Wake Up!

If you have somehow missed the onset of spring in Israel, just have a look at the vineyards; they’ll tell you all about it.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Salomon Winery’s annual pre-Pesach launch of their latest vintage (see notes following the pictures).  Along the way, I passed lots of vineyards and I noticed that they were in various states of awakening. Some were full of leaves and even showing flowers. On the other hand some vines had only a very few leaves and a few had  none at all. I even saw two adjacent vineyards, one looking very much alive and the other quite the opposite.

Sommelier 2014 – Part I

If I wait to till I’ve written the entire thing, this posting may never see the light of day, so it’s coming in installments. This is Part I.

Sommelier is a two day trade fair (Jan 7 & 8 this year) at which wineries present their wares to distributors, wine merchants, restauranteurs, hoteliers, sommeliers, and the like. It is a major opportunity for wineries to get their products on shelves and wine lists. Sommelier is also open to wine journalists, and even wine bloggers like yours truly.

After a hiatus of several years the Sommelier Wine Fair was back where it belongs, at Tel Aviv’s Charles Bronfman Auditorium (what many people still call the Mann Auditorium).

Naively I thought if I went both days I’d manage to try most of the wines that interested me, and speak to most of the people I wanted to. And while I did manage to cover a lot of ground, and even though I skipped many wines that were already familiar to me, I still didn’t get anywhere near tasting and schmoozing as much as I’d intended.