Recently, we were invited to participate in a wine tasting consisting only of Israeli wines.  It was an interesting experience.  I, like most of the wine drinking public in this country, think of Israeli wine through the following framework: Israel is the Jewish state; Jewish wine would typically be kosher; the most well known kosher wine is Manischewitz, which sucks; therefore, all Israeli wine must suck.  Believe me when I tell you this — and I hope that, for a second, you can forget about the fact that this is coming from a web site whose name has the word “rabbi” in it – the way we all think about Israeli (and yes, even some kosher) wine is destined to change sometime soon.

One of the wines that we liked most, the Rimon Dessert Wine 2005, was actually not a wine made from grapes, but rather from pomegranates.  The aromas and flavors brought to mind pomegranates (surprise, surprise!), and though the wine’s color suggested high extraction, it was neither thick nor syrupy as one would normally expect of a dessert wine.  For people like us who normally prefer dry wines over sweet ones, the texture was very much a pleasant surprise.  And it wasn’t the only surprise: I was floored to find out its alcohol content was around 15%.  Even at $29, we give this wine a strong recommendation, not just for novelty, but also because it’s just really, really delicious. 

So, ok, Israel is making good pomegranate wines.  So why jump to the conclusion that something is happening over there that will change the way we think of Israeli wine?  Well, the rest of the wines that we tasted were all very good, but one other in particular –the sample of Sauvignon Blanc that our winemaker host had made in Israel using Israeli grapes — truly moved us.  It was a revelation, and probably the best Sauv Blanc I’ve had within the last year.  There appears to be a number of high quality boutique wineries sprouting up in Israel (check out Israel Wine Company, for example, which sells some of their products), and they’re producing wines using classic grapes.  Assuming that these boutiques are harnessing the potential that we detected in our host’s Sauvignon Blanc, there ought to be a lot of worthy wines coming our way soon from this tiny little country.