Israel’s Unique Wine Blend: Innovative Spirit with Mediterranean Elan

After tasting more than a hundred current releases from Israel, I am seriously amazed by what rapid progress the leading winemakers of this Eastern Mediterranean country have made since my first tasting trip there in the fall of 2014. Not only are many of the new wines worthy of attention, they also begin to reflect the enormous geographical diversity and amazing cultural melting pot of this country, which invented the USB stick and drip irrigation, among other things.

Just take a look at the two highest-rated wines in this report, the 2018 Grand Vin from Domaine du Castel and the 2018 red from Razi’el. The former is a Bordeaux-style blend based on the cabernet sauvignon grape that was first produced in 1992 and remains a benchmark for the country, while the latter is just the second vintage of a new blend of the grenache and carignan grapes that originate in Spain, at the other end of the Mediterranean. These world-class wines taste radically different, although both were made by the same winemaker: Eli-Gilbert Ben-Zaken.

For anyone who only knows Israel from summer days on the beaches of Tel Aviv, it could be hard to believe that sophisticated wines can be produced in this climate. However, the best vineyards lie at altitudes of 250 meters to almost 1,200 meters above sea level, and the average temperature falls about 0.6 degrees Celsius, or about 1 degree Fahrenheit, with each hundred meters that you climb. That means they have average temperatures from 1.5 to 7 degrees Celsius cooler than Tel Aviv!

That climate analysis comes from 2015 research by Israel’s first Master of Wine, Eran Pick of Tzora Vineyards in the Judean Hills region. It was necessary to rely on the winemakers for most of the information used for this story, since there are no official statistics except for crop tonnages. That situation has a lot to do with the youthfulness of the Israeli wine industry, a paradoxical situation given the ancient roots of winemaking in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The modern industry was founded by Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, who planted the first experimental vineyards in 1884, when what is now Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire. The focus was on red Mediterranean and Bordeaux grape varieties, but only carignan really caught on. Until the boutique winery boom of the 1990s, when significant areas of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay were planted, it was the dominant grape variety. In Israel old vines for reds means carignan, and for whites it means either semillon or french colombard. There are no indigenous wine grape varieties, but some local table grape varieties exist and a couple of winemakers are experimenting with them.

On top of this, in exciting wine regions such as the Upper Galilee or the Judean Hills, the number of hours with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) during July, August and September – the crucial three months for grape development – is lower than in Lodi, California, or the Barossa Valley in South Australia. Much of the best cabernet sauvignon in Israel grows there. It is the most widely planted red wine grape, with about 20 percent of the 5,500 hectares of vineyards. In the highest-altitude vineyards of the Golan Heights, the number of hot hours in summer is lower than in St. Émilion in Bordeaux!

The wines in this report are the work of a highly diverse group of winemakers and reflect these roots. For example, Pick, whose red Misty Hills 2018 is one of the highest-rated wines in this report, started out as a helicopter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Then a chance encounter with the riesling wines of Germany’s Mosel region in 1996 changed his life. Like many Israeli winemakers, he studied at the University of Caifornia, Davis, graduating in 2006. His reds are blends of syrah with Bordeaux grapes, and this, together with the shallow rock limestone soil of Tzora’s Shoresh vineyard, gives his wines a unique flavor profile.

Assaf Paz of the Vitkin winery was the first winemaker in Israel to graduate from the University of Bordeaux’s oenology department, and he is also one of the leading proponents of Mediterranean grape varieties, both as blends and varietal wines. His vineyards are scattered across the country’s wine regions, but all his wines impressed us and rated very well.

Ze’ev Dunie of Seahorse Winery shares that Mediterranean obsession, and his Chateauneuf du Pape-inspired red Rhone blend, Antoine 2016, was another standout wine, as was his equally complex and original Chenin Blanc James 2013. He used to be a studio technician in New York and a documentary filmmaker. If I dug further into their backgrounds and those of other leading winemakers, this picture would become more colorful!

Every time you think there is an easy logic to Israeli wine, you bump into a striking exception. For example, reds dominate wine production, but Doron Rav Hon’s Sphera winery, just southwest of Jerusalem and founded in 2012, only produces dry whites. Theoretically, elegant and aromatic dry whites are the toughest call in this warm Mediterranean climate, but we were very impressed by Rav Hon’s wines from the chardonnay, chenin blanc, riesling, sauvignon blanc and semillon grapes. Through the precise choice of vineyard location and attributes – a valley floor where cold air collects at night, with deep soil and the precise use of irrigation – he cracked it.

If Israeli winemakers have anything in common, it is this spirit of innovation.

– Staurt Pigott, Senior Editor

Note: We are well aware of the deep conflicts that trouble in Israel and the Middle East as a whole, but this story is about wine, rather than politics or religion – a policy we apply to every country and region we report on.