Mark Squires scored over 100 Israeli wines for the latest addition of The Wine Advocate. He concentrated on boutique wineries and gave some of the wines we import and sell great scores!!! I am posting part of the article here. For the rest of the article and all the scores, you will need a subscription to the
Wine Advocate.
Take a look at the
Erle Family Winery Blog for scores of the Erle Wines.
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David Takes Center Stage: The Rise of the Small Wineries (written by Mark Squires for the Wine Advocate)
Israel is a country whose marketplace was dominated by one winery--historic Carmel-- for the better part of a century. Even today, Carmel, together with Golan Heights and Barkan, controls about 75% of the marketplace. Yet Israel has over 200 wineries—and most of that total consists of boutiques, garage operations and other small wineries. They are multiplying like bunny rabbits. Increasingly, they look like Israel’s future.
It is hard to define terms. What’s a boutique? Perhaps 5,000 cases and under is sufficiently small. Perhaps as one approaches and exceeds 10,000 cases it is clear that it is simply a small winery. Whatever you call them, the wineries at or around these production levels tend to be individualistic and family run, dedicated to doing something special. The story in Israel today concerns the rise of the boutiques, or, let’s just say, “small wineries.” Not all of them are exceptional, as this report most certainly shows, but the best of them are delivering interesting wines with lots of potential.
Some of the output from some of the big wineries can be quite good, to be sure. In particular, the upper level wines from Golan Heights are the well known benchmarks that inspired the current quality revolution. Golan Heights, Carmel and Galil Mountain also often provide some of the better values in Israeli wines. As a group, though, most of the wines from most of the big wineries tend to be less intriguing.
Long established crown jewels among the small wineries include well known names like Domaine du Castel (first harvest, 1992; now producing a bit less than 10,000 cases total in the most productive vintages for all of its three bottlings, its owner says to just call it a small winery) and Margalit (first vintage 1989, self-described as Israel’s first boutique and making about 1,700 cases a year). That is no longer the end of the story, though, as there are many others on the rise, at varying stages of development, to be sure. Some of Israel’s most interesting small wineries would include, in no particular order, Yatir (9,100 cases); Pelter (6,700 cases), Vitkin (3,300 cases), Tulip (7,000 cases), Flam (9,000 cases), Chateau Golan (5,800 cases), Chillag (1,700 cases), Alexander (4,100 cases) and Avidan (2,500 cases), among others. There are brand new ones popping up all the time (the promising first reports on Trio, with roughly a 1,300 case production, are contained in this article). Much of the boutique/garage/small winery output is admittedly harder to find, but many of them have acquired importers. They are well worth seeking out. I have the sense that the Israeli boutiques are consolidating their gains in the 2006 and 2007 vintages—proving as a group that they can consistently make good wines. The one problem—price. Many of these wines are selling for a pretty penny, not exactly the values for which consumers may be searching in a difficult economy.
A note on wine styles, not applicable just to the boutiques: First, I continue to find lots of green notes in Israeli Bordeaux blends. For a warm weather country, there is a lot of herbaceousness popping up here, more than I’d like to see. Whether due to canopy management issues, picking too soon, or other issues, it seems to crop up a lot, no pun intended. Second, and on the other hand, I’m happy to see increasing skill with white wines, especially Chardonnay. Wineries like Clos de Gat and Domaine du Castel, in very different styles, are normally good producers, but others are coming along just fine, too. The unoaked Chardonnay from Ella Valley is a treat and a better buy. In other whites, Clos de Gat is also leading the way—its Chanson blend is a pleasure to drink. Other interesting dry whites that show promise, in no particular order, include Flam’s Sauvignon Blanc-Chardonnay blend, Erle’s Sauvignon Blanc, Chateau Golan's Geshem, Tulip's White Tulip and Vitkin's Riesling and Journey. Vitkin’s Riesling is not all the way there yet, but it is a particularly interesting example of how Israeli whites are developing. It usually has typicity—it now needs to work on acidity and structure to make it more ageworthy and distinguished....."
