Month: May 2018

The first French Revolution in Israeli wine came at the end of the 19th century when Baron Edmond de Rothschild founded a modern wine industry. He was a Paris banker and winery owner and he invested millions in planting vineyards in the 1880’s and building wineries with deep underground cellars in the 1890’s. He used French administrators, the most experienced French agronomists and French winemakers. The accounts were kept in French and the wine growers cooperative he set up was even registered in French: Société Cooperative des Grandes Caves. So undoubtedly the Israeli wine industry was revived after 2,000 years owing to French finance and French expertise. Israeli wine was built on French roots.

The Festival of Shavuot is a good opportunity to drink wine with cheese and it has become known in Israel as the white wine festival. When I came to Israel in 1989 most of the wine drunk was white wine. Since the early 1990s, we then became a red wine drinking country because of a number of reasons. Firstly, there was the influential 60 Minutes television program claiming that drinking red wine was healthy. Secondly improved winemaking techniques enabled wineries to make entry level red wines like white wines. Fruity, without astringency, with a good refreshing acidity. Thirdly a more sophisticated wine loving public simply began to choose red.