They say we make judgements about people within the first 30 seconds of meeting them.

Sitting in their lovely winery in Kfar Tikvah (“Village of Hope”) this past August I knew right away I would fall in love with the people, the wine, and the story behind Tulip Winery, located in Israel not too far from Nazereth and Haifa.

We sat at the prepared table in their wine room tasting through a series of wines over cheese and good conversation, asking questions about each others goals and dreams, thoughts about marketing wine, how I pick winery partners and the sort of one-stop all-inclusive wine import/fulfillment/marketing platform we provide boutique wineries in Israel.

There’s a kind of courtship dance importers and wineries do with each other when they first meet that’s a lot like what happens on a first date.

I’ve written before about how I personally select wineries and wines to work with.

For me, it’s all about finding 1) wines that surprise, 2) wines that taste like the place they are from, and 3) people I love.

I have had occasion to find some sweet wines made by sour people and avoided them (for the record, I’m sure the guy wanted to strangle me, too!). 

My personal Dream is to help other peoples dreams come true. Sounds emotional perhaps, but it’s the truth. We’ve created a platform to help small-production wineries in Israel access the world’s largest wine market in the US in a way that could not do on their own. I hope in some small way our platform makes a bit of their dreams come true.

Today, Tulip, under the leadership of Roy Itzhaki and winemaker Tamir Artzi  and marketing manager Orly Schorr, is producing around 100,000 bottles annually across a wide variety of great reasonably priced wines.

In addition to producing great “value for money” wines from grapes sourced through long-term contracts with vineyards in the Galilee and Judean Hills, Tulip has fully integrated the winery operations with the adults with various developmental challenges living in their community, several of whom work in the winery itself. In fact, Nathan (he’s the gentleman with the amazing smile and great big heart on the far right in the picture above) was a full participant in our meeting. The team had just come in from a full morning of harvesting when we met.

In the last couple of weeks we received US government label approval for a Tulip wine called Mostly Shiraz 2006  (love that name!). The wine should leave from the docks of Haifa in the next couple of weeks. Orly was nice enough to send me some samples so we can start sharing the wine with you before it even arrives!

This will be Tulip’s first entry into the US and I am proud to be a part of that. We expect to import several hundred cases of their wines in 2009.

And Roy and Tamir will join me and other great Israeli wineries in NYC in early February 2009 for major trade and privateve events.

I’m excited and proud to have the opportunity to work with this amazing team.