The wines we drink while traveling are clearly different from those we store in our cellars or wine-fridges at home. Indeed, much of the excitement and adventure of travel comes with the conversations around the glass, and the different local elixirs that we taste in our goblets. Being intimately attached to both Wine and Travel as my vocation means there is a unique interplay between the two. Indeed, sipping a French wine at home, can bring me back to journeys in Bordeaux, and surfing mountains in Austria can allow me to recall the first time I sipped from a glass of succulent alpine, Gruner Veltliner.
Living in Israel, I typically drink Israeli wine, and considering we are a wine tour company that focuses on Israel, we are blessed to fill our glasses with some local flavors and styles. The flavors of the Judean Hills come alive with the Terra Rosa soil and the limestone below. This distinct and delightful terroir feeds the vines with our particular Judean history and heritage, as well as the nutrients needed to give life to great grapes.
Mount Carmel carries the cries of Elijah the prophet from millennia gone by and the stories that we read and reread from the biblical narrative. Indeed, the tales from our Judeo-Christian texts infuse the wines with a unique flavor and a particular, holy effervescence.
When it is time to taste beyond Israel’s borders, Europe is our typical destination and European wine is a pleasure that we are lucky to enjoy and appreciate. Having lived in Spain as a young man, I can try and remember the taste of Rioja’s grapes that I first discovered at the age of 16 while studying abroad, and use my palate to seek out the hidden memories from our past that a glass of wine can often invoke.
But on this adventure, America was our destination, and American wine filled our glasses this time around. And true to the local appreciation that come with traveling the world with a glass in hand, California Cabernet was the dominant varietal to be enjoyed. I first learned to appreciate this grape as the child of a family of wine importers, sampling from my mothers glass with the responsibility to describe what I was tasting. Underage tasting was part of our enological education and along with it, the sense of responsibility as connoisseurs not just consumers.
I have not tasted American Cabernet in quite some time, and while the ones we drink were wonderful, my pallet has adapted to my new terroir. There’s a certain supple, joyful, easy-drinking American quality to California’s Cabernet culture. It’s approachable, fruitful, and simply enjoyable. Often as my in-laws had mentioned, European wines make you work a little bit on the pallet to enjoy their overall flavors. They can be more mineral-rich and granular, chewy or nutty, with a certain bite that the casual wine drinker might find less than appetizing.
I appreciate working for my enjoyment and working hard for my wine. Indeed, my toil as a guide is my vocation, and my responsibility as a father, as a homeowner, and as a business operator. I work to honor my wife and to afford activities for my daughter, and certainly for my Hebrew nation that I represent. But I also work hard in order to purchase a wine or two, that I can enjoy at home.
When I welcome guests to my home, I do my best to spoil them with the local flavors. Yet in this case, I was the guest at the home of my in-laws, enjoying their wine and their hospitality.
While Cabernet was indeed the varietal I most consumed during our visit, there was a bottle hidden in the back of their wine fridge that spoke to me from a place of intimacy. Indeed, they had an outstanding Israeli wine from my dear friends at Somek Winery that I insisted on opening on their behalf. It was a bottle of Ramat HaNadiv, a wine I have enjoyed throughout the years of working and pouring in Israel over the past decade. It spoke to me not only because I’m familiar with the outstanding quality that Barak Dahan, the winemaker, and his wonderful wife Hila manage to create with their craft, but it marks a decade since this wine was bottled. The 2013 Ramat HaNadiv was like tasting home, while away from home. There were several notes of Carmel mineralogy, aged abroad. The refined and elegant character of this distinguished wine were on full display with the proper aging and storing that it had enjoyed. Indeed, I was tasting home while abroad.
My first taste of this wine came not long after it was bottled while visiting with Barak alongside my mother, some 10 years ago. I remember the visit more than I remember the wine, and that onto itself is part of the tale to be told. Just like the wine has aged with elegance and character, my friendship with Barak has continued since that first meeting. Throughout the past decade, he has welcomed me with open arms and my guests along side. We have sampled his wines over that decade and for me, his warm embrace and gentle smile are the sentiments that are most extracted from tasting his dynamic and delicious wine that I love to enjoy with my guests.
I could talk about how delicious it was, indeed, but I’d rather invoke the friendship with my friend the winemaker who I remember well, while I was abroad for a visit in America, once upon a time.
Wine and War: A Toast to Israel’s Past, and sincere Hope for Its Future