Late last week, 420 cases of the new wines I bought from the top 5 wineries in Israel cleared US Customs and settled into our warehouse in Benicia, just south of Napa.

And so I got to thinking about how I came to select these particular wines and what it means to be a wine “importer”.

A couple thoughts (I’d love yours, too):

1) being a wine importer (at least the part of selecting which wines to import) is like being an “editor” – you have a lot of possibilities to work with and they need to be narrowed down into your version of “the best”, with all the dots connected and some theme(s) in mind, a sort of story to tell that emerges out of the endless possibilities and raw data (in my case, the many possible wines from Israel or any other place that could possibly be imported)

2) don’t take this wrong but…..I actually don’t think about YOU when I am selecting which wines to import. I think about ME and the wine styles I like, and then I buy those. And then people who resonate with or dig those styles tend to buy them from us. For example, if your wine thing is oaky, jammy, in-your-face, taking-my-clothes-off-before-the-first-date-is-even-over wines you will not like my portfolio. If you like fresh white wines that allow you to taste some fruit + sunshine and light-medium reds with a Mediterranean herbiness full of both fruit and dirt, then you will likely appreciate the wines from Israel I work with.

A famous sommelier in NYC (who carries 3 wines from us) once told me when I asked him how his customers liked the wines we had sent him, “I don’t care if they like them or not; I care if I like them or not. And I like them.”

GOOD POINT!

ANALOGY: This reminds me of people who talk too much – I have never understood that! I always (at least try) to do more listening than talking since (think about this)….I already know what I think, right? I want to know what YOU think. If you keep trying only the wines you have always had before, it’s like listening to yourself speak all the time. And if I try to buy wines for some vague guesstimate about what The Market will buy (as opposed to buying what I love) I’ll please no one really and you will “read” my edited portfolio and not be able to find a plot line.

So, I hope you will try these wines we have made available in the US and I hope you like them. But I didn’t exactly buy them for YOU. I bought them to Tell a Story through the wines about a place called Israel, the people there – past and present, what life is like there, what such an ancient re-born land does to Cabernet or Chardonnay, to let you experience what it feels like to taste the breeze and the sand and hills of the place that we actually all originate from, where Noah planted vineyards and David danced and fought and Jesus fished for men.

To see wine as Poetry again.

And Geography Lesson.

And Original Alchemy – as sunshine turns dirt back into liquid sunshine.

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