with more spice, nice mineral, dirt, not yet integrated tannin, and olives. This is a wine that is not even starting to be accessible, but one that should have most of its components coming together in a year or so.

2006 Barkan Superieur Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: A-
This is the flagship wine for Barkan, the wine is composed of a selection from the the best individual barrels that were sourced from three vineyards in the Upper Galil and the Golan Heights. They then underwent an additional period of aging in new oak barrels to further enhance the wine’s structure. The nose on this dark garnet colored wine hits hard with crushed herb aromas, followed by date, tons of cedar, blackberry, black plum, and chocolate. The mouth is full bodied, layered and rich with soft and accessible mouth coating tannin that are still integrating and nice ripe fruit. The finish is long and balanced with nice mineral notes along with leather, and vanilla.

2007 Barkan Cabernet Sauvignon, Altitude Series 412+, Reserve – Score: A-
I found the entire 2007 vintage of the altitude series was nice, with the 624+ label being the best one. The series is numbered based on the elevation of the vineyard in meters, in anticipation that the wines will show differently because of that.
The nose is clean with good notes of raspberry, currant, black plum, and mineral. The mouth is big but with restrained oak influence, nieblack fruit, integrated mouth coating tannin, that helpsto bring the wine together. The finish is long and spicy with chocoolate and date.

2007 Barkan Cabernet Sauvignon, Altitude Series 624+, Reserve – Score: A- to A
I found the entire 2007 vintage of the altitude series was nice, with the 624+ label being the best one. The series is numbered based on the elevation of the vineyard in meters, in anticipation that the wines will show differently because of that.
The nose hits you over the head with extremely ripe and expressive classic Cabernet fruit. Starting with blackberry, black plum, cassis, heavy notes of date, light graphite,and cedar. The mouth is massive and moiuth coating with clear influence from the wood and dark fruit coming together in alovely manner. The fruit is concentrated and focused while also being mouth filling and ripe. The finish is long with hints of tobacco and vanilla. This is a rich and expresive wine in both the nose and mouth and one worth finding.

2007 Barkan Cabernet Sauvignon, Altitude Series 720+, Reserve – Score: A-
I found the entire 2007 vintage of the altitude series was nice, with the 624+ label being the best one. The series is numbered based on the elevation of the vineyard in meters, in anticipation that the wines will show differently because of that.
This wine was clearly different from its two siblings. It showed candied fruit, red raspberry, and other unique characteristics. The nose is subdued with raspberry, blackberry, and plum. The mouth is expressive with layers of candied cherry, raspberry, and cassis that are wrapped up nicely with nice integrating tannin and sweet cedar. The finish is long and spicy with chocolate and vanilla lingering nicely.

2006 Segal Argaman, Dovev, Rechasim – Score: B++
Rehasim is Segal’s label for single vineyard wines from the Merom Hagalil/ Upper Galilee region, with Dovev being the vineyard’s name. Argaman, which means ‘deep purple’ in Hebrew, was first developed by Professor Roy Spiegel of the Volcani Institute of Agriculture. It is a cross between Carignan and the Portuguese grape Souzao. The grape is still not good enough for single varietal wines, even after limiting the grapes’ vivacious yield.
The nose starts with raspberry, crushed herb, blackberry,black cherry, and date. The mouth is full with heavy tannin, candied fruit, and nice cedar to round out the mouth. The finish is long with chocolate and red fruit lingering.

2006 Binyamina Cave – Score: A-
The wine is a classic Bordeaux blend of 65% Cab, 33% Merlot, and 2% Petite Verdot. The nose starts off with heavy date from overripe fruit, blackberry, cassis, and raspberry. The mouth is rich with concentrated and focused black fruit, black plum, heavy and mouth coating tannin, nice extraction, all coming togther into a lovely mouthfeel. The finish is long and spicy with chocolate, mounds of vanilla, and crushed herb.

2006 Binyamina Aquamarine, Choshen – Score: A-
The nose explodes with heavy date, blackberry, black plum, ang nice graphite. The mouth is rich and layered with lovely cedar, spicy wood and clear oak influence that rounds out the mouth with lovely ripe black fruit, and mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and spicy with chocolate, vanilla, and tobacco lingering long on the palate.

2006 Binyamina Sapphire, Choshen – Score: A-
The unique blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, and Merlot is lovely, and is becoming a more common blend than one would think. The blend is not a common Bordeaux blend, as Shiraz is not a Bordeaux grape,but the blend is becoming more and more common in Israel.
The nose starts off with rich black pepper, raspberry, date, candied fruit, and crushed herb. The mouth carries the candied fruit with lovely mouth coating tannin, nice cedar, blackberry, and bramble that rounds the mouth. The finish is long and inky with chocolate, cassis, tobacco, and vanilla.

2007 Castel Grand Vin – Score: A-
This wine is a classic Bordeaux blend with 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot,and 5% Petite Verdot. The nose on this purple colored wine is rich with toasty oak, blackberry, cassis, plum, earthiness, crushed herbs, and raspberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is massive and richly extracted with massive mouth coating tannin, black fruit, blackcurrant, toasty oak, and nice earth notes, all coming together in a very harmonious manner. The finish is long and spicy with almost mouth drying tannin, chocolate, graphite, mint, and garrigue.

As usual there are two other options. The first is the VIP session where you will be able to taste many Teperberg wines along with Chief Winemaker Shiki Rauchberger of Teperberg Winery. You will also get to taste a few special wines that Costas finds in his or the Gotham’s private collection.

This is the event to not miss, so add it to your calendar and show up when you can. Right now JDeal has a deal going on for the lowest price ticket – half off! For the rest of the tickets – go to gotham’s site.

For eight years Gotham Wines brought you the ONLY comprehensive wine tasting of over 300 wines that offer a panoramic view ofKosher wines in today’s market.

Sample amazing wines from every major vineyard from Israel , France , Italy , Spain , SouthAmerica , Argentina , New Zealand , Australia , UnitedStates and more at this annual wine Extravaganza.

Taste and enjoy wines from wineries such as: Adar, Aldaz, Alexander, Baron Herzog, Barkan, Bartenura, Binyamina, Borgo Real, Bravdo Capcanes, Carmel, Casa Da Corsa, Castell D’Olerodola, Chosen, Cordovero, Covenant, Dalton, De Elvi, Domaine du Castel, Dovev, Drappier, Efrat, Ella Valley Vineyards, En Fuego, Five Stones, Flechas, Florenza, Gabriele, Gamla, Goose Bay, Guillermo, Gush Etzion, Harkham, Joseph River, K Wines, Kinneret, Lan Zur, Laurent Perrier, Luis de Sacy, Mony, Noah, Notte Italiana, Odem Mountain, D’Owyers, Or Haganuz, Pacifica, Psagot, Ramon, Rashi, Recanati, Segals, Shiloh, Tabor, Teal Lake, Teperberg, The Cave, Tierra Salvaje, Tishbi, Tzora, Vignobles David, Weinstock, Yatir, Yogev exciting new wineries from France and many many more.

Schedule of EVENTS

VIP Tasting: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Tickets available on line only! $60.00 per (pay on Gotham’s site)

(VIP tickets entitles attendees to the entire event)

Part1: Join Chief Winemaker Shiki Rauchberger of Teperberg Winery for a wine tasting showcasing wines from his iconic winery. The wines are:

Reserve Blend 2009 – Un-released magnum

Premium 2009- Un-released 750ml

Malbec 2009 750ml

Cabernet Franc Reserve 2010- barrel samples

Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2007-2008-2009 750ml

Port 2010 750ml

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Early Admittance: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

Tickets available on line only! $40.00 per (pay on Gotham’s site)

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Standard Tickets: 3:00pm – 6:00pm

Tickets available on JDeal – link above

For all the hard core wine lovers out there, this is the time and the place to taste or simply enjoy some of the best kosher wines in today’s market.

I will be writing up my impressions on both wineries in due time, but for now I wanted to talk about the wine I tasted over Shabbos. I took/borrowed four half bottles from our tasting of Agua Dulce wines and they were impressive overall. I was privy to things that I do not wish to discuss but also somewhat stunted my enthusiasm for a couple of the wines, but issues that I know Craig will work out before the wines are released to the public. Craig joined the winery in 2010 and all wines from that time on were made kosher.

I took home a Cabernet that I must say, I was not expecting from the vineyards of this winery. The 90 acres of Agua Dulce’s vineyards are planted in desert plains at an elevation of 2000 feet. The winter days can be downright cold and the summer days can warm up a bit, but not to a point of Napa or the Central Coast. Gabe, who tasted the wines with us, said that the terroir of this vineyard is the black pepper that is obvious within all of its wines. There are many small black pepper bushes around, but that may well be an effect of the land and not the cause. The vineyard is a cold weather vineyard and one of the outcomes can be low ripeness, during cold summers, like the past two years. Under ripe fruit can sometimes shows green notes that in the hand of a professional like Craig can sometimes mean a masterpiece.

The Cabernet was luscious, rich, with big fruit and green notes that almost forces you to take notice of them, with a long linger of obvious and classic bell pepper. All together the wine was really lovely. I truly enjoyed the wine along with a bottle of Cabernet from 2011 along with a bottle of Syrah, Zinfandel, and the fore mentioned Cabernet from 2010. The 2011 Cab is quite rich and has more weight because of the higher alcohol, but for now the 2010 shines brightest. The other two wines from 2010, the Syrah and Zinfandel are both quite impressive, but the Syrah is the clear winner of those two and very close, if not exactly even with, to the 2010 Cabernet. I will report back on the notes of the other wines, as they did not show as well a day later, which is totally reasonable. The crazy thing is that the 2010 Cabernet was as good if not better and totally scoreable for the place it was tasted (my home), so that is the wine I will note below. PLEASE look forward to more notes and a complete write-up on the Agua Dulce and Shirah wines that we enjoyed this past week, coming soon to this blog soon.

PLEASE NOTE: The wines I tatsed through, the 2010 and 2011 wines from Agua Dolce, are kosher, but are not yet available for purchase. These were early and further along barrel samples and will not be ready for prime time, for some time yet. That said, the wines are showing nicely and I look forward to tasting the line again, when they are closer to or already bottled.

To pair with the Agua Dulce wines we made some sick and lovely flanken short ribs (ribs cut against the bone, not with it) that we bought at the new kosher market (Pars Market) here in San Jose. We have already spoken a few times about what short ribs are versus flanken versus English cut ribs. No matter the name, the product and the way to cook it is the same, simple – SLOW AND LOW! I am almost done with my cache of bad whiskey (yes we covered this in the past), but no matter the product, as long as it has a hickory or oak taste the whiskey will be a good medium to slow cook your ribs. Why? Because hickory or oak melds so well with brown sugar and spices to make a killer, yet simple, braise for the ribs. Also, though our old recipe calls for browning each and every riblet, it can be very tiring, and can take a ton of time. Instead, I saw a new episode of America’s Test Kitchen and in it they “roasted” the riblets in the oven and the riblets were nicely browned and their fat was rendered, thereby assuring that the slow cook braise will comprise more of sweet alcohol goodness and less of nasty grease.

To complete the meal we made some simple long grain Basmati brown rice and a fresh green salad.

I want to thank Craig Winchell and Gabe Weiss for taking the time to meet with us and share their wonderful wines with us. The wine note for the 2010 Cabernet is below:

2010 Agua Dulce Cabernet Sauvignon (Barrel Sample) – Score: (A- may go higher or lower when bottled)
The nose on this dark purple colored wine is filled with candied fruit, nice oak, toast, chocolate, blackberry, rich black pepper, and cassis. Over time the wine shows some black plum, graphite, and bell pepper. The mouth on this full bodied wine starts with large mouth coating tannin, lots of black fruit, lovely oak, and nice extraction that comes together into a rich and lasting mouth. The finish is long and spicy with black plum, cassis, more chocolate, graphite, and bell pepper. As the wine opens it shows a concentrated and mouth filling wine with lovely cherry cola, blackcurrant, bell pepper in the mouth and finish, cloves, lovely vanilla, and eucalyptus. This is a lovely wine that needs time to open but once this settles down it will be quite an impressive wine and one that you should seek out.

Four Gates Winery welcome sign and road up

I must start this posting by saying, I could not believe that I have waited this long to write an update to my previous postings on the Four Gates Winery. I did post about the time I crashed the Alice Feiring visit to Four Gates, which is almost fully documented in the last chapter of her new book: Naked Wine, more on that when I do my write up on the book. I also posted many wine notes along the way. Still the last real post I did on my friend’s winery is almost 4 years ago! Are you kidding me?

Once again, I was driving up this time to see Benyamin Cantz, the winemaker, vineyard manager, and Numero Uno of Four Gates Winery, in the rolling hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. It was a beautiful winter day in February that felt like a spring day in Northern California, another lovely reason to live in NorCal. The drive to the winery winds through the twisting roads that crest and wrap around the Santa Cruz Mountains. By the time you arrive at the address of the winery, you will notice a Bruchim Habaim (translated loosely to mean blessed be those who are arriving) sign to the left and a driveway in front of you. As you look at the driveway that will take you to the top of the hill upon which the winery is perched, the thoughts of stairway to heaven cannot help but play in your head! The drive up the hill to the winery used to be a dirt road long ago, and with all the switchbacks and near vertical climbs, it dumbfounds me how Binyamin (and many others who lived on the hilltop) ever drove up and down that mountainside many times a day. Since then, the road has been paved and now by comparison, it feels like a highway. Once you have circumnavigated the circuitous drive to the top, the vineyard will be visible flanking the driveway from both the right and the left. The larger block of vines is on the right, but the Pinot and part of the Chardonnay are on the left.

The Four Gates Winery is owned, operated, run, and managed by a single man – Binyamin Cantz. He is the chief, the winemaker, along with being the CEO, and sole vineyard manager. Parenthetically, he is a man I am proud to call a friend and I state it here for full disclosure. He has people help him every so often but he is really the sole proprietor of Four Gates Winery. Binyamin has been making wine for some 30 years now, more as a home winemaker to start, but that turned into a real passion for wine some 20 years ago, when he planted the vineyard. The vineyard is planted on a lovely hillside with views (far away views) of the Pacific Ocean and parts of Santa Cruz. In 1997 he released his inaugural kosher vintage, which was a success, and to this day, the 1997 Merlot is still quite lovely, but growing long on the tooth.

I met Binyamin in his house where he was writing invoices for the new wines he is shipping out to his customers. In the world of wine clubs, Twitter, and Facebook, it is so refreshing (to me) to see a human take pen to paper to write an invoice! To say Benyamin is a renaissance man would be an understatement. He is an art major, a fantastic calligrapher, a great wine maker, a man with a vast knowledge of many things art and architecture related, and a man who can handle things ranging from fences to wells to piping, and anything else that the hilltop needs mending! Though, for the longest time he shied from computers and it took me forever to get him to buy a computer. Now he replies with email and keeps the website up to date with wine notes and thoughts – very cool.

Whenever, I am on up on the hill I cannot help but think back to the many times that the winery setting turns magical, as it did when I was at the shabbaton two years ago. It is also a lovely place to spend shabbos in quiet solitude. The hilltop is where a few other families live, but it is always quiet and demur, a very different setting than the hustle and bustle of the city down below. The house is a rustic home rebuilt recently with exposed roof beams and original wood floors. This same room has held 40-50 people, and it never ceases to amaze me how he can find the time to tend to his winery and do all the other things he does for the Santa Cruz community.

On another aside, Four Gates is a kosher winery that grows its own organic grapes. He has been making kosher wine from the very start, when in 1997 there was not much kosher wine out there. Sure, there was Hagafen Winery, Herzog Winery (not yet in its cool new digs), and Gan Eden Winery (which has since gone away), but no one else was making kosher wine from organic grapes back then in California or Israel, from what I can remember.

We walked over to the winery building to take some pictures and taste through the newly available wines, along with the wines that are aging in barrels. Binyamin built his winery with his own hands and it is quite an ingenious layout. The winery is built on a hillside with no direct exposure for the sun, as large mature trees surround it. The winery building has two floors. The top floor is where the crush and press occur for the wines and where the fermentation occurs for the red wines, the Chardonnay is fermented in barrels below (sur lie). It is also used for bottle labeling after they are filled downstairs, and is a general storage for previous year vintages. The ground floor is dug into the hillside and is cool in the hot summer days. This is the perfect place to let sleeping wine lie, and as such, it is the winery’s barrel room. After crush or press, Binyamin funnels the wine to the barrel room via gravity into the stainless steel settling tank. From there it can be pumped into any of the barrels or smaller tanks, for whatever the situation calls for. Once the particular varietal is finished living in its woodsy confines, the wine is blended in the tank before bottling.

It is impossible to talk about wine without talking about the grapes and the vineyard. At the time of this post, the vineyard is still being pruned and in need of many longer wet days. If you get the chance to meet Benyamin, you will see a man who is self deprecating, humble, and yet more than capable of creating a wine that will stir you to your core. This man never started off desiring to create wine, he fell into it, or maybe he was driven to it by a higher order. When Benyamin came to the hilltop, it was a quiet location in 1971, when he came to manage the area for his professor of art history – the late Mary Holmes. When he was on the hilltop mending fences, fixing buildings and the sort, there was another tenant that was growing marijuana, who had planted Chardonnay grapes, as cover crop! Benyamin started tending to the vines, and before he knew it, he was planting 3.5 acres of Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Franc vines. It was a serious leap of faith that turned out to be a blessing for the many fans of his wines.

Ask a winemaker and he will tell you that his job is 70% living in the vineyards, 20% working the wines, and 10% public relations. The numbers are not hard and fast rules, but the vast majority of the time is spent in the vineyards, even if they do not own the vines. Why? Because if the vineyard produces fruit that is not inline with the winemaker’s vision, then the wine itself will not be what the winemaker was hoping for. Simply said, it all starts in the vineyard and then you pray it ends well in the winery. Four Gates Winery is one of those truly rare places where the winemaker is the vineyard manager – the visions are fused into a single minded individual, whose passion and knowledge is focused on creating the best kosher wine possible, using organic grapes. Binyamin explains that he is one of the few kosher wineries in the world that grow his grapes organically, though that has grown to many more wineries in recent time. The vineyard is CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) certified. Also, the vines are dry farmed which creates fruit flavors that are bursting in the mouth. The objective is to maximize the sunlight on his grapes, while also keeping steadfast to the grape’s true nature. The vineyard is in the Santa Cruz Mountains at an elevation of 660 feet, where temperatures do not reach high extremes like in Lodi and Napa. Further, the evenings are quite cool in the summer, and fog is a common sight in the early morning or late evenings, this temperature variation helps to increase the fruit’s flavor. The vineyard is not tilled and is dry farmed which forces the vines to dig deep for their water.

Dry farming has many added benefits, one of which is that it creates wines that are intensely acidic and low in pH. The wines are very different from other wines on the market, which lack acidity and brightness. The first time you taste a Four Gates Wine the acidity can hit you and make you take notice. It is for this reason that many of Benyamin wines need to be held back until some of the acidity has melded with the wine’s other components, that then make for intensely enjoyable and rich wines. The rich acidity allows the wine to seemingly age for a longer period of time. I have enjoyed many Chardonnays from 1996 that have been spectacular, rich with butter, round in the mouth, butterscotch, and still tart fruit that makes you wonder why others do not make wine like this?

With all the noise and backlash surrounding natural wines, you might think it is a complicated and difficult subject. Truly, natural or naked wine, as Alice Feiring calls it, is simply wine that has no extra additives. In comparison, Cantz uses yeast, which is clearly a no-no in the natural wine world, of course he sprays the vines to hold back mold during the summer, and he inoculates the wine for alcoholic fermentation, but that is about it. At bottling time, Benyamin will throw in a bit of sulfur to keep the wine fresh as it starts its new journey in the bottle, but if you take a quick survey of the winery, there is little else one can find that could be added to wine. The idea is truly simple; let the natural fruit talk for itself. The ultimate outcome is for the wine to present itself in the bottle in the manner that Cantz envisioned when tending to his vines. I will say that the newest releases are a bit more rich and extracted, and that will be noticeable in the notes below. Still they are well balanced and terroir driven wines, with nice mineral and earth notes.

Not all his wines are sourced or estate bottled from his vineyard, and those are clearly labeled of course. Sometimes he sources grapes from other areas within the Santa Cruz Mountains or further afar. Still, the wines are balanced with good acidity, a trademark of his wines, and a feature that is missing in many other kosher wines out there.

So there you have it!  As, I was leaving I helped Benyamin pack up some of the wine, and I took some pictures of sunset with the ocean in the background, stunning! Here is hoping that you get a chance to taste his wines created with a single vision from a true vigneron, who builds terroir driven wines for us all to enjoy.

The wine notes below are for the wines that are currently available and for some older wines that one may still have in their cellar:

2009 Four Gates Chardonnay - Score: B++ to A
The nose on this dark straw wine is unique. If I had been told it was a viognier, I would have believed them. The nose is rich with bright quince, fig, petrol, green apple, forest floor, slight honey, bright citrus, and floral aromas. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is rich and mouth filling with ripe melon, fruit from the nose, and oak that melds into a lovely mouthfeel. The finish is long and spicy with nice petrol, butterscotch, balancing honey, spice, summer fruit, citrus, and toasty oak. The wine is can power through most spicy foods, and roasted fowl. It is a unique wine that I hope to try again and watch evolve. Drink by 2015.

2009 Four Gates Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: A- to A
The fruit for this lovely old-world Cabernet comes from Betchart Vineyard on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I have been able to watch this progress from press to bottling, and it has gone from a rich red fruit wine, to a hybrid rich old-world wine with big red fruit along with some lovely black fruit. A unique Cabernet that is rich, extracted, balanced, yet oak influenced in a lovely manner, this is not a big black new-world Cabernet! The nose on this purple to black colored wine is screaming with cloves, graphite, oak, kirsch cherry, raspberry, blackberry, red fruit, tobacco, roasted herbs, and anise. The mouth on the medium to full-bodied wine is super rich, extracted, and concentrated, with nice fruit, spice, big round and mouth coating tannin, and lovely oak that makes for a rich and spicy mouthfeel. The finish is long, lovely, and spicy with more tannin, chocolate, tobacco, cinnamon, red fruit, more spice, and a nice hit of vanilla. The chocolate, oak, cloves, herbs, red fruit, and vanilla linger long. Best in a year and drink by 2016 or 2017.

2007 Four Gates Cabernet Franc – Score: A- to A
The nose on this dark purple wine is hopping with oak, cherry, raspberry, plum, blackcurrant, lovely herb, strawberry, floral notes, lovely leafy tobacco, green notes that come out after some time, and expressive baker’s chocolate. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is highly structured, concentrated, and extracted with oak influence, that mingles nicely with mouth coating tannin and rich red fruit, into an expressive and surprising mouthfeel for a Cabernet Franc from Four Gates. This is highly enjoyable now and one that will become even lovelier in the future. The finish is long with nice chocolate, fruit, mounds of vanilla, oak, tobacco, spice, and light leather. This is a wine that can also use a few hours of air, but it is still lovely out of the bottle and one that should be checked every hour or so after you open it. Get some of this before it all but disappears. This may well be the best kosher Cabernet Franc I have had, once it has sufficiently opened. Drink by 2016.

2007 Four Gates Merlot – Score: A-
The nose on this massive wine is screaming with blackberry, black plum, ripe raspberry, herbaceous, bramble/minerality, toasty oak, and coffee. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine, is gripping with tannins, dark fruit and minerality that come together into a nice round mouth. The finish is super long with nice red and black fruit that is topped with rich coffee balancing acid and oak. This is a structured and massive wine that will also open up over time. For now, open it and taste the wine, then watch it grow before your eyes. If that is too complicated, stick with tasting it out of the bottle, and then again after a few hours of air. Drink by 2016.

2009 Four Gates Pinot Noir – Score: A-
The 2009 vintage for California Pinot Noir may well be the best vintage in many years, even topping the great 2007 vintage. Well, this vintage from Four Gates is no slouch either, with the wine showing more extraction and rich fruit than normally, but balanced nicely with core acidity, that has always been the true trademark of Benyamin’s wines. The nose on this dark ruby colored wine does change a bit in the glass, it starts with raspberry, black cherry, boysenberry, blackberry, herb, and oak. As the wine opens, the unique boysenberry and blackberry give way to Four Gates Pinot trademarks of rich kirsch cherry and chicken cherry cola. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is richer than the last few Four Gates Pinot Noir. This wine is rich and round with mouth coating tannin, along with a layered attack of fruit, and rich extraction that is just now melding nicely with spicy oak. The finish is rich with ripe fruit from the nose, along with more tannin, extraction and mounds of black pepper that makes for a spicy and herbaceous finish. Drink by 2016.

2009 Four Gates Syrah – Score: A- to A
This is one of those unique Syrah wines out there, with lovely blueberry, rich oak, nice bright fruit, and nice herbaceous qualities. The nose on the vibrant dark purple colored wine is redolent with rich oak, tobacco, citrus rind, blueberry, blackberry, black plum, blackcurrant, chocolate, and herb. The mouth on this rich and full-bodied wine is concentrated, and layered and massive with mouth coating tannin, oak extraction, along with blue and black fruit, inky and mineral structure, and lovely tangy wood all coming together into a crazy big mouthfeel. The finish is long, rich, and spicy, yet perfectly balanced with big black fruit, citrus, leafy tobacco, leather, herb, and nice vanilla. Drink by 2016 or later.

2008 Four Gates Chardonnay – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this wine is slow out of the gate. However with time it shows off three lives. Initially it is stunted with oak and heat. With a bit more air it shows off nice oak, citrus, peach, apricot, sweet grass, toasty almonds, and butterscotch. Finally, with a few hours of air the wine turns more tropical in nature with lychee, grapefruit, lemon, sweet oak, ripe peach, and sweet grass. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine has toasty oak, peach, green apple. With time it shows melon, grapefruit, lychee, and green apple. The finish is long with butterscotch, spicy oak, green apple, orange peel, and spice. This wine clearly changes over time and is at its peak about three to four hours after opening.

N.V. Four Gates Soirée – Score: A-
This is another wine from Four Gates that needs abundant amounts of air to see its true potential come out to play. This wine starts off with, a Four Gates and Santa Cruz flavor, chicken cherry cola, raspberry, sweet oak, prune/plum, herbaceous, mint, and vanilla. With time, this wine comes out to play with a more expressive nose with deep floral and mineral notes. The mouth of this medium to full-bodied wine has spicy and rich oak, playful tannins, all packaged into a layered and structured wine with red fruit dominating. The finish is super long and layered with oak, coffee, plum, and vanilla. With more time the mouth fills out as the tannins calm down and round out the mouth, along with rich oak, black cherry, raspberry, plum, dates, and herbs. The finish is super long with more plum, spice, rich oak, and coffee. This wine starts off quiet and builds with time, until it hits its stride with ripe red fruit, structure, mouth feel, lovely tannins, and bracing acid that keeps the wine balanced yet striking. This is a wine that needs time. Open it and taste, then let it sit for two hours and taste again, and then try it another three hours later and see what you get.

N.V. Four Gates Pinot Noir - Score: A-
The nose on this light purple colored wine is bursting with Chicken Cherry Cola, raspberry, plum, and mint. The mouth on this medium-bodied wine is a concentrated attack of red fruit, lovely acidity, along with not yet integrated tannins that play nicely with the wine and the bright fruit. This wine has wonderful bone structure, tannin, and oak, and over time will fill out a bit more, as the tannins integrate. The finish is super long with oak, nice acid, plum, and kirche cherry. This is not an over oaked wine in any way, and that is clear from my notes, still the oak is present in places and works well when it does peek out from under the fruit haze.

2006 Four Gates Frere Robaire – Score: A- to A
This wine is still young and needs time, but one worth the effort. To start the wine has black notes of blackberry, dark plum, rich oak, chocolate, with hints of orange and vanilla. The nose is subtle yet rich. The mouth of this full-bodied wine is a tight wine to start with dark plum, not yet integrated tannins, oak, and fruit all waiting to get into a long dance. The finish is super long and lingering with tannin, chocolate, cherry, and plum. After more time the wine wakes up and explodes with heavy tannin and more bright red fruit, over time the wine returns to its roots with a super rich mouth feel, chocolate, and ripe red and black fruit.

2003 Four Gates Merlot – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this electric blue/purple colored wine is vibrant and expressive with plum, bramble, chocolate, oak, raspberry, crushed herbs, and date. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is expressive likes its nose, from its fruit and acidity, over time it becomes full in the mouth, with slowly integrating tannin, acidity, raspberry, ripe plum, and spice. The finish is super spicy and long with acidity, powerful ripe plum, chocolate, long and luxurious finish with dates and vanilla.

N.V. Four Gates Merlot – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is slightly muted now from bottle shock with black cherry, raspberry, dark plum, oak, dark chocolate, spice, and tobacco. The mouth on this medium to full-bodied wine is ripe and soft in the mouth with ripe black fruit soft tannins, and oak. The finish is long, spicy, and extracted with oak, chocolate, black plum, tobacco, and lovely tannins. This is a more ripe, black and fuller wine than the 2003 Merlot. It has less astringency, more balanced, and a bit fuller, while also showing nice fruit and extraction.

Well 2011 has come and gone and I am finally getting the chance to write up the 2011 International Food and Wine Festival (IFWF) that was held at the Herzog winery in Oxnard. In some ways it was the best ever and in some ways it was not. To start, 2011 was the fourth incarnation of this event and each time it has been well worth the trip. This past year’s event, in many ways, was the best. The food, as usual, was fantastic! The food is catered by Chef Todd Aarons, the head chef of the Tierra Sur, the world-class restaurant that is in the Herzog Winery. As usual, the food that Mr. Aarons and his staff prepare the event is bite size or a bit larger format, food that easily fits on a small plate. Essentially, think of them as normal or slightly large tapas, depending upon the food in question. As usual, the tapas were just divine, and as usual I always get the scarps. I say that because, I want to finish tasting the wines before I eat the awesome food, which would seriously inhibit my ability to write coherent wine notes. Of course, there is never a lack of good wines to taste, so essentially, I always eat whatever is left over as they are winding up the food and wine service. It is a mad rush to get some pictures and eat some food – truly sad, and totally my fault!

This past year’s event was even larger than its predecessors. As usual, the Herzog winery was fully decked out and expanded in the back by adding on a few heated tents. Normally, the French and Israeli wines were poured from the back room and the tent, behind the back room, which itself abuts to the parking lot behind it. This past year, they expanded further by pouring only Israeli wines from the entire back areas, moving Capcanes to the Spanish and Italian section, and moving all the French wines to its own room – the Herzog Situation or Conference room, which is off to the right from the entrance, essentially on the other side of the building. Some may look at that and say they relegated the French wines to the “basement”, but the way I see it, Royal has SO MANY wines to show off from its portfolio, and only so much room in the winery that they chose the best holistic group they could that would not look too small or take up too much room, in the conference room, and that fell to the French wines.

This was the first of the, not so good points, and that was the lack of communication around this change of venue for the French wines! I totally understand the complexity of it, and there was signage. However, given the drastic change that was in affect, a bit more information for some would have been good. I found myself telling many people about the new location for French wines, that they thought were AWOL for 2011. That said, I think this will not be an issue in 2012, as the event will be moving from Oxnard and the Herzog Winery to LA at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Century Plaza!

Of course, with all the room taken up by wines and wonderful food, there still needs to be place for the humans and this was issue number two, which again will be fixed in 2012. That being, there was very little room to move about as the evening moved on. I found myself having to find a corner to just write notes, let alone not to feel claustrophobic, which is a problem I do not normally exhibit. That said, I hope that the new venue will allow the event to stretch its wings and soar to higher heights with more space and more opportunities to showcase its wonderful food and wines.

I truly believe that 2011, was the first year where the wines totally out shone the food, excepting for 2008, when the French wines were truly off the hizzy. This is not in anyway a slight to Aaron’s food, rather it is a compliment to Royal wine portfolio, that has now reached world class, and something I am sure they are extremely proud of. I do not need to repeat the story of Herzog, which can be found in the middle of last year’s post, as that would be just repeating myself. I just hope you read this and it grabs you enough to buy some tickets that are going really fast for the 2012 version of the International Food and Wine Festival which will be happening in LA this year – enjoy the notes. I need to add my personal thank you to the entire Royal and Herzog staff for putting together such a great show, and much luck on your new 2012 event!

The wine notes follow below, in the order they were tasted:

2007 Domaine l’OrDeLine Chateauneuf du Pape – Score: B+ to A-
Would love to know how Herzog pulled this one off, and who is the negotiant for this wine.  I found a lovely write-up about the winery and the name, anyway, on to the note.
The nose on this light gold colored wine is hopping with kiwi, grapefruit, lemon, gooseberry, mineral, apple, and white peach.  The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich with white fruit, tropical fruit, and mineral.  The mid palate is round and balanced, with nice spice and mineral.  The finish is long with clean yet round flavors of of fruit, spice, mineral, and bramble. The wine is so classic in its minerality and clean lines yet ripe and luscious.

2009 Pascal Bouchard Chablis – Score: B+
The nose on this straw colored wine has peach, apricot, nice mineral, and grapefruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is bright with bracing acidity and nice dirt and mineral background that adds a bit of complexity. The finish is long and tart and lingers nicely on the palate, with the dirt and grapefruit/peach showing well on the finish.

2009 Chateau Maime Cotes de Provence – Score: B++
The nose on this light rose colored wine with a tint of orange is rich and slightly sweet with quince, peach, kiwi, fig, strawberry, and light mineral and spice. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is lightly sweet and unique with a rich and zesty mouthfeel. The wine is balanced and tart with nice spice. The finish is long and spicy with tart quince, strawberry, and mineral lingering long.

2009 Domaine Lafond Tavel – Score: B++
The nose on this pink/rose/cherry colored wine is a lovely rose with a bit more punch than your average rose colored wine! The nose starts with peach, strawberry, currant, raspberry, tart and bright dark cherry, along with rich dirt and mineral. The mouth on this medium bodied wine again channels its nose with a more rich bodied wine than your average Rose, with bright and rich fruit, while being nicely balanced with light tannin, bright fruit, and mineral. The finish is long, spicy and bright, with rich red fruit and nice mineral. This is a unique Rose and one that is quite lovely.

2004 Chateau Puligny Montrachet – Score: C
The nose on this light gold colored wine is showing obvious signs of reduction, stink and oxidized nose, quince, green apple, peach, apricot, light oak, and grapefruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine again shows oxidized reduction, with still nice acid and loamy dirt. The finish is long and spicy with peach, tart green apple, and green tea. Sadly this wine, and a few other bottles that I also tasted is almost not score-able, really just cooking wine.

2010 Domaine Netofa – White – Score: B++
The nose on this light gold colored wine shows clean and lovely nose of green apple, peach, grapefruit, kiwi, light quince, and rich/nice loamy dirt and mineral. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and balanced with nice minerality, along with nice bright fruit that mingles well in the mouth. The finish is long and spicy with nice quince, tart green apple, grapefruit, and green tea.

2010 Baron Herzog Pinot Grigio – Score: B+
The nose on this straw colored wine is nice with green tea, lemon, green apple, and kiwi. The mouth on this light bodied wine is nice with a tart and rich mouth of fruit and nice balanced acid. The finish is long and nice with ripe grapefruit, green tea, and tart fruit. This is a nice quaffer that would go well with light fish dishes and salads.

2009 Covenant Lavan Chardonnay – Score: B+ to A-
The nose on this straw to light gold colored wine is rich and toasty, with lemon citrus, fig, creme brulee, rich toast, melon, honeysuckle, peach, apricot, and brioche. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and mouth coating with white fruit, toasty oak, and nice balanced citrus. The finish is long and spicy with rich toasty oak, fig, ripe melon, lemon citrus, brioche, and creme brulee.

2009 Binyamina Chardonnay Reserve Unoaked Galilee (Israel, Judean Hills) – Score: A-
The nose on this straw to light gold colored wine has stayed fairly consistent between the two times I have tasted this wine, some 6 months apart. The nose explodes with rich ripe and tart summer/tropical fruit, pear, kiwi, lychee, honey, grapefruit, ripe lemon, apple, and floral notes. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is super rich with explosive fruit that follows the nose, peach, lemon, apple, kiwi, lychee, and grapefruit. The mid palate flows off the mouth with super rich and tart lemon, honey, apple, and mineral almost yeasty. The honeyed and spicy finish is super long with crazy tart fruit, lychee, grapefruit, kiwi, lemon, floral notes, and mineral. The wine is super enjoyable with more than enough attention getting fruit, minerality, and floral notes. The lack of oak is a benefit with this fruit and makes one wonder whether oaking this wine is such a good idea!

2009 Binyamina Chardonnay Reserve Galilee (Israel, Judean Hills) – Score: B++
The nose on this light gold colored wine started off muted and not nearly as bright as its unoaked brother. The nose opened to a rich and deep honeyed nose, oak, smoky toast, floral notes, grapefruit, lemon, yellow apple, and mounds of caramel and butterscotch. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with honey, oak, pear, kiwi, grapefruit, lemon, and apple, all rounded with a tad of oak which seems to dull the fruit. The mid palate is oaky with toast, cut grass, and butterscotch. The finish is long and richly honeyed with butterscotch, oak, kiwi, lemon, melon, and grapefruit. Honey coated butterscotch candy along with ripe grapefruit, lemon, and melon linger.

2009 Binyamina Sauvignon Blanc Reserve (Israel, Galilee) – Score: B+
The nose on this straw to light gold colored wine is ripe with kiwi, grapefruit, peach, green apple, mineral, light cat’s pee, and bright lemon. The mouth on this nice and medium bodied wine is rich and tart with bright citrus and tropical fruit, and balanced with nice acidity. The finish is long and tart with bright citrus, kiwi, and tempered with mineral.

2007 Domaine du Castel ‘C’ Chardonnay – Score: B++
This is the second or third time we have tasted this wine and it is now starting to show its age and its losing its bright fruit and showing more and more burnt oak and less fruit. The nose on this light gold colored wine smells burnt with mounds of toasty oak, peach, green apple, almond, and apricot. The mouth on this full bodied wine is mouth coating while still astringent with bright acidity, light and dying fruit, and crazy heady burnt oak. The finish is long and spicy with lemon, green apple, and crazy burnt oak. Drink up!

2008 Elvi Wines Ness Blanco (Spain, Castilla-La Mancha, Ribera del Júcar) – Score: B+ to A-
This wine is a 50/50 Muscatel and Sauvignon Blanc blend, one that is not very common to me. When we tasted this a year ago the wine was showing nicely with Sauvignon Blanc more than Moscato. The nose on this light gold colored wine is screaming with rich honey, guava, wet grass, kiwi, and lovely grapefruit. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is off dry to semi-sweet with nice rich tropical fruit, honey, and balanced acidity, along with wet grass and spice. The finish is rich and tart fruit with nice honey, spice, more grass, and lemon. This is a nice tart wine with good wet grass yet rich all at the same time. This was a fun wine that has now turned more honeyed and round.

2009 Yatir Sauvignon Blanc – Score: B++
The nose on this straw with light gold halo colored wine started off with a butter or malo funk that was a bit off, along with nice kiwi, lemon, green apple, spice, and mineral. The mouth on this medium bodied wine was nice with rich brightness that is tempered slightly and rounded nicely by the oak influence. The wine is balanced nicely and the finish is long and spicy with rich tart fruit, rounded oak, and spice. A nice Sauvignon Blanc but one that just does not have enough complexity to bring the entire package together.

2009 Yatir Viognier – Score: A-
The nose on this straw colored wine is rich and heavy with bright lemon, kiwi, fresh green grass, melon, honey, and guava. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and mouth coating yet balanced perfectly with lovely honey tones, fresh grass, and guava. The finish is long and spicy with tons of tart fruit, kiwi, and nice honeyed fruit that rounds out a finish on a grassy knoll. This is a lovely Viognier that is not as classic with rich perfume and all, but one that makes its own very enjoyable path.

2009 Elvi Wines Mati, Rioja – Score: B++ to A-
This is a lovely and extracted Tempranillo wine that sat in oak for five months and shows the oak influence by lovely coffee and light oak attributes. The nose on this dark garnet colored wine was rich with nice loamy dirt, dark plum, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry, mushroom, light oak, and espresso coffee. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and mouth coating with more loamy dirt balanced nicely with rich tannin and acid. The finish is long and zesty with black and red fruit, nice tannin, and dirt.

2008 Elvi Wines Herenza, Rioja, Crianza – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet to black colored wine is rich and oaky with chocolate, dark cherry, bright mineral, rich earthy loam, dark plum, cedar, raspberry, cranberry, and rich espresso coffee. The mouth on this full-bodied wine is rich, expressive, mouth coating, and lightly extracted with rich dirt, mineral, and nice fruit. The wine is balanced nicely with acid, coffee, chocolate, and vanilla. The finish is super long, spicy, and rich with dark cherry, spice, vanilla, rich espresso coffee, and chocolate. The wine is rich with a mouth of chocolate, espresso coffee, dark cherry, and black cherry linger long after this wine is gone, which is quite quick!

2007 Elvi Wines Makor (85% Bobal and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich with ripe plum, rich earth, raspberry, date, and black cherry. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich with light hints of oak, influenced from 20% of the wine being in oak for 10 months. The structure of the mouth is rich and inky, textured with nice earth notes and dark fruit, almost concentrated and rich. The wine is nicely balanced with rich and zesty acid and nice mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and tart with nice earth, rich still gripping tannin, and nice ripe and rich fruit. The oak does not show strongly in the mouth but it’s influence is felt nicely.

2007 Elvi Wines Vina Encina (33% Bobal, 26% Merlot, 21% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Tempranillo) – Score: B++
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich and screaming with candied fruit of cherry, raspberry, currant, garrigue, bramble, light oak, and tobacco. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and spicy with candied red fruit and nice earth and bramble tones that is nicely integrating and coming together to highlight light oak influence and integrated tannin. The wine is nicely balanced with spicy notes, rich red and candied fruit, rounding oak, nice tannin, and spice.

2007 Elvi Wines Adar (25% Bobal, 25% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Tempranillo, 5% Petite Verdot) – Score: A-
The Adar has many similarities to the Vina Encina as it shares some common components, however, it differs clearly in its blacker fruit, richer dirt, and coffee. The nose on this dark garnet to black colored wine is rich with candied fruit of black cherry, raspberry, dark plum, blackberry, deep earthiness, cassis, and coffee. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich with nice candied red and black fruit, balancing acid, mineral, mouth coating tannin, and spice. The wine is not so oak forward as much as it is oak influenced and rounded by sleeping in a 300L oak barrel, where the impact is not as pronounced as a smaller barrel. The finish is long and spicy with nice coffee, black fruit, integrated tannin, dirt, and oak.

2008 Elvi Wines Matiz, Rioja – Score: B+
The nose on this dark garnet, 100% Tempranillo wine, starts right out of the bottle with a powerful nose of chocolate and tobacco. As the wine opens up, the chocolate and tobacco give way to cherry and raspberry notes. The mouth on this full bodied wine is smooth and concentrated, with cherry and raspberry fruit that follow the nose. The mid palate is bright enough to balance out the wine while sharing space with a hint of tannins that are integrating nicely. The finish is long with a return of the cherry fruit, acidity, on a bed tobacco leaves and chocolate candy.

2005 Elvi Wines EL 26 (40% Syrah, 30% Grenache, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet to black colored wine is highly extracted with rich and ripe blackberry, black plum, toasty oak, raspberry, loamy dirt, bramble, chocolate, and tobacco. The mouth on this rich and super extracted mouth is complex and layered with massive and mouth coating tannin, rich and toasty oak, ripe and black fruit all coming together to make a wine that is very rich and spicy with ripe black fruit with all the components coming together nicely. The wine is balanced and the finish is toasty long and super extracted with even more mouth coating, ripe black fruit, plum, rich chocolate, and tobacco leaves.

2007 Binyamina Shiraz Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on this purple colored wine is rich with roasted meat, ripe blackberry, black cherry, black pepper, spice, ripe plum, raspberry, tobacco, and cedar. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is mouth coating and rich with nice black fruit, tannin and cedar play nicely on the palate and flow into a long and spicy finish with more mouth coating tannin, tobacco, black pepper, spice, blackberry, chocolate, and vanilla. The wine is a lovely example of a smooth ripe Shiraz without overripe or sweet overtones while being spicy and complex enough to get your attention.

2007 Binyamina Zinfandel Reserve – Score: B+
The nose on this dark garnet to black colored wine starts off way to hot, however over time it calms down to expose chocolate, tobacco, cedar, raspberry, plum, blackcurrant, black cherry, crushed herbs, dirt, and mound of black pepper. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is starting to show its age with excessive date flavors that taste oxidized, plush mouth feel from nice tannin, rich loamy dirt, and fruit. The finish is long and spicy with heaps of black pepper, cedar, vanilla, and chocolate linger.

2005 Carmel Kayoumi Cabernet Sauvignon – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is super rich with, now classic Israeli Cabernet aromas and flavors, blackberry, tobacco, cassis, rich cedar, and some nice earthiness. The mouth on this full bodied wine is super rich and mouth coating, the mouth coating tannins have melded nicely with the rich cedar to create a nicely balanced wine whose parts are all coming together nicely, though the tannins are still a bit austere. The finish is long and concentrated with tobacco, spice, nice chocolate, and still not integrated tannins coming together to linger nicely.

2008 Capcanes Peraj Ha’abib, Flor de Primavera – Score: A-
The nose on this garnet to black colored wine is screaming with blackberry, cassis, black plum, chocolate, mocha, rich toasty cedar, and spice – what a nose! The mouth on this full bodied wine is layered with black fruit, nice mouth coating tannin, toasty cedar, that comes together in a lovely and spicy manner. The wine is nice and balanced, but still coming together in all its parts. The finish is super long and spicy, with more nice cedar, chocolate, black fruit, and tannin. The toasty cedar, plum, blackberry, and chocolate linger nicely.

2005 Capcanes Peraj Ha’abib, Flor de Primavera (Magnum) – Score: A- to A
The nose on this black colored wine is exploding with rich black plum, cassis, blackberry, chocolate, sweet cedar, blueberry, and rich tobacco. The mouth on this massive full bodied wine is exploding with lovely rich and concentrated fruit, blueberry, layers of blackberry, cassis, and extracted oak flavors, and nice mouth coating tannin. The wine is nicely balanced with rich and expressive tannin, cedar, and tobacco. The finish is long and extracted with nice tannin, blackberry, cassis, tobacco, and chocolate finish.

2007 Yatir Forest (50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 36% petite Verdot, 7% malbec, 7% Merlot) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark purple colored wine explodes with rich and concentrated plum, blackberry, toasty oak, crushed herbs, and dirt. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and layered with massive mouth coating tannin, rich toasty oak, and rich black fruit, and nice core acid all coming together into a nice and velvety mouth feel. The finish is long and spicy with nice black plum, rich chocolate, nice crushed herb, lovely green bell pepper, chocolate, coffee, and nice dirt. This is a rich and layered wine with big tannin that needs time to settle down, along with earthy and green goodness.

2007 Capcanes Flor de Flor (100% Grenache from 105 year old vines) – Score: B++
This wine was all the rage for a year already from a winery that has been producing world-class wines that happen to be kosher. When we had the first chance to taste this bottle in Oxnard, I was not impressed as impressed as others were. The wine starts off with a nose of light oak, earthy and mushroom, raspberry, currant, loamy dirt, and some floral hints. The mouth on this medium bodied wine has integrated tannin, chocolate, tobacco, with oak that is coming together quite nicely. The wine is OK but nothing on it grabbed me with either complexity, focus, or concentration that would make me stand up and take notice.

To be fair, we tasted this wine again in NY and it showed far better – here is the note for that tasting.

2007 Segal Cabernet Sauvignon Unfiltered – Score: A-
The nose on this dark purple colored wine starts off with rich earthiness, dates, rich and ripe blackberry, cedar, tobacco, and creme de cocoa. The mouth on this full bodied wine is super rich, layered, and concentrated with massive mouth coating tannin, that is married in a lovely way with rich cedar, and ripe black fruit. The mouth is focused in way that accentuates the ripe black fruit along with the oak extraction that makes for a lovely wine. The wine is rich but it is also balanced with good acidity. The finish is long and rich with cedar, date, chocolate, tobacco, and rich black fruit. This is a lovely wine that is ready now, but could use a year and will be fine till 2017 or 2018.

2007 Barkan Superieur Pinotage – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich and filled with cedar, tobacco, raspberry, plum, currant, nice smoked meat, herbaceous notes, tobacco, and rich spice. The mouth on this full bodied wine is super rich and concentrated with massive mouth coating tannin, rich cedar, nice red fruit, and heady tobacco that is coming together quite nicely. The wine is well balanced and the finish is long, massive, and super spicy, with a fat stogie, black pepper, cedar box, ripe red fruit, and a spice box that ties the entire package up perfectly. This is by far the best Pinotage I have ever tasted, but to fair, that has not been very many.

2006 Barkan Superieur Shiraz – Score: A-
The nose on this deep purple colored wine is super rich and extracted with rich black pepper, tar, earth, bramble, ripe black plum, blackberry, raspberry, coffee, mint, and rich cedar. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and massive with an inky structure, full on spice attack, along with a concentration and focus that comes from the rich tannin, cedar, and black fruit, and inky structure all coming together nicely. The finish is long and spicy with cedar, chocolate, tar, black pepper, and plum all lingering nicely on the palate.

2007 Domaine du Castel Grand Vin (70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 5% Petite Verdot) – Score: A-
The nose on this purple colored wine is rich with toasty oak, blackberry, plum, earthiness, crushed herbs, and raspberry. The mouth on this full bodied wine is massive and richly extracted with massive mouth coating tannin, rich black fruit, rich toasty oak, and rich earth notes, all coming together in a very harmonious manner. The finish is long and rich with still massive tannin, rich fruit, chocolate, coffee, mint, and garrigue.

2006 Binyamina Cave (65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 33% Merlot, 2% Petite Verdot) – Score: A-
This wine has been around for many years and this is the first vintage that I really liked. In part that had to do with the fact that Binyamina, who bought and now owns the boutique winery, was flash pasteurizing the wine (Mevushal), for the US export business. Now, the wine is being left alone and it is improving greatly. The 2006 vintage was a fantastic vintage for Israel, and this bottle is no less wonderful. The nose on this garnet colored wine is super rich with nice cedar, rich candied fruit, raspberry, black cherry, chocolate, blackberry, and mint. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is hits you with a rich concentration of black fruit, rich cedar wood, nice tannin that comes together nicely. The finish is long with cedar, rich chocolate, cedar, and nice tannin that last long on the palate with a hint of mint and herb.

2007 Binyamina Diamond, Avnei Hachoshen Ya’alom (50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Syrah and 20% Petite Verdot) – Score: A
We tasted this wine last year at the event in Oxnard when Assaf brought in a bottle or two of this wonder on the slide. The wine we tasted this year was an almost identical wine that we tasted last year – rich and wonderful.

The nose on this garnet to black colored wine explodes with sweet oak, rich and ripe blackberry, licorice, raspberry, chocolate, rich plum, along with a bit of prune. The mouth on this broad shouldered and massive wine is packed and layered with layer upon layers of rich and ripe black fruit, blackberry, and raspberry. The mid palate is balanced and flows off the mouth with rich sweet oak, acid, chocolate, and coffee. The finish is massive and long with a huge mouth coating structure, along with prune, oak, blackberry, and chocolate. This is a massive and structured wine that is unique and one that truly shows the power of Israel’s potential.

2006 Binyamina Ruby, Avnei Hachoshen, Syrah – Score: A- to A
The nose on this dark garnet to black colored wine is packed with super sweet and ripe blackberry, cassis, tobacco, ripe black plum, raspberry, creme de cocoa, and sweet oak. This full bodied wine has a crazy complex and layered mouth with an inky structure, rich extraction, integrating tannin, and sweet oak, all coming together nicely now. The finish is long, spicy, and complex with nicely integrated tannins, date, sweet oak, ripe plum, and chocolate. This wine is rich and layered, though the wine is coming up on its end life – another year or so.

2006 Binyamina Sapphire, Avnei Hachoshen Sapir (45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Syrah and 25% Merlot) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine hits you first with some alcohol, dark plum, blackberry, raspberry, coffee, mineral, and cedar. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and layered with nice mouth coating tannin and sweet cedar that are coming together nicely. The wine is balanced with a long and spicy finish of blackberry, coffee, rich tobacco, and cedar. A lovely and rich wine with solid focus and complexity.

2007 Binyamina Aquamarine, Avnei Hachoshen Tarshish (100% Cabernet Sauvignon) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich and expressive with rich coffee, oak, blackberry, cassis, plum, raspberry, crushed herbs, and pencil shavings. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with spicy oak, red fruit, nice tannin and date. The finish is long and spicy with spicy oak, coffee, nice tannin, and herbs.

2009 Goose Bay Pinot Noir Reserve (not mevishal) – Score: B++ to A-
This is a non-mevushal version of the usual Goose Bay Pinot Noir. The slap that the Goose Bay wines get are that they live for a year or two and no more. Many think it is because of the mevushal process, but this one is not mevushal and so it is a great wine to either be confirm or be a rebuttal to the lack of longevity of the Goose Bay wines. This is a small batch wine, only 250 cases were produced. The nose on this bright ruby colored wine is rich and bright with tart cherry, a rich and loamy dirt that is actually perfumed, rich coffee, raspberry, strawberry, and currant. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with still integrating mouth coating tannin, rich candied and tart red fruit, nice earthiness, and oak, from being in new French barrels for 11 months. The parts are still coming together, with the tannic structure needed time to settle in. The finish is long and tannic with nice tart red fruit, coffee, and kirshce cherry. Look for a bit of leather in a year and the wine to be coming together as well.

2009 Goose Bay Pinot Noir – Score: B+
When tasting this wine at the event the wine was not showing well at all. We later drank this wine and it showed far better. The nose on this ruby colored wine has strawberry, light cherry, bramble, rich earth, espresso coffee, and rich oak. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and almost dense with spicy oak, nice tannin, rich red fruit, and mounds of dirt, with kisrche cherry making a solo appearance on the finish.

2003 Chateau de la Tour Clos Vougeot, Grand Cru – Score: B++
AHH!!! This wine is infuriating! One bottle is rich and extracted and crazy cool, the next time I taste it from a different bottle it is DOA. The thing I do with the French wines is taste them a few times along the evening, as they tend to be hit and miss. If I find a wine that is consistent across bottles, we are good. At this tasting it was OK. This is the third time we are tasting this wine, and it is still as I remember it, powerful tannins, rich mouth feel, and oak extraction that is just now getting under control. That said, please stay with my previous advice, buy from a reputable merchant who will be happy to take the wine back if the bottle is DOA. This is an expensive wine, so be sure to have that assurance.

The mouth dark garnet colored wine is rich with spicy raspberry, cherry, plum, coffee, rich earthy loam, mushroom, oak, and crushed herbs. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich with still massive tannin that is melding now lovely with the rich oak and bright and intense red fruit. The wine is perfectly balanced and the tart and intense fruit rise on the finish with more tannin, oak, rich coffee, and lovely dirt. This is a great wine if the bottle is right.

2009 Domaine Netofa, Latour Netofa (70% Syrah and 30% Mourvedre) – Score: A-
The nose on this classic Rhone styled wine is super rich and bright with ripe plum, blackberry, crushed herb, rich tar, cherry, and nice mineral. The nose is super rich and expressive and makes you stand up and take notice with rich earth and fruit. The wine also has a controlled approach to oak, though the oak influence is noted in the perfumed nose and rich rounded mouth, but not a star, more of an accent that really makes the wine seem Rhone like and less American Rhone-rider like. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is super rich and inky in structure, along with nice bright and ripe fruit, and mouth coating tannin that makes for a lovely wine that is rich yet controlled with nice fruit. The finish is long, spicy, and balanced with nice acid, rich fruit, tar, coffee, and mineral. One of the best kosher Rhone styled wines.

2009 Chateau de Parsac, Montagne-St-Emilion (mevushal) – Score: B++
The nose on this deep garnet colored wine is screaming with earth, loamy dirt, mushroom, rich raspberry, currants, anise, and oak. The wine is a Bordeaux blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc. This medium to full bodied wine starts with a rich caressing mouth coating tannin, that is supported by more earth, raspberry, and currants, along with nice oak and coffee. The finish is long and spicy with rich coffee, more nice mouth coating tannin, rich earth, plum, and ripe currant. Quite a nice mevushal bottle!

2009 Flechas de Los Andes Gran Malbec – Score: B++
The nose on this garnet colored wine is super rich with heavy extraction with rich toasty oak, blackberry, crushed herb, rich tobacco, plum, raisin, chocolate, and cherry. The mouth on this insanely full bodied wine is rich and toasty with mouth coating tannin, rich toasty oak, tobacco, and rich fruit all come together to create a mouth that shows its influence from oak encasement. The finish is long and spicy with massive tannin, raisin, chocolate, and tobacco. This wine is super rich and focused but the complexity is what is missing to make this a superior wine.

2003 Chateau Leoville Poyferre Saint Julien (62% Cab, 28% Merlot, 8% Petite Verdot, 2% Cabernet Franc) – Score: A- to A
The nose on this garnet to black colored wine has a huge and crazy nose of chocolate, oak, date, raspberry, black plum, bramble and loamy dirt. The mouth on this rich, concentrated, and extracted full bodied wine shows still gripping tannin, loamy dirt, rich fruit, along with clear oak impact, giving the mouth a rich and layered attack of ripe fruit and massive mouth coating tannin that is still coming together. The mid palate is balanced with rich and bright fruit, along with a long and spicy finish, nice tannin, chocolate, oak, red fruit, and more nice dirt. This wine attacks and does not let up till well after the wine is gone.

2005 Chateau Leoville Poyferre Saint Julien (62% Cab, 28% Merlot, 8% Petite Verdot, 2% Cabernet Franc) – Score: A-
The nose on this garnet to black colored wine has a huge and crazy nose of chocolate, oak, raspberry, blackberry, cassis, mint, creme de cocoa, tobacco, and mineral. The mouth on this rich, concentrated, and extracted full bodied wine shows a massive and complex mouth with rising tannin, rich oak, and chocolate that is truly unique. The wine is classically French with balancing acid. The finish is super long and lovely with tobacco, rich oak, mint, mineral, and chocolate. This is wine is truly lovely and very enjoyable tasting it side by side with its slightly better and older 2003 sibling.

2004 Pontet Canet – Score: A- to A
The nose on this purple to black colored wine has a massive nose of rich and ripe blackberry, plum, raspberry, chocolate, tobacco, smoke, and loamy dirt. This nose is rich but not overripe to the point of a Napa Cabernet, definitely more refined and lovely. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich and concentrated and lovely with true gripping mouth coating tannin, ripe red and black fruit, spicy oak that brings the entire rich wine together. The wine is balanced, super long and spicy with more crazy and rich tannin, blackberry, chocolate, date, tobacco, dirt, and mushroom. The wine is killer and a bit better than the 2003 vintage. This wine has many more years ahead of it.

2004 Chateau Labegorce Margaux – Score: B+
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich and expressive with lovely mint, crushed herb, eucalyptus, blackberry, raspberry, plum, oak, and coffee. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is nice and round with lovely mouth coating tannin, rich and ripe fruit, nice oak, and coffee. The finish is long, with rich tannin, raspberry, chocolate, oak, and mint. The mouth is showing well but I would not hold this for a long time, maybe a year or two at most – drink up!

2005 Chateau Malartic Lagraviere Grand Cru Pessac-Leognan – Score: A-
WOW what a rich and smoky wine. The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is smoking with an almost smoke screen like aroma, over a sea of intense dry and candied raspberry, ripe blackberry, rich currant, mint, plum, and rich chocolate. The mouth on this blockbuster full bodied wine is intense, structured, and concentrated with lovely and massive tannin, rich fruit, and smokey oak. The finish is super long and concentrated with bright fruit, acid, fat cigar tobacco, nice oak, mint, and a long slug of mocha. This is a rich and layered wine that is well worth seeking out and one that will reward your perseverance for another 6 or 7 years at least!

2008 Herzog Oak Knoll Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is rich with nice raspberry, blackberry, plum, chocolate, cedar, cassis, and pencil shavings. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine starts off with a strong hit of spicy oak, ripe fruit, and massive tannin that has not yet even started to come together, this wine will hopefully be there soon, but for now open early or decant. The finish on this wine is long and spicy with rich spicy oak, ripe black and red fruit, and a fair amount of chocolate. This is a wine that needs time and as it ages look for some leather and richer fruit to appear.

2006 Herzog Generation VIII Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley,To-Kalon Vineyard) – Score: A
This is the third or fourth time I have tasted this wine, and every time I taste it I am impressed and in true awe. The nose on this black colored wine is screaming with rich toasty oak, creme de cocoa, black cherry, blackberry, cassis, and rich spice. The mouth on this massive full bodied wine is rich, layered, huge, and concentrated, with mouth coating tight tannins, chocolate, oak, blackberry, and cassis. The fruit on the mouth is rich and ripe while not being overly ripe to the point of tasting cooked. The mid palate is balanced and flows from the mouth with still bracing tannins, nice acidity, oak, and chocolate. The finish is crazy long with chocolate, rich oak, blackberry, and rich ripe fruit. This is a crazy winner that will be around for at least another 8 years. I hope to have the opportunity to taste it again and again in the coming years at the Herzog Wine Festival.

Most would not associate wine and blackberry juice, but for Rosenberg it was a great gateway beverage to acquire the yearning for something a bit more real. With time, Rosenberg realized that wine was his real future and he started tinkering with it in his basement – a classic garagiste! During that time his ultimate dream was growing, of building a winery that would prove the words of the Patriarch Jacob, who prophesied to his son Yehuda some 3000 years ago: “Binding unto the vine, his foal, and unto the choice vine, the colt of his ass; he will launder his garments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes. His eyes shall sparkle with wine, and his teeth white with milk” (Bereishit 49:11-12). Commenting on these verses, Rashi states, “[Yaakov] prophesied regarding the land of Yehudah, that it would produce wine like a fountain.”

As his tinkering continued friends told him how much they loved his wines and one thing led to another – with Rosenberg officially leaving his managerial position at senior citizen’s home to become a farmer and winemaker! In 1995, with the decision already made, he started to look around for enough grapes to make his dream a reality. To do this he reached out to growers in the area and he quickly found out that if he wanted to make this happen, he would need to plant his own vineyard and augment it in the time being with what he could find in the area. With total control on his vineyard, Rosenberg could manage the vines to make the kind of wine that he sees as world-class, rather than the yield and size that the growers wanted.

As the winery started to grow so did their output. In 1998 the Rosenbergs released their first vintage from their newly minted winery, in the basement of their house in Efrat. They initial vintage consisted of 7000 bottles, which is quite large if you are doing all the work in your basement! The varietals for the first year were all from the Noble grapes; Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc. Since then both the varietals and bottles have increased. By 2009 mass planted had expanded the winery’s vineyards to about 120 acres. Among the varieties planted include; Chardonnay, Organic Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, White Riesling, Shiraz, Merlot, Organic Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Gewurztraminer and Viognier.

The varietals that the winery is now using are becoming more and more common around Israel. Organic vineyards are now common place, with Tishbi, Bashan, Yarden, Or Haganuz, and others using organic techniques to manage their vineyards. It is good for the environment, it is good for the workers of the vineyards, and it is good for all of us that enjoy the wines. Other than the organic farming, Viognier is a hard grape to grow and to sell, and it is no surprise that Gush Etzion does not make a single varietal wine from this grape. The Gewurztraminer, Petite Verdot, and White Riesling are getting far more play now a days as well, and ones that do well in the Israeli heat. We really enjoyed the White Riesling but were surprised by the lack of the classic oily texture. We enjoyed a bottle of Carmel White Riesling at Sommelier and that one was a bit more complex because of the oily texture. We did not get to taste the Gewurztraminer on that day, and the Petite Verdot is currently used solely for blending.

Other than its initial vintage the winery hit its next big growth spurt in 2005 when the winery’s current building was ready to play. The winery itself was finished in September 2004, and has a capacity to produce 50,000 bottles a year. The winery currently produces some 40,000 bottles and caps it at that number to continue to keep its boutique styling and processes. The winery was established in partnership with investors from the United States and Tishbi Winery who buys the rest of the grapes from Gush Eztion’s vineyards.

The new building did more than just expand the winery’s production ability, it added two very important features that more and more wineries are doing or dreaming about doing. Those being adding a restaurant, which serves only local fare, and creating a viewing booth or platform for visitors to be able to watch wine making, bottling, or any other wine process that occurs within the winery itself. The visitor center was designed so visitors can watch the entire production process while staying safely out of the way of the staff. The visitor center in Gush Etzion consists of a steel bridge that is suspended above the inner workings of the winery, allowing guests to view the bottling line, the production area, and the steel vats. You can view the barrel room through a transparent glass window. Attached to the winery is the Mehadrin Kosher milk restaurant/cafe that is open late into the night.

The combination of being to allow guests to essentially do a self-guided tour along with a place to taste the wines and have a meal is a theme that is being replicated all over the world, and particularly well, in Israel. Carmel, Tishbi, and Binyamnia to name a few have implemented this wonderful idea, and in 2005, so did Gush Etzion. The idea is not a new one, but it is new for many of the kosher wineries around the world. A few weeks ago we went to the famous Tierra Sur restaurant that is located within the Herzog Winery, and enjoyed a lovely dinner, along with a very nice tasting. We could have done the self-guiding tour there as well, but we had done it a few years ago, when they were bottling wines. The viewing platform at Herzog is two floors above the winery’s work floor, and viewable by a walkway that is wall-to-wall large pane glass windows that give every single guest a bird’s eye view of the winery’s inner workings.

Though we did not actually meet the Rosenberg’s at the winery, we have heard many first hand accounts of the winery and how lovely the food is at the cafe. Friends of ours went to the winery a year or so ago, and it took me a long time to figure out they were talking about Gush Etzion. For the longest time I thought they were talking about Ella Valley Winery, which is a mere 6 kilometers from Gush Etzion, but Ella Valley does not have a cafe, though they have a large and lovely tasting room.

Instead we met the Rosenbergs at the 2011 Sommelier, like we met Chaim and Yoram from Tanya, and like we met many other wineries as well. During our conversations with Shraga and the rest of the winery staff, we never did talk much about the winery, and that is our loss for sure. Hopefully, the next time we are in Israel we will get a chance to see the winery first hand and experience its lovely ambiance and cafe.

Until then, we are so happy that we had the chance to taste some of the current wines from the winery and hopefully you will also get a chance to taste some of the lovely wines that this old yet up and coming winery has to offer. Most of these wines are now locally available here in the USA and many are worth the time to search them out. The wines are now imported into the USA by a new wine importer – The River. They also import Har Bracha (Mount Blessing) and Kadesh Barnea, two other wineries that we also tasted at Sommelier a few months ago. Look for upcoming posting on these wineries and more.

My many thanks to the entire staff of the Gush Etzion Winery, especially to Shraga for taking the time to talk with us. The wine notes follow in the order they were tasted:

2009 Gush Etzion, Sauvignon Blanc, Alon Haboded – Score: B++
The nose on this light straw colored wine is rich with spice, quince, yellow apple, kiwi, mineral slate, stone fruit, and herbs. The mouth on this light to medium bodied wine is refreshing with tart acidity and spice that help to highlight the fruit and give slight focus to the wine. The finish is long and spicy with more apple and stone fruit. The ripe fruit help to balance the wine’s lemon tartness. A nice enough Sauvignon Blanc but missing the complexity to take it to the next level. Drink in the next year or so.

2010 Gush Etzion, Unoaked Chardonnay, Alon Haboded- Score: B++
The wine is another example of winemakers stepping away from the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) epidemic by loosening up on the oak and letting the fruit do all the talking. The nose on this light straw colored wine is rich with yellow apple, grapefruit, kiwi, stone fruit, lemon rind, almond shell, and mineral. The mouth on this medium bodied wine does all the talking without having to play footsie with oak. The fruit shines through with enough weight to catch your attention while also being balanced and bright. The mineral and lemon rind helps to highlight the stone and tropical fruit, while adding some complexity as well. Drink in the next year or so.

2009 Gush Etzion, White Riesling, Alon Haboded – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this light straw colored wine is screaming with rich and sweet honey, dates, lovely flowers, mineral, pit, fig, and vanilla. The mouth on this medium+ bodied wine is dry but feels sweet from the ripe fruit, honey attack, and fig though balanced nicely with tart acidity, and mineral. The mouth feel on the wine is almost coating from the ripe fruit and would go well with spicy dishes. The finish is long and spicy itself with vanilla, flowers and honey balanced by the acid, mineral, and fig. This is a wine that should last a year or so, but is drinking lovely right now.

2007 Gush Etzion Nahal Hapirim (60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot, and 14% Petite Verdot) – Score: B++
The nose on this dark garnet to purple colored wine is rich with crushed herbs, prunes, date, vanilla, sweet cedar, blackberry, ripe plum, cassis, chocolate, and tobacco. The mouth on this rich and full bodied wine shows the influence of sitting for 12 months in French oak, with sweet cedar and tannins that have melded quite nicely together. The flavors flow from the nose and balance nicely with acid, but also show the ripe fruit with slightly raisin overbite. The finish is long and spicy with sweet cedar and chocolate coming together on the finish. Drink this year.

2008 Gush Etzion, Cabernet Sauvignon, Alon Haboded- Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine is screaming from 20 months of oak with rick oak, crushed herbs, dark cherry, blackberry, raspberry, plum, chocolate, tobacco, smoky notes, rich mineral, loamy dirt, and vanilla. The mouth on this crazy rich and expressive wine is medium to full bodied with massive tannins that have yet to integrate with the rich oak influence and spice. The mid palate is toasty and balanced with leather being nicely exposed. The finish is long and spicy with the tannins showing some respite along with nice chocolate, leather, and tobacco. This is a powerhouse of a wine that needs a year for the oak and tannins to settle down, and then should be OK for two to three more years.

2008 Gush Etzion, Cabernet Franc, Alon Haboded- Score: A-
The nose on this dark purple colored wine starts off with crazy nice eucalyptus, herbaceous notes, floral hints, black cherry, plum, rich oak, raspberry, toasty espresso, and vanilla. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and toasty and again shows clear influence of oak but in a nice and almost integrated manner, that makes for a rich and creamy mouth feel, while the mid palate is balanced nicely. The finish is long, spicy, and lovely with eucalyptus, herbaceous notes, floral hints, raspberry, and vanilla stealing the show. This is a truly lovely Cabernet Franc that shows much of the varietals best features.

2008 Gush Etzion, Shiraz, Alon Haboded - Score: A-
The nose on this black colored wine leaps out and smacks you upside the head with rich black pepper, roasted meat, cassis, oak, rich loamy dirt, mineral, crushed herb, inky nose, garrigue, massive ripe plum, raisin, and tobacco. The mouth on this super rich and layered wine hits you with massive tannin to start that is not yet integrated, along with a lovely inky structure. The mid palate is balanced and flows into a super rich and spicy finish with classic Shiraz flavors showing well; ripe plum, cassis, blackberry, while finishing with nice leather, tobacco, oak, and vanilla. This is clearly a powerhouse wine that has yet to settle down its components and needs a year, and then drink for two or so years after that.

2007 Gush Etzion, Merlot, Emek Bracha (85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine shows clear oak influence with rich oak, ripe plum, rich and expressive tobacco, raspberry, cassis, and vanilla. The mouth on this rich and mouth coating wine starts off with massive tannin that has yet to integrate, along with rich oak and vanilla. The mouth feel on this wine is so oak and tannin rich and expressive that it takes time for the fruit to come out and take a bow, still the wait is worth the final product. The finish is long and rich with leather, tobacco, and vanilla taking a backstage to the ripe plum, raspberry, and cassis. This is a wine that needs a year or so to integrate and then enjoy for two or so years.

Many in Israel know Yoram not because of his unique personality or artistic passion, but rather because he was on Israel’s Big Brother 3! Yes, you heard me correct Yoram Cohen was on the Big Brother of Israel, but I guess he should stick to what he does exceptionally well, as he was the second housemate to be tossed out. I hope it helped to put focus on his personality and winery, because they are both quite unique and wonderful treasures that we get to enjoy!

In the middle of the first day for me at the 2011 edition of Sommelier, I got to the Tanya Winery booth! Just a few reminders about Tanya Winery, in case you are too lazy to click the link to my other posts . In 2002 Yoram started to make wine out of his house. In 2007 one of Chaim Feder’s friends tasted Yoram’s wines and was sure that Yoram was the next big thing in wine. Chaim and his partners met Yoram and the rest is history. They upgraded the winery’s future productivity by purchasing new equipment, plantings new vineyards, and leasing more space for the winery. The winery’s current production is about 30,000 bottles annually. Most wineries were displaying their wines from 2008 at the event, which by now you all know is a problem for many, being that it was a Shmitta year. In case this is your first roll through my blog, check out my Kosher 101 posting about Shmitta and more. Tanya however did not produce any wines in 2008, which all I can say is WOW! Takes a certain spirit and belief system to not make wine for a year! The winery has three labels; Enosh, Halel, and Eliya Reserve, all named after his kids, which are shown on the booth and on the website (though at a younger age). Enosh is the winery’s top Bordeaux blend, Halel is the main wine line, while Eliya is the lower label that has recently been upgraded, as is visible in the Shiraz below.

As I tasted these wines, I did not know that one of them was also part of my original wine tasting in 2008! The 2007 Pinot Noir, which we tasted from the barrel, has clearly changed with more red fruit showing and lovely oak extraction as well. However, the body and structure look the same from those many years earlier!

Tanya Winery is not one of those winery’s that buy their grapes or schlep them from the Galilee all the way down to the Judean Hills. Actually, the winery and its grapes are located in the heart of the Judean Hills, in and around the city called Ofra. The Winery’s vineyards are planted in the central area of the gentle slope of a mountain proximate to Ofra in chalky rocky ground at an elevation of 900 meters above sea level. The winery has 8 acres of vineyards that grow the following varietals; Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay.

As we were drinking through the wines there was one very distinct attribute of these wines that were almost quite shocking! Normally tannin makes for either a puckering experience, a gnarly experience, or a lovely mouth coating experience. This was none of the above! The tannins here were clearly mouth drying almost assailing the mouth with tannin that seemed to be trying to get your attention. I correctly guessed that this must be oak tannin, though I think it is also tied to the rich toast that Yoram must have used on these staves or a heavy char on the barrel itself.

It was a real joy to see Yoram and Chaim all over again. We had called Chaim in advance and he assured us that not only was he going to be there, but also Yoram and the wine mashgiach (kosher certification supervisor). It was a real joy to taste through the current crop of wines, though we did not get a chance to taste all the Eliya wines for 2009. Currently, the wines imported into the US are still of older vintages, but I am sure many of these will make their way to our shores soon.

Many thanks to Yoram, Chaim, and the mashgiach (missed his name) for making our tasting the joy it always is, the wine notes follow below in the order they were tasted.

2007 Tanya Halel Pinot Noir Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine exudes a rich and expressive nose with crushed herbs, raspberry, black cherry, nice plum, vanilla, crème de cocoa, and rich espresso coffee that makes you think you walked into a Starbuck shop. The mouth is rich and medium to full bodied with what can only be explained as crazy charred toast, rich and extracted oak tannin that literally dries your entire mouth, and almost takes the focus away from the lovely crushed herbs, cocoa, and raspberry. A sense of espresso, and charred meat arrives with mouth drying tannin continuing. More charred and spice rise on the finish with roasted meat and fresh ground espresso, raspberry, and black cherry.

2009 Tanya Halel Cabernet Franc Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet colored wine exudes a rich and expressive nose with raspberry, crushed herbs, rich floral notes, lovely green notes, charred oak, and plum. The mouth is rich and medium to full bodied with more crazy mouth drying tannin, rich charred oak, nice raspberry, more floral, along with espresso, and green notes that seem to heighten the experience. A sense of floral notes continues with more dry tannin, and charred oak. Espresso, charred oak, shows as floral notes and crushed herbs rise on the finish with a hint of chocolate cherry, and vanilla.

2010 Tanya Halel Blend Reserve (60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 10% Shiraz) – Score: B+ to A-
This wine put a smile on my face, as it is a wine that actually embodies the moniker on the label! The nose on the electric garnet wine continues with this new Tanya charred style, with toast, rich espresso, raspberry, plum, cassis, crushed herbs, cocoa, and pencil. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and mouth coating with espresso, raspberry, ripe plum, crushed herbs, cocoa, pencil, bone dry tannin that will settle down in a year or so, and some black fruit. The mid palate is balanced but the lack of concentration is what is missing. Cocoa, raspberry, crushed herbs, and cassis rise on the spicy finish that fades into a vanilla chocolate float with black cherry and pencil topping.

2009 Tanya Halel Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve – Score: A-
The nose on the electric dark garnet colored wine is a rich and black wine with echoes of a French wine while deeply ensconced in a Mediterranean style. The nose on this electric purple colored wine evokes deep black cassis and blackberry, while balanced with raspberry, ripe plum, and chocolate, with a touch of pencil and mineral. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is mouth coating while also mouth drying with rich tannin, cassis, blackberry, ripe plum, balanced nicely with crushed herbs, and licorice. The wine is balanced nicely with more than the average acid, sweet oak all part of a spicy finish with chocolate, blackberry, cassis, in harmony with crushed herbs, mineral, licorice, and pencil shavings. A nice lively and rich black fruit Cabernet that may be a bit over the top in char but balanced nicely. This will show far better in a year or so.

2009 Tanya Halel Blend Reserve (70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot) – Score: A-
The nose on this electric purple colored wine is redolent, rich, and ripe with blackberry, cassis, raspberry, ripe plum, cocoa, chocolate, crushed herbs, and sweet oak. The mouth on this rich, full bodied, and mouth coating wine is quite lovely and concentrated with rich plum, blackberry, raspberry, rich espresso, and crazy mouth coating tannin. The wine is balanced nicely with rich espresso, date, and chocolate. The finish is long and spicy with espresso, vanilla, raspberry, chocolate, nice crazy tannin, ripe plum, pencil shavings, and sweet oak. The mouth on this wine is lovely, concentrated, and rich with black fruit, espresso, and rich oak extraction, balanced with herbs, and pencil shavings.

2009 Tanya Eliya Shiraz Reserve – Score: A- close to A
The nose on this electric purple colored wine is super rich and true to its varietal, with rich black pepper, tar, blackcurrant, raspberry, espresso, roasted meat, rich and opulent sweet oak, ripe plum, spice, and crushed herbs. The mouth on this rich, ripe, and full bodied wine is so Syrah like, with concentration and layers that hit you wave after wave of ripe plum, blackcurrant, blackberry, rich spice, black pepper, all in front of a backdrop of rich oak, mouth coating tannin, and crushed herbs. The wine is nicely balanced with tar, sweet oak, oak extraction, more spice, and crushed herbs. The finish is long and extracted, with spice, sweet oak, rich tannin, roasted meat, blackberry, tar, and vanilla. This is a super rich and extracted Shiraz that is lovely with still mouth drying tannin that need to die down a bit.

As we entered the winery we were greeted by the nice lady at the front desk, as we made our way to the restaurant we passed the Herzog Tasting Bar.

Traffic getting to the winery was so crazy busy that we barely made our appointed time. We entered the lovely restaurant and were seated immediately, and were given the current menu. The menu changes often, as the restaurant is proud of its local sourcing and its rich and bountiful flavors. According to the website: Tierra Sur continually strives to bring the best produce and ingredients to its customers by buying from local, small family farms. We are proud to participate in the Growers Collaborative Program under Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF). CAFF is a statewide non-profit organization that works to build a movement of rural and urban people to foster family-scale agriculture that cares for the land, sustains local economies and promotes social justice.

Given the complexity of building a menu around what is available locally, even in California, Tomatoes are pretty much over now, as are zucchini, and fresh bell peppers. So the menu is filled with fresh winter salads, chard, and beets, all lovely tasting winter California bounty, with tomatoes and other Summer Solstice vegetables used as adornments. For starters we chose the Chorizo lamb sausage and black olive piadina flat bread with watercress, cherry tomato salad and zahtar dressing. The small pie was lovingly adorned by rich and spicy lamb sausage, along with black olives and a couple of tomatoes on top. For entrees, my wife chose the braised brisket and I chose the duck. After makes our choices, we made our way to the tasting bar and we sampled four of the red wines that were available.

I started with the 2008 Baron Herzog Zinfandel, which is a fine enough wine, but one that does not stand me up on my ear and make me take notice. For 10 bucks or so a bottle, at most local shops, it is the best of the baseline Baron Herzog wines. We than had a taste of the 2009 Herzog GPS (Grenache Petite Sirah) blend. According to the back label Joe Hurliman, the head winemaker at Herzog, has been wanting to make a wine from the Grenache grape and personally, he has made a wonderful wine that emotes whimsical and light white chocolate, flowers, and rich fruit. We followed that with a testing of the 2010 Weinstock Alicante Bouschet. Do not worry, I never heard of this one either before my friend told me about it when he received it in his Herzog Wine Club delivery. For some quick history and viticulture the Alicante Bouschet, it is an intensely red grape with a somewhat dark and infamous past. It was the number one grape used during the prohibition, and widely planted in California during the prohibition, because its color and thick skin allowed for the long trip to the east coast and to be diluted without discoloring the wine too greatly! The grape makes for intensely dark wines, with somewhat high alcohol, and average quality wine.

When standing around and tasting the Alicante Bouschet, I asked the folks around what they thought about it. They answered (though some pleaded the 5th), to a man/lady, that the Alicante Bouschet was OK, but had no finish, and that it was far to young. When I smelled it the first thing that hit me was the intense floral, cherry, raspberry, and chocolate. The mouth was OK, and in my opinion the finish was fine, but the wine overall did not have enough to grab me, but it is truly unique.

Finally, we tasted the Herzog Petite Sirah, Second Edition, which we greatly enjoyed the last time we tasted it. The notes were almost exactly the same – excepting for the fact that the wine opens much faster, with rich tar, chocolate, oak, and nice rich black fruit.

Here are the notes for the wines that we tasted:

2008 Baron Herzog Zinfandel – Score: B to B+
The nose on this black colored wine is rich with chocolate, dark cherry, ripe mixed forest berry, blackcurrant, bramble, and boysenberry. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with forest berry, boysenberry, black cherry, blackcurrant, and oak. The mid palate is chocolaty with rich acid, oak, and berry. The finish is long and spicy with berry, acid, oak, chocolate, searing tannin, and bramble.

2009 Herzog GPS (Grenache Petite Sirah) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this vibrant purple colored wine is super rich and redolent with light fluffy white chocolate, blueberry, ripe raspberry, blackberry, black cherry, and rich oak. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is fun and ethereal is dominated with lovely white chocolate, black cherry, blackcurrant, oak, and blueberry. The mid palate is balanced with acid, more oak, white chocolate, lovely soft tannin that contributes to a fun rich mouth. The finish is long with more white chocolate, oak, blackcurrant, raspberry, black cherry, blueberry, and vanilla. This is a lovely wine that has about two years left in its sea legs.

2010 Weinstock Alicante Bouschet – Score: B+
The nose on this purple to black colored wine is heady and addictive nose of dark cherry, floral notes, raspberry, spice, blackcurrant, and lovely minted chocolate. The mouth on this medium bodied wine, disappointments in comparison to the nose, with a rich mouth of dark cherry, raspberry, floral notes, blackcurrant. The mid palate is spicy with balancing acid, rich spice, tar, and chocolate. The finish is long and super spicy with chocolate, tar, raspberry, black cherry, bramble, floral notes, and heady spice. Like I stated before, this is a truly unique wine and one that you should try and decide for yourself if this is a wine that grabs you.

Herzog Petite Sirah, Second Edition – Score: A-
The nose on this tar infused purple to black colored wine screams tar, blackberry, blackcurrant, black cherry, chocolate, oak, spice, rich black pepper, bramble, and loamy dirt. The mouth on this full bodied wine is rich with tar, oak, blackcurrant, blackberry, raspberry, and freshly ground spice. The mid palate is rich and layered with nice acidity, and more fresh spice, tar, and chocolate. The finish is long and super spicy with rich chocolate, tar, raspberry, blackcurrant, bramble, black pepper, and spice. This is truly a powerhouse PS and one that has 4 or 5 years left in its legs.

We finished the tasting in perfect timing, as our waiter summoned us back to our table. We paid for the tasting and two bottles of GPS and we made our way to the restaurant. The chorizo was rich and spicy and a food that would go well with either the PS2 or a rich sweet Zinfandel late harvest. We noshed on some of lovely bread and garlic infused oil until our main courses arrived. I finished my duck that was laid on top of beets and pillows stuffed with duck pate. My wife’s course was massive with two large hunks of brisket on top of a bed of torn pasta adorned with a rich and savory sauce. We could not finish all the brisket or the chorizo, so we took that home to go. We had a rich chocolate hat with creamy rich chocolate mousse inside. I had a French press of fantastic coffee and we were all set.

The entire experience is not cheap, but one that you can savor and remember as an evening well spent with your loved ones and with people who care deeply about their craft and product. My many thanks to the entire Herzog staff for such a lovely and wonderful evening.

Around that very same time, Ben Ami Bravdo was inaugurated with his now synonymous professor title from Hebrew University. Though even before his official title, he was already teaching students for 16 years on the intricacies of agriculture and viticulture. It is not hard to see how this man is a truly influential figure in the Israeli wine industry, if you do a bit of digging. For some 35 years Professor Bravdo trained hundreds or even thousands of aspiring agriculturalists, including many of Israel’s leading winemakers. Of the four or more existing universities in Israel focusing on agriculture, Hebrew University is the oldest and the most famous.

When people call a person by their old or past title, such as Senator or Congressman, I always laugh because sure they worked to get that title and rise to the fame that it bestows upon its holder. Still, once they are out of office or power, the title does not fit the holder. With Professor Bravdo, nothing could be further from the truth. For some 40 years, from 1962 till 2001, he trained and studied the effects of viticulture in regards to both the final product; wine, and in regards to the ecology and environment. Bravdo was one of the many scientists who early on spearheaded the usage of drip irrigation in both Israel and abroad for a multitude of applications, including many New World wineries. In 2001 he left the University and was bestowed the Professor Emeritus title, one very befitting his time at the University, and still in the industry.

It was during his tenure at Hebrew University that he met and later advised, his now wine laboratory partner, Oded Shoseyov. It was Shoseyov’s PhD thesis that fascinated Bravdo, the biochemistry of grape and wine flavor evolution. Together they quenched the thirst of the starving minds that passed through their lecture halls, the very same minds that lead wineries and agricultural powerhouses the world around. Shortly after Shoseyov’s PhD they collaborated on improving and developing viticulture methods for optimizing the grape aromas, as well as experimenting with the chemical properties of the wine must and wine to improve wine and aroma qualities.

In 1998, the two professors decided to take their game out of the comparatively cramped halls of the University into the sprawling 50 acre winery and vineyard that grace the foothills of the Judean Hills wine region. The Shoseyov family, with 120 years of grape-growing expertise, planted the sprawling vineyard some 55 years ago, right outside Moshav Karmei Yosef. The winery is located smack dab in the middle and totally surrounded by the 50 acre vineyard. The estate specializes in using exceptional techniques for producing a high-quality wine, including water stress, along with managing sunlight exposure to their grapes, and their proprietary aroma enhancing techniques. They released their first vintage in 2001 with production of around 3,000 bottles. The winery became kosher in 2007 when they released some 20,000 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, and Chardonnay. Since then they have increased the production to 45,000 bottles, and have released their first blend, which is fantastic, and made from one of my favorite grapes, more on that soon.

With that as the background, my friend was super kind to drive me to the Bravdo winery on a beautiful Friday morning day. As an added bonus we were blessed with the opportunity to meet one again with Zvi and his wife from the Rogov forum. As I ponder back to the drive down to the winery, from Jerusalem, I remember with vivid fear and wonder if the car was going to die in the middle of nowhere, and if we were going to have to huff it on foot the rest of the way. My friend’s car is fine, but the road to the winery is a bit challenging. The vineyards surround the winery, and the vineyards start off the main road, and access to the winery after that is only via the dirt and rock path. As you are driving the 1.4 kilometers of dirt and rock road, please take it slow, and have no fear you will be there soon, as long as you follow the lovely signposts that point you to an oenophile oasis in the middle of a 50 acre tapestry that looks touched by the hand of God.

As I was doing research for this post I was shocked at the lack of material on this fantastic winery. Rogov bestowed four stars (out of five) on this winery, which is large praise. Further, Rogov scored many of the wines 90 or higher, including all the reds from the 2009 vintage. So why no love? Where is the coverage for such a strong player? I believe in part it has to do with the remoteness of the winery, though that is easily rectified a 4×4 or calm nerves. Also, the winery is small, producing some 45, 000 bottles this past year. Further, the winery is steeped in technology and research that can make the average human weak in his/her knees. When the question of technology was brought up on the forum, based upon a blog posting, Rogov was quick to retort with “Important to remember that while technology, even technology at the cutting-edge, is important, no less critical to the success of wines is the training, experience, “touch”, intuition and “gut-knowledge” of the winemaker.” Clearly technology is wonderful, but it cannot take the place of world-class winemaker, which is a two piece suit that Professor Bravdo fits into perfectly. Finally, the winery’s two-part name may be unclear to those unfamiliar with the Israeli wine industry, or those who have yet to read this article. The concepts that are used at the winery may be complex, but the camaraderie and product are clearly wonderful.

A final note, when I was in Israel a February, I called Hadar (Professor Bravdo’s daughter and manager at the winery) and asked if I could visit the winery. She wisely recommended that we try to meet somewhere else, as Mother Nature had been dumping her wrath upon us for a week already, and that the winery would be inaccessible. At that time I was wondering – how bad could it really be? A few months later, when we finally had the chance to enjoy Hadar and her family’s company and wine, I could see clearly that she is not only a talented and wonderful person, but a very intelligent one as well!

As we pulled up to the vineyard, on this gorgeous early winter morning day, with the sun was dominating the clear blue sky above, all we could do was to stop and take in the fantastic view. Sure, we saw the vineyards as we drove by them, but now with the car parked we could really stop for a moment and take in the view. We were truly surrounded by perfectly manicured yet wild and unpruned vines, for as far as the eye could see – awesome! As we approach the winery, the first thing we could notice were the two large vats of grape pulp, that are presumably left over from the recent harvest and pressing. As we come closer, we notice the many varied olive trees that surround the winery grounds. As we get closer, two things come into perfect focus, the winery building and a massive pergola covering, what looked to be, a 25 foot or longer table that would be the centerpiece to our tasting.

On one side of the pergola, there were tens of clean gleaming glasses, next to open bottles of Bravdo wines, in a combination of ice and water, plain ice water, and stand alone on the table. As we learned later, Hadar explained that some of their red wines present themselves at the truly recommended temperature of 54 or so degrees Fahrenheit, while others are fine at the day temperature of 65 or so, while the Chardonnay requires ice and water at a chillier 50 or so degrees.

As we approached Professor Bravdo, his wife, and Hadar greeted us. We were then given a glass and took our seat. We were one of the first guests that day, but as the morning progressed people were clearly not intimidated by the access road as they were coming and going quite rapidly and the table was continuously full. The tasting was led by Professor Bravdo in Hebrew, which I was proud to say, that I followed pretty well. I did ask for a word here and there, and he was very kind to explain it to me in English. The tasting started with the 2010 Chardonnay, and then continued with the entire 2009 red line, Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz, and then the Coupage. The 2009 Coupage blend is a mélange of 40% Cabernet Franc, 33% Shiraz, and 27% Cabernet Sauvignon.

As we tasted the wines I had the luck to sit across from Zvi and his lovely wife Rachel. The tasting was a blast, and throughout I could not help but take a peek over my back and across the table to the surrounding vines and olive trees, and the happy and talkative crowds that poured in. Israelis really do love their Fridays, and they cherish them like Americans do their Sundays, so when I see so many happy and effervescent people surrounding a table setting with fine wine in their hands I cannot help but wonder about the magic of this place. Clearly the wine is world class, and obviously just because the Internet is not hopping with recognition to this oasis, it does not mean that people are as equally ignorant. The winery has a charming boutique setting and camaraderie among its fans that would make Plato and Aristotle blush. Still, after being at many planned and large tastings, the atmosphere was akin more to a foodie convention (there was tons of cheese and bread enjoyed by all) than to a wine tasting. Though through it all the winery’s roots shown through. At times there were as many as three groups of people, and all of them being given the same warm and friendly treatment so common in Israeli culture, but also they were poured a healthy but controlled dosage of Bravdo wine and Winery.

No matter the size of the group or the time that they arrived, each was served a healthy pour of wine, food, and message. Each group was privy to a talk by the professor about wine chemistry, the make up of each of his wines, and the flavors that we were all enjoying. For each of the wines we savored, two things came out loud and clear, the aromas were truly concentrated and redolent, and the wines were not overpowered by oak. Professor Bravdo kept repeating that he is very focused on not over oaking his wines and also concentrating to minimize the bitterness that may arise from the maceration process. What was fascinating to me was that even as the Professor was holding court and throwing out concepts like phenolic, tannin, color, stems, and wine body, I looked around and there were no blank stares or folks ignoring him. Rather his ability to explain the concepts, and the impact of them on the wines, to the uninitiated was mind blowing! It once again solidified to me the idea that his abilities in the lab and on the stage are one the same, to bring quality Israeli wine to the masses, no matter the medium or place.

Rogov, commenting on the Bravdo Winery, made the following statement: “the major reason for buying the wines of boutique wineries is that they should reflect both the philosophy and signature of the winery. The Bravdo wines most certainly do that!” As we were sitting tasting the wines and taking in the surroundings and group energy, I could not help but totally agree that Professor Bravdo has succeeded in transporting the academic qualities of wine research and knowledge transfer and channeling them into quality Israeli wine and winery.

Like I stated in my previous two postings on the 2009 Bravdo Coupage, the wine is a unique blend. Recently, we were doing blending trials at a different winery, and we tried to put together some of these non sequitur blends and they did not work out. The wines by themselves were lovely but a complex blend was non palatable because there were not enough commonalities between the varietals to make up for the subtleties that were hoped to be captured. In the end a blend like Coupage is no easy feat and one that proves that the Bravdo winery is not just about smoke and mirrors, or mere must aroma delight, but rather a winery who takes the best that Israel has to offer and makes it better with a combination of research and technology along with equally deep winemaking knowledge and experience.

My many thanks to Zvi and his wife for helping us get to the tasting and for the usage of some of their pictures. Many thousands of thanks to the entire Bravdo family for hosting us at their wine oasis, and the rest of the staff for making the entire experience one to remember. The wine notes follow below, in the order that they were tasted:

2010 Bravdo, Karmei Yosef, Chardonnay – Score: B++ to A-
The wine was aged 50% in oak and 50% in steel, the part in oak was aged in barrels for 3 months. The nose on this light gold colored wine is rich with mineral, fig, toasty oak, peach, apricot, brioche, vanilla, creme brulee, ripe grapefruit, spice, and yellow apple. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich and coating with nice brioche, peach, apricot, yellow apple, ripe grapefruit, and creme brulee. The mid palate is balanced with lovely acid, toasty oak, rich spice, mineral, and a nice rich body. The finish is long and spicy, with spice, peach, apricot, mineral, creme brulee, and vanilla. A lovely rich Chardonnay that has a few more years left in its sea legs. Drink now and enjoy.

2009 Bravdo, Karmei Yosef, Merlot – Score A-
This is a brilliant wine that has strong varietal characteristics, and may well be my favorite varietal Israeli Merlot. The nose on this dark garnet to purple colored wine is super rich with forest berries, sweet cedar, rich blackberry, ripe plum, black cherry, nice mineral, bramble, loamy dirt and rock, rich chocolate, light tar, and tobacco. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is truly rich and mouth coating with nice mouth coating tannin, plum, black cherry, blackberry, and cedar. The mid palate is balanced with nice acid, chocolate, cedar, plum, vanilla, tobacco, and more nice tannin. The finish is long and rich with more mouth coating tannin, plum, tobacco, sweet cedar, vanilla, and malted chocolate. Quite a rich wine that still needs to settle down. Enjoy this puppy in a year.

2009 Bravdo, Karmei Yosef, Cabernet Sauvignon – Score A-
The nose on this dark purple to black colored wine is rich with tar, garrigue, blackberry, rich date, cassis, heavy chocolate, tobacco, and nice cedar. The mouth on the rich, heavy, layered, and super extracted full bodied wine is filled with tar, blackberry, cassis, date, heavy tannin that coat your mouth, and garrigue. The mid palate is balanced with lovely acid, tar, cedar, tobacco, vanilla, and rich blackberry. The finish is long and rich with tar, vanilla, blackberry, cassis, rich tannin, chocolate, nice cedar, and a hint of black olives. Quite a rich wine that still needs to settle down. Enjoy this puppy in a year.

2009 Bravdo, Karmei Yosef, Shiraz – Score A- to A
The nose on this black colored wine is rich and redolent with heavy tar, date, blackberry, rich chocolate, super rich cedar, tobacco, crushed herbs and garrigue. The mouth on this full bodied powerhouse of a wine is rich and lovely with mouth coating tannin, blackberry, currant, and garrigue. The mid palate is balanced with more attack of blackberry, tar, cedar, tobacco, and vanilla. The finish is super long, extracted, and spicy with tar, more mouth coating tannin, tobacco, cedar, garrigue, and vanilla. Quite a rich wine that still needs to settle down. Enjoy this puppy in a year or maybe a bit more. Also, do not let the shape of the bottle scare you, this is a real doozy of a Shiraz, even if in a Bordeaux style bottle.

2009 Bravdo, Karmei Yosef, Coupage – Score A- to A
This melange is a truly unique blend of 40% Cabernet Franc, 33% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 27% Shiraz. A few comments on this wine, it shows its blend and components quite well throughout. You can always pick out the flavors that are derived from the different grapes, but overtime the particular characteristics give way to other characteristics, all the while still being true to their origins – a very unique wine.

The nose on this impenetrable black colored wine, to start, is floral, with herb, mineral, black cherry, and raspberry from the Franc. Heavy date, tar of the Shiraz, and rich ripe plum, blackberry from Cabernet, along with alcohol, more tar and chocolate. The mouth on this rich and full bodied wine is super layered and concentrated with multiple attack vectors, mint, floral, plum, raspberry, date, rich and aggressive mouth coating tannin, and hint of blackberry. The mid palate is balanced with acid, chocolate, mint, raspberry, date, vanilla, cedar, and rich tannin. The finish is long and rich, with cedar, tar, raspberry, plum, heavy tannin, tobacco, chocolate, blackberry, and lovely vanilla.

Overtime the wine turns blacker flavored with more tar, chocolate, crushed herb, blackberry, date, and oak making a presence. The mouth softens and becomes plusher with integrated tannin, ripe date, blackberry, tar, plum, and a richer and plush mouthfeel. The mid palate is rich and layered with acid, chocolate, oak, and blackberry. The finish is long and lovely with black olive, date, blackberry, vanilla, nice oak, chocolate, and bit of leather and tobacco.

This wine needs time, lots of time, in a year or two this will be really ready to enjoy. If you do as I did and open one before that, please taste a bit by pouring a glass once you open the bottle, and place that to the side. Then decant the rest of the bottle, and leave it rest for an hour or so, and then try the glass versus the decanted wine, and I hope you will see the elegance growing from glass to decanter.

In a previous post concerning Ella Valley Winery, I have already discussed what I believe to be the definition of a boutique winery. In a sentence or more, it means a crazy (in a good way) level of oversight from the mundane to the essential. Of course, my take leaves a large enough space to drive a semi-trailer through, as exemplified in these retorts to my post. With that said, to me Flam Winery exemplifies many of the aspects of what I look for when talking about a boutique winery. Yes, they are smallish, at some 120 thousand bottles a year, along with very tight oversight of their vineyards. Flam leases five vineyards throughout the country, three in the Judean hills area and two in the upper Galilee. The vineyards are leased so that Golan Flam, the head winemaker, can work hand in hand with the vineyard manager, and know that they will both get what they want. The vineyard knows it will be paid on a consistent manner, per acre. While, Golan knows that the vineyard will be managed with quality as the benchmark and not quantity. Also, Golan has the opportunity to work hand on with the vineyard manager to maximize the potential of the grapes, in the direction that he thinks is most beneficial to the vineyard and the winery.

There are a few famous family owned wineries, including Castel Winery in the Judean Hills, and Tulip Winery in the Galilee. Flam Winery, of course is also on the short list of quality family run wineries. Flam Winery, which was started in 1998, is a personification of Golan’s dream to create an Israeli wine estate, focused on premium quality wines. The dream was hatched after graduating from Hebrew University with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, on a trip through Tuscany, Italy in 1996. While on a fascinating tour amongst the splendid wineries of this enchanting region, Gilad & Golan decided to build a boutique winery in the Land of Israel, which should be surrounded by superb vineyards, and would be the source of the best possible Israeli wines. Golan returned to Italy to get his Master’s degree in Enology, and worked at Carpineto Winery in Tuscany, and in Australia as well. In 1998 Golan returned to Israel to be the wine maker of Flam, and joined forces with his brother Gilad, a successful lawyer and businessman, who runs marketing and Business Development. They recruited their mother, Kami, a successful businesswoman to be the winery’s CFO, and they leaned heavily in the beginning on their father, who was then the head wine maker for Carmel Winery.

The Israeli Wine Industry renaissance can truly not be told without a large time spent on one of its biggest protagonist’s Israel Flam, Golan and Gilad’s father. For starters, Israel Flam was the first head winemaker in Israel to be UC Davis trained, the then clear choice for those wishing an advanced degree in the field of Enology. No, not in 1990 or 1980, we are talking about 1969! This is before Tishbi, the Golan Heights Winery, or any other of the nouveau boutique wineries of Israel’s wild 80s. In many ways, Golan and Gilad were born into the Israeli wine renaissance without even knowing it, at the time. Wine was everywhere in their early days, in 69 Israel took the kids to California to study at UC Davis. He returned to Israel in 1971 to eventually become a winemaker at Carmel winery for some 35 years, including 15 years with the word chief augmented to the beginning of his title. Israel Flam joined the winery in 2005, and I must say, we had the rare opportunity to luck into spending a joyous and truly enlightening 30 minutes with the man, who has left an indelible mark on the now sumptuous tapestry, that is the Israeli Wine Industry! He also left his mark on his children, according to Golan, “I grew up with wine always around me,” he continued. “While we (my brother, sister and myself) were children, we used to spend a lot of time in the winery during harvest time – that was our summer vacation and we all have great memories from this period.”

In 1998, and for sure now a days, starting a winery is no small feat. To hedge their bets, they started another business, Hagefen, a liqueur importing and distribution business, importing Italian and European wines. Personally, if I was starting a new venture, the last thing I would do is start a second business to hedge the first business, both would fail for sure! Israel Flam was truly worried about the dual venture, “In 1998 there were only four to five boutique wineries in the whole country. He was afraid we were going to lose all our money,” Gilad says. In hindsight it was pure genius! Israel was turning a corner and creating a strong and vibrant middle class with more bourgeoisie tendencies. Hagefen turned into the cash cow creating the cash flow to bankroll the cash flow black hole that is a winery. Where do you get the capital to buy the new crop of grapes, the barrels to age the new crop in, or the funds to pay for the staff, while your Messiah is aging in the cellar? If you do not either have deep pockets or a hotline to your local area bank, the next best idea is to have a hotline to your brother who is running a distribution business, that if run correctly can actually be quite cash positive, and in the sure hands of Gilad that is exactly what they have.

As you know we only drink kosher wines, but I wonder at times if that limits our vision of the Israeli Wine Industry, to our own detriment. Of course, we have no interest in non-kosher wine, but spending 30 minutes with Israel Flam taught me one very important lesson, kosher is a moniker for food not knowledge! In 2010, the Flam Winery decided that it would turn kosher, and it created quite a stir, as it was not the only winery to do so at that moment! Actually, three wineries decided to go kosher in 2010, Tulip Winery, Saslove, and Flam Winery.

When we called Liatte, an ex-Oakland native, to setup a visit to this wonderful winery, we did so because the winery had just made available two of their 2010 lineup, and it was close to where I was staying for Shabbat. We arrived on a lovely Friday afternoon, earlier than we had agreed, and Israel was leading a large group tasting of the Flam wines. Liatte was very kind and she agreed to meet with me an hour earlier than expected, which was awesome, because it gave me time to talk with Israel at the end of the visit, but I am getting ahead of myself here. The drive up to the winery is truly lovely, and the seating outside, where Liatte set up, is equally lovely, surrounded by lush green foliage. The winery is a stone throw away from Catsel Winery and Tzuba Winery, just a short ride off the winding roads of the Judean Hills. The winery is very reminiscent of a Tuscan building, with its warm cream and yellow tones, wrought-iron decorative grilles, and the surrounding olive trees. Still, if the all the winery claim to fame was only skin deep, they would never have garnered such worldwide acclaim, from the likes of Daniel Rogov and Robert Parker.

The passion that the Flam family shows to its craft, starts in the hours that Golan spends in the vineyards and carries its way all the through to the art inspired labels, that are handcrafted by an artisan in Italy. Golan and the family have found a way to bring together the best of both worlds. The old world or European style wine, fused together with a clear nod to the grapes and climate of Israel. The wines may show European but they are still the embodiment of an Israeli nurtured environment.

As I am sitting sipping some nicely chilled 2010 Flam Blanc, some guests join the informal seating outside, and it was then that I made an obvious observation, in regards to Israeli wines. We all know the line about how horrible kosher wine used to be, we hear it from the press Ad nauseam. Still, while sitting back at the Flam Winery, I realized that Israelis really do love their wine, and the reason they love it is wine’s romantic and transportational characteristics. As we sat there, I had a chance to chat up the other guests, and invariably the conversation returns to which varietal or wine they love so much. How they met their date or significant other at a wine tasting, or how they had just tasted this exact wine at their friend’s wedding reception. We have spoken about this particular power in the past, but it is still special when you see it come to life in front of you. It is clear, the wine drinking is growing in Israel, what is also clear is that it is not just the upper crust that desires quality wines, but the proletariat do as well.

The winery’s portfolio is a unique combination of Chutzpah and European styling. The Flam Blanc, is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, and never with oak. This is a fantastic continuation of what we realized on our previous trip to Israel, which is that winemakers are now embracing elegance and control when it comes to their white wines. However, that very thought is NOT a new thought to Flam Winery, but rather an ethos upon which they built the winery and one that shows lovingly in their wines. The next wine in the lineup is a Rose, made out of Cabernet Franc of all grapes! What a lovely crisp and refreshing wine that has enough complexity to keep your attention, while also keeping to their core belief of clean and mineral wines that show well in the Rose as well. The next wine in the portfolio, and the first red wine, is the Flam Classico, a classic Bordeaux blend of Cabernet and Merlot. The next wines are the Flam Superiore Syrah, Flam Merlot Reserve, and Flam Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve. The final three wines live anywhere from 6+ months in old oak for the Syrah to 16 or 18 months in a mix of new and old oak for the two Reserve wines.

As we were sipping the next wine, the 2010 Flam Rose, I could not help myself and blurt how much I truly love Cabernet Franc. Of course, I have never tasted a Rose made from Cabernet Franc, so it was a doubly cool experience for me. Finally, Liatte opened a bottle of the yet unlabeled or released Flam Classico, and it was another example of the fusion of European restraint and elegance combined with Israel’s hot and ripe flavors. The black fruit was not under ripe or green; rather the fruit was perfect, not overcooked or overripe, while also not a sledgehammer of oak or ripeness. Instead, a healthy balance of ripe black fruit, clearly stating this is an Israeli born wine, while also showing clean and elegant lines. The white wine were also quite a joy for the same reasons; the Blanc had flint to slate flavors, with clean and bright lychee and grapefruit flavors. No question that the bright and ripe Israeli fruit has as well taken residence in the Blanc, however, the balance and restraint is clear with the lack of oak or malo. Ditto for the Rose, with its clean and bright lined coat draped on top of a ripe red and white body.

While I was taking in the a fore mentioned surroundings and the lovely wines, I could not help but ask the obvious question at hand, of why kosher and why now? Liatte has probably heard this question a thousand times by now, and she showed extreme professional and human restraint in not reaching over the table and strangling the life out of me, as she answered; it was a business decision. When you’re not kosher, you’re not working in the free market, and are limited in your easy export opportunities. Of course, there is a fair amount of competition now in the Israeli kosher boutique winery business, even with Royal importing your wines. Still, I asked, is this a Flam family decision? It was then that she said, that Israel Flam, who is the winemaker’s father, and a world-class winemaker in his own right may be available to answer my question. It was then that I lucked into stealing 30 minutes from a legend in the Israeli wine industry, and a gentleman in his own right as well. Our discussion ranged in topics from Daniel Rogov’s unfortunate passing and his forum, to the subject of kosher wine, Royal, and worldwide competition. Time passed way too fast, in an almost blur like fashion. Unfortunately, it was Friday afternoon, and the Sabbath was fast approaching, so, I bid my adieu, picked up a bottle of Rose, and thanked them both profusely for the hospitality, wine, time, and lovely company.

We tasted the three kosher wines that were available at the time. The Syrah will be released in mid to end of 2012, with the Merlot and Cab reserves being released in late 2013.

My many thanks to the Israel Flam, Liatte, and the rest of the Flam winery staff for taking the time to make me feel 100% at home, even with my early arrival, and my unwillingness to leave. The wine notes follow below in the order they were tasted:

2010 Flam Blanc (67% Sauvignon Blanc and 37% Chardonnay) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this straw colored wine is super bright and rich with pear, litchi, tart grapefruit, peach, rich slate or flint, floral notes, lemon rind, and nice citrus pulp. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is rich and tart with more slate, lemon, pear, litchi, peach, and tart grapefruit. The mid palate has restrained yet almost bracing acid, mineral, litchi, and citrus zest. The finish is long and rich with bright acid, slate, citrus zest, and litchi. The citrus zest, litchi, pear, slate, and summer fruit linger long on the palate. The lovely mineral slate combined with the clear Chardonnay fruit is in perfect balance with the lovely Sauvignon Blanc fruit, a lovely example of restraint and Israeli terroir.

2010 Flam Rose (100% Cabernet Franc) – Score: B++ to A-
The nose on this salmon colored rose is rich and floral with lovely violet notes, nice mineral, strawberry, mint, ripe raspberry, rich brightness, citrus fruit, and orange blossom. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is bright and rich with more floral and violet notes, ripe raspberry, strawberry, lemon fraiche, and lovely tart acidity. The mid palate is bright with nice acid, lemon, zesty raspberry, and orange blossom. The finish is super long and bright with more acid, mineral, strawberry, ripe raspberry, lemon fraiche, and strawberry sherbert. This is a perfect wine for a hot summer day or as a lovely aperitif.

2010 Flam Classico (50% Merlot and 50% Cabernet Sauvignon) – Score: A-
The nose on this dark garnet to purple colored wine starts off with a super rich mineral nose, rich and ripe black cherry, ripe blackberry, loamy dirt, restrained chocolate covered mints, restrained toasty oak, and vanilla. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is lovely with mouth coating tannin, rich toast, ripe black cherry, ripe blackberry, and nice black olives. The mid palate is nice and balanced with good acid, blackberry, chocolate, toasty oak, black olives, and more dirt. The finish is long with toasty oak, tannin, chocolate, vanilla, mineral, and blackberry. Black cherry, blackberry, toasty oak, and espresso coffee linger long on the palate.