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.

Like wine.

And olive oil, honey, cheese.

There may be others.

Wine is alchemy in action. Wine turns dirt into gold.

Israeli wine has a unique PLACE to translate.

You can begin answering interesting questions when you drink Israeli wine.

Like…what did Jesus drink?

And…what does merlot taste like from the valley where David killed Goliath?

Wine, and other foods that translate PLACE, lets you travel from your own home, lets you taste PLACEs thousands of miles away. 

And when you agreggate enough wineries from around Israel like we have, you can literally taste different regions within a larger PLACE.

Here’s what the volcanic ash of the Golan Heights tastes like coming through Chardonnay…

Here’s what the Judean Hills does to Cabernet Sauvignon…

And from a financial standpoint, a company that’s an aggregation of great Israeli wineries will begin to act like an Index Fund of the re-emerging Israeli wine sector.

Let me repeat that cuz it’s potentially a Big Damn Deal.

From a financial standpoint, a company that’s an aggregation of great Israeli wineries will over time begin to act like an Index Fund of the re-emerging Israeli wine sector.

If you get what I just wrote, you will understand the power and the possibility of Israeli Wine Direct.

Israeli Wine Direct is a PROTOTYPE platform for getting FOOD THAT MEANS SOMETHING into the US market on a primarily DIRECT to consumer + trade basis from exotic or emerging wine and food scenes (think Georgia or Macedonia next…).

And soon people will be able to literally own a piece of the Israeli wine world’s re-emergence through a security that we’ll offer.

The future of Israeli wine is in the small premium boutiques. Period.

The barometer of the re-emergence of the Israeli wine phenomenon will track the growth of these brands.

Brands like Margalit, Flam, Pelter, Tzora, Tulip…

The small boutiques are the brands that will jump the ghetto fence and make it to the outside world, too.

Please stay tuned for details about how people like YOU will soon be able to own a piece of the Israeli wine industry from thousands of miles away…OR you can email me or phone me at 847-924-5523.

Some of you  have heard me talking about a new LLC I formed with my pal Leah Jones here in Chicago.

Leah dropped the idea that grew into the company over supper with me late one night at Matilda, her fave haunt, as easy as if she had said “please pass the salt” (this happens a lot with Leah!).

The new company is called MyWineTxt.com 

You can go there now and register if you like. Yes, we know it’s just a shell of a registration site right now…we’ll pretty it up as soon as we can. As Leah will no doubt tell you, I tend to be impatient to get things moving so she’s frequently telling me to slow down and breathe (one night I told her she’s like my Ritalin!).

You’ll see the Israeli Wine Direct logo up there for now while we get the logo designed over at Crowdspring by an entire crowd of hip designers we don’t even know and may never meet from all over the world (cool, huh?). You can watch their design work (and my feedback to them) on our logo real-time here, and even participate by posting a design of your own.

mywinetxt.com will change the way people buy wine, adding another wine-buying channel for people like me who want an easy, immediate way to get whatever the hell it is they want at any particular moment in time. My impulsivity has gotten me into trouble on occasion but in this setting I think it’s a good thing!

mywinetxt is a platform for people to order wine via txt messaging.

Once registered, your phone becomes a wine order-taker for you. Simply type “buywine #bottles winecode” to our shortcode and 3-4 days later wine shows up at your door. No lie.

This should facilitate wine sales in a PARTY SETTING – my favorite setting to drink wine and interact with people but generally (before mywinetxt) a lousy, challenging setting for taking wine orders.

In addition, registrants can elect to receive special wine offers they can simply respond to immediately with an order. You could be buying wine walking down the street or in the shower or in the middle of Target or wherever. 

We’ve got some other crazy wickedly fun stuff we’ll be doing in our major parties, too, that should get people really excited about buying great wine.

I’m jazzed to see the group psychology that happens in a party setting as people compare-and-contrast wines with friends and then buy wines they like immediately.

One of the things that makes me nutty is the often ridiculously long time between a person’s Urge to Buy and their Ability to Buy. (Game Over with mywinetxt!)

The Israeli government has taken this to ridiculous extremes in the past by holding major wine tastings in the US with great wines not even yet imported (talk about having to delay gratification!). As in, “hey, I love this wine, how can I get it? — “oh, that wine, that wine’s not even imported yet…”

Maybe this says more about my impatience than anything but I just think it’s a pain to have to go on-line to buy wine, or drive to the store every time, or fill out paper order forms in a party setting.

Plus txt messaging is FUN! You know you love it!!!

We’ll use it here at Israeli Wine Direct and we will also license the platform to others – retailers, for instance. If you know someone who might be interested, email me at richard@israeliwindirect.com, please. Or call me at 847-924-5523.

Over time, our mywinetxt database will be a wicked piece of the platform enabling us to make recommendations to people based upon their past buying coupled with the purchases of others with similar tastes.

Europeans are years ahead of us when it comes to mobile marketing and purchasing with cell phones. It’s time to catch up to them.

So, go register on the secure site….we’ll start using it soon to make special outbound wine offers.

In November we have launch parties planned in Denver and Chicago.

Now I just gotta get my gal pals in Houston to pull over and stop drinking long enough to plan a major launch party in Texas, too. Hhhhhmmmm, maybe we invite a Texas winery to the party and let them use the technology with us (not a bad idea, huh?).

Please share your thoughts. And REGISTER!

Be patient and gentle with us though……….it’s a beta, baby! We want cool people like YOU to play with it and make it BETTER.

I’m not sure I have the right answer.

What do you think?

First of all…what do Old World and New World signify when it comes to wine, anyway?

The diferences are slowly fading so as to make the distinction all but useless and artificial (I think!) but…

Old World winemaking relies on years of Tradition; New World winemaking relies on Science (I re-read Jancis Robinson on this topic before writing this post so full credit to her!)

Old World (European) winemakers tended to want their wines to represent a PLACE, emphasizing terroir over grape variety.

New World winemakers (in the past at least) have been more likely to try to express a particular grape variety through their wines.

New World people were more experimental; old world guys tried to stay out of the way of the wine.

New World wines emphasize the role of the winemaker as artist; old world wineries de-emphasize the personality of the winemaker generally.

Today, the distinctions between “old” and “new” world wines fade as European (“old world”) nations absorb the best cutting-edge winemaking technology and “new world” nations focus more on the way that wine can translate a particular PLACE in the bottle. Wine varieties in both “worlds” overlap now, too.

The punch-line of this post is that I don’t think Israeli wine is either Old or New World wine!

It’s probably a bit of both.

But given that it’s the Birthplace of Wine it’s sort of neither, as well.

I think it’s something like…

Original World Wine

OR

First World Wine

OR

Re-emerging World Wine

What do you think?

I think my friend Chavi in CT has started something REALLY cool (whether she meant to or not!)

The reality is that there are beautiful women all over the world drinking Israeli wine. Chavi is one of them!

If you have been following me on Twitter this evening, you know that I am giving away Israeli Wine Direct t-shirts (I’ll send them to almost anyone but honestly – sorry – I prefer sending them to beautiful women).

Just let me know you’d like a t-shirt and how to get it to you. I’ll send you one and you send me a photograph of you in it so I can post it here!

Maybe we need a Women of Israeli Wine Calendar? YES WE DO

My friend Shelley who is an amazing photographer will soon start photo shoots with handsome Israeli winemakers to let the world know about the great guys in the Israeli wine scene, as well. Stay tuned!

One of the smartest people alive on the planet today (I can’t speak for other planets like Tom Cruise might be able to) is Roger Dooley, of The Neuromarketing Blog and Dooley Direct, LLC, his consultancy. If you are involved in any way with HUMAN BEINGS (and most of us are [smile]) then you need to start reading every single thing Roger posts.

Roger was nice enough to allow me to ask him some questions about the intersection of our brains and wine. Enjoy!

What is “neuromarketing”?
I’ve heard various definitions, but the simplest one is “the use of neuroscience in marketing.”  This can include, for example, the interpretation of fMRI brain scans to analyze how subjects respond to advertisements.  From the standpoint of my writing, I broaden the definition to include behavioral research. What was traditionally called psychology is now gradually merging with neuroscience, or, if not actually merging, is being enhanced by the ability of neuroscience tools to look inside what used to be a “black box.” (See What is Neuromarketing?)

Are people more rational or emotional when it comes to buying stuff?

As with most decisions we make, buying decisions are a mix of emotions and rationality.  This will vary greatly by product category.  Some commodities, like salt or batteries, involve little emotion for most consumers.  Other products, like autos, fragrances, Scotch, and wine, may incorporate significant emotional components.

The same products may be treated quite differently by different people.  One person may consider tires to be an undifferentiated commodity and buy whatever is cheapest.  A sports car enthusiast may look at expensive, high performance tires as a status symbol that his friends will admire and envy.  A parent might look at tires as a safety feature to protect the family’s health.

Are there things that the evolution of our brains can teach us about marketing?

Most would consider our advanced cognitive processing to be the most evolved feature of our brains.  However, both marketing and purchase decisions may be processed in simpler, less-evolved areas of our brain that are interested in basic questions like reproduction, sustenance, and status.

How come (even mediocre) wine tastes better when we drink it with friends?
There are probably several answers to this.  Perhaps we simply pay less attention, and the wine is more of a social lubricant than an object of aroma and flavor analysis.

A neuromarketing explanation might be that our opinions are influenced by those around us.  Experiments show that a subject may answer a question incorrectly when everyone else in a small group provides the same incorrect answer – even when the subject should know that answer is incorrect.  So, in a group setting, if others seem to be enjoying the wine, the peer effect is likely to lead one to enjoy it as well.

That group dynamic could change quickly. If one of the group of friends tasted the wine and declared it to be awful, it’s likely that others might find defects, too.  (The peer effect seems to be operative only when the other group members are all in agreement.  Even a single dissenter can cause other group members to trust their senses.)

How come people are so driven by a double-digit wine ranking when wine is such a complex product? And why does a “90″ rating drive purchasing like an “89″ score just doesn’t?

People like simple rankings that let them compare products.  Deciding between a “91″ and “85″ is simple.  Trying to weigh the merits of wines with ratings in six categories (like aroma, finish, etc.) or non-numeric information (like tasting notes) is a LOT more difficult.  Look at college rankings, for example – if there’s ever a product that can’t be reduced to a simple numeric scale, it’s a college education and undergraduate experience.  Just about everyone would agree with that.  Nevertheless, US News sells lots of magazines when they publish their ranking issue, and both parents and students pore over the list to decide where to apply.

As far as “90″ vs. “89″, I think the higher number suggests a different tier of wines (even though the absolute difference between 89 and 90 is minimal).

Do consumers at an online wine store show up with a different ‘psychology’ than consumers in a brick-n-mortar wine shop? What should Internet marketers keep in mind?

Internet marketers have a big advantage – they can easily test different ways to present a product, different features to emphasize, and different pricing strategies.  Rather than trying to guess what a consumer might respond to, they should test.  I spent years in direct marketing, and one thing I learned was that even the best-informed opinion is no substitute for directly measuring customer behavior.

Are there preferred ways that Internet wine marketers could organize or categorize wines to assist online visitors with exploring and making purchasing decisions?

Effective Internet marketers let customers do some of their own categorization.  Many customers will want to view wines by varietal, for example.  Some may want to view products by price range, or country of origin, or winery.  Giving visitors some simple options to drill down to what they want quickly improves the chance of a sale.

Why does FREE Shipping seem to drive consumer behavior more than wine discounts?

As I described in my article, The Power of FREE!, the word “FREE” is uniquely powerful.  One great example of that is Amazon.com’s experience with free shipping.  Inadvertently, the French version of the offer had become “one franc” shipping, which, even though it was almost free, performed much worse than other offers.

A secondary effect might be that discounting the wine unconsciously signals that the wine is somehow not quite as good as it was before the price drop.  In Danger in Discounts, I described research showing that people seemed to enjoy a discounted product less than the full priced product.  Having said that, I’d also say that discounts can have very positive effects on buying decisions and, in most cases, the benefit of increased sales outweighs any lessening of enjoyment.

Why do people think expensive wines taste better?

People don’t just think expensive wines taste better, they actually DO taste better (as measured by brain scans) – even when the cheap and expensive wines are the exact same product.  (See Why Expensive Wine Tastes Better.)  Of course this happens because they expect more costly wine to taste better, which is what they have been taught for many years.  The effect was similar when wine was said to be from California (good) or North Dakota (not so good).

The short answer is that our expectations influence our actual experience.

What makes websites or events “sticky” so that people interact, come back for more, and tell others?

My work involves building online communities, and there are no stickier sites than those with friendly and welcoming communities.  Certainly sites with good content that is easy to find can also be sticky, but communities are ever-changing and always offer new points to interact with others.

I’d love to come to Indiana (that’s where you are, right?) and host an Israeli wine party for you and your pals. Let me know if you are interested. I’ll bring the wine!

Yes, I’m in the South Bend, IN, area – where are you?

I live in Evanston, IL – just north of Chicago…sounds like we need a road trip to see you, Roger! Thanks for talking with us!

Being around a lot of unbelievably hip hot women lately has made me realize some things:

Some of the best businesses are all about Bringin’ the Love into People’s Lives.

Most people just want to win; cool people want as many other cool people to win as possible.

Most people talk to you in a way that elevates themselves above others; cool people (most women, by the way) want to interact in a way that includes as many people as possible.

The traditional approach to marketing has been command and control – telling customers and prospects what to think; cool people just want to find forums to learn what others think, and share their own take on things.

Most of the world is slowly realizing that what people tell each other about your shit is all that matters (women, who buy 83% of all consumer goods, have been knowing this for a while). And now, enabled by Twitter and other social media, what used to happen in caves and on the plains (as in, “the apples on that hill are delicious”…”if you walk around at night without friends and fire, the lion will eat you, including your bones”) happens instantly over the Web.

So….no more hiding behind bad boring products and fake marketing people. Today, your marketing department like it or not consists of all the people talking about you on the Web… and everywhere else.

All of this will impact who I partner with, how we market, to whom we market, who I spend time with, hell, who I have lunch with.

If you ain’t about

Bringin The Love

Holdin Hands

Dreaming a Big Dream and

making sure that No One Cool Gets Left Behind

then beat it.

This is not a “soft” approach to biz, not in my mind. We still want to win. Bringin’ the love is not a business suicide pact. We still want to change the world, or die trying. Bringin the Love is a way of positioning what you’re here to do, and then letting that message attract the right people for you to work and play with. We still need enough testosterone to get up in the morning and Get Shit Done in spite of the losers and roadblocks springing up everywhere to greet us.

You will see our wine parties evolve towards Love Fests. For instance, my pal Aimee and I are planning a party in Denver with a theme of “PBJ, Grilled Cheese, Israeli Wine…in our Pajamas”. No swirling of the wine. No spitting out of the juice. No writing of the wine notes. (Though other times we will do that traditional kind of thing, and that’s cool, too.)

Wine is ONLY a Vehicle (a good one!) for:

1) Connecting people to each other

2) Connecting people across cultures and experiences

3) Connecting people to Place – through a highly expanded version of terroir

4) Rapidly Scaling Meaning across a Network

5) Long Tail Exploration

6) Bringin’ the Love

7) Going to a place outside (or is it inside?) yourself

That’s it!

We’re gonna figure all this stuff out, believe me.

Oh…and maybe we’ll change the way people BUY WINE along the way, too. You will NOT believe what is in store for you there.

Meanwhile, here are some people you have to get to know, people who get it, ladies who every day bring LOVE to BIZ and LOVE to their PALS:

Gwen Bell

Monica Danna

Leah Jones

Soon you will see how this ties together. Patience!

[youtube]8PJaDsb5PZQ[/youtube]

I’m BORED with the Robert Parker-Ralph Nader-Consumer Reports Approach to wine, the most metaphysical alchemical substance in the Universe.

Check out how Food writers write about Food, or how Erotica authors talk about Sex – with passion, sensually, like they care deeply and personally about the topic, right?

I’m BORED with wine reduced to numbers and wine tasting notes that read like the notes I used to take about baking soda + batteries experiments in Chemistry Class. Who talks like that, anyway? (I got an F in Chem, probably because I put black marker on the teacher’s goggles and she looked like a raccoon when she took them off!).

Wine is a lot of things.

In this series I’ll post on all of these AND ANY OTHERS YOU TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS SECTION TO INCLUDE.

Wine is:

1) Classic Condiment - making food taste better (and vice versa)

2) Metaphysical Food – tasting like things that are not really in it, and tasting a bit different to each of us

3) Cultural Connector – bringing people together across cultures and experiences

4) GPS Device - translating a highly specific Place into a bottle of grown-up grape juice

5) Social Lubricant – opening people up to the Other around them (and within them)

AND….

6) WINE IS A SPIRITUAL ROLE MODEL

Check out this first videocast in the series to hear all about Wine as a Spiritual Role Model.

Trust me, this will change the way you think about wine. No more over-focusing on wine scores or stupid wine medals after you see this series, okay?

You know about “alchemy”, right? It’s turning dirt and other crap into GOLD. Sounds like wine to me.

Hey – no promises I’ll be able to include them BUT if you want to send me a video with your description of what wine MEANS to you, do it and I promise to at least review and respond to you.

I got to thinking today about how American men (sorry, but it’s true) have worked so hard to take the fun and sensuality out of wine, the universe’s greatest food, the only food that can taste like foods and other stuff that’s not even in the wine (berries, leather, dirt, petrol, smoke, kiwi, cat’s pee, peaches, walnuts).

Wine is magical to me. It’s sort of like Biblical manna, which we are told tasted like the eaters’ favorite foods.

Wine can be a liquid Rorschach (how do you spell that anyway?) – telling more about the drinker than the wine’s chemical make-up.

So then, what mind drinks wine and sees a number, like we’re rating dives or iceskating?

What mind sees the most spiritual food in the universe (we should all hope to be personally transformed into something fine the way grapes get transformed into wine after all!) and says….oohhh that’s like a 92.3!

I’m not naive enough to think we’re close to tossing out wine scores and competitions.

But let’s see if we might PLEASE make wine more accessible to all of us.

Take off your shoes, put on your jeans, curl up with someone you like and drink wine together staring at each others eyes.

Or gather a bunch of friends you don’t know well yet, pour some wine you’ve never had before and WATCH what happens.

Wine is a social lubricant.

Wine brings people together across cultures and experiences. It loosens up our boundaries a bit so we can let the OTHER in.

Food can do this too sometimes, but not like wine.

We could learn a lot from the food writers, by the way. Read them – they talk about food like people talk about sex, it’s sensual and real and you can tell they love what they write about.

A lot of wine critics on the other hand are “clinical” in their wine descriptions….”The patient presented hot with mixed berries on her nose, some funky stuff in the mid-palate and a long structured finish that went on ad nauseam. The tannins were tight so we immediately ordered a massive aeration. After examination, no identifiable terroir could be discerned.”

Who talks like this?

Here’s what I care about when it comes to wine. TELL ME what I am missing, PLEASE!

1) I want to know about the people and the story behind the bottle of wine. A bottle of boutique wine is SOMEONE’S DREAM come true in a bottle. Handle it with respect. Be curious about the maker.

2) I like my wines to smell and taste SURPRISING. I like a wine that tastes like….itself. Status Quo is BORING. I like to meet unique people and likewise I like to taste unique wines from everywhere.

3) Finally, as above, what’s most important with wine is what happens inside of and BETWEEN PEOPLE when they drink – after the bottle gets opened. That’s where the action is. When good wine goes in, a person’s spirit is more likely to come out. Drink wine with food and friends.

We should expect all these things from the wine we drink.

I’ve been teasing that our new Mission is to Bring Sexy Back to the Wine Industry (hell, it was never there) through wine from Israel, the birthplace of wine. By “sexy” I mean fun, friendliness, passion, curiosity, playfulness, a seriousness that’s not overly so.

Come to one of our wine house parties and you’ll leave knowing exactly what I’m talking about.

I hope to see you soon.

You can always reach me personally richard@israeliwinedirect.com

It’s a good question. So, you may be wondering, if it’s true that people were producing wine in Israel 4,000 years ago, if Noah really did plant a vineyard immediately after getting off the Ark, then where have all the indigenous grapes gone?

While it would be nice if Israel had a lengthy roster of indigenous, unpronounceable grape varieties like Greece does to work with, she doesn’t. Period. (I say to my wife all the time when she slaps me down from dreaming my dreams , “Let’s not dwell on the facts, honey.” But the facts remain facts, nonetheless.)

Occasionally, I’ll hear people on various wine forums or in person complain about this and plead for someone to Do Something to fix this fact, but Israeli winemakers for the time being must work with the European grape varieties we are all familiar with.

History Lesson: When the Muslims conquered the region in the 6th-7th century, being the kind of folks who do not drink alcohol (I know, it’s weird to me, too) they uprooted and destroyed all the vineyards they could find.

And so in an instant an entire world of indigenous grapes had their lights turned out.

But an artist must work with the available tools.

And that’s what the best Israeli winemakers are doing, often very creatively, too. They’re taking available European varieties and making them taste like Israel, pushing Israel through the grapes into the bottle.

The sunshine, the spice, the desert air, the herbs, the dirt, the volcanic remains, the sand…

Here’s what we have that IS indigenous, though.

We have the valley where David killed Goliath.

We have the Carmel Mountains near where the prophet Elijah heard a still, small voice.

We have the hills around Jerusalem where King David and Jesus walked.

(Wait til you see our t-shirts!)

We have an ancient wine land that’s only recently come-to-life again, paralleling Israel’s rebirth as a modern nation a mere 60 years ago.

What does the Israeli terroiruniquely DO to modern European varieties (and since taste is SO subjective when it comes to wine anyway, let’s expand terroir at least for this post, to include the MEANING that a drinker might assign to PLACE)?

The Israeli wine sector, like everything else Israeli it seems, is the combination of the Old and The New.

It’s the OriginalWine World meets modern grape varieties and cutting-edge winemaking technique.

It would be wonderful for some Professors to stumble upon a fossilized seed from an indigenous variety and resurrect it a-la-Jurrasic Park, but let’s not hold our collective breath.

Meanwhile, we need the winemakers to make the best wine they can, and the drinkers to drink, and the critics to critique, and the marketers to market.

Let’s everyone focused on the hard work of experimenting until we find the BEST place in Israel to make the BEST Shiraz (for instance), the one that actually tastes like ISRAELI Shiraz… and the best hill up north somewhere for making a Pinot or a Sauvingon Blanc that tastes like their Israeli versions.

I am not sure we know what “Israeli wine” tastes like yet. This is our time!

Cheers!

 Source for photo: Micah Vaadia, Galil Mountain winemaker

[youtube]rf8w32rS4-c[/youtube]

Please watch this video and help me KILL once and for all the misperception that a wine’s “kosher” status makes the wine anything less (or more) than exactly what it is.

We carry 3 great wines from Israel that just happen to be kosher but I don’t want you to try them (or not) because they are kosher. I want you to try them because you like them, because you’re adventuresome and want to try wine from the Birthplace of Wine. IWD is totally focused on Israel as a BRAND – not whether a wine is kosher or not, but I felt it was imperative to address this kosher issue with our followers right away.

Heinz ketchup, Diet Coke, and Cheerios are all kosher – but you don’t buy them (or not) because they’re kosher, do you? Of course not! You buy them because they’re great brands that taste great and….also just happen to be kosher. I’ll bet you didn’t even realize they WERE kosher, did you?

Most of the stuff in your frig is kosher and you don’t even know it.

Enjoy the video and then MAKE SOME COMMENTS HERE BELOW! I want to hear from you.

The gist: after you get beyond the popular well-known “hits” in any space (music, movies, books, wine) there still exists this “long tail” of nichey stuff that some people would love if they only knew about it, if they could get to it, if they had help sorting through all the crappy stuff that also admittedly exists in the long tail of anything.

For instance, probably 80% of Israeli wine available in the US comes from a very small handful of commercial wineries. I wanted to get to the juice that wasn’t here, and I’d done enough homework to know there was some REALLY worthy juice in that long tail I wanted to shine a light on for others, too. So that’s what we did. We reached across the ocean into the long tail of Israeli wine, sorted through the nasty swill and brought you what we believe to be the best AND then built portals for you with easy access to these tail-wines(websites, wine parties, direct marketing etc).

There are businesses to be made from AGGREGATING and BUILDING EASY ACCESS TO a selection of high-quality long-tailers (Amazon.com and eBay and NetFlix are great world-class examples of such businesses). There’s an audience out there for really off-the-path stuff (there are some kooky people trolling for kooky stuff on eBay but good for them!). As Tom Wark said about us some time ago, the Internet has enabled us to create a “store”  entirely focused on Israeli wines – a hyper-narrow niche that would be impossible to do as a bricks-and-mortar store.

It was and is a lot messier and more complicated than it (hopefully) looks behind the scenes, trust me, but that’s the idea of Israeli Wine Direct.

Today, Chris Anderson penned a post about the Long Tail of CUSTOMERS (forget about product long tails for a moment). And here’s what he says about the customer long-tail and a bottoms-up marketing approach:

if you’re selling things, you don’t necessarily need to massively expand your product range to tap Long Tail markets. You can instead just reach the “long tail of customers”, which is to say all the potential pockets of demand that don’t necessarily lie within your normal marketing channels. This is the smaller potential customers, the ones you don’t know about, the ones you never considered and the ones who didn’t even think they were potential customers until they heard about your products from someone they know.

Chris has managed to get in my head again – and it’s now after 2:00am Central. Uh oh.

He’s talking about the OTHER Long Tail, the one that you and I are likely in and may not even know that we’re in it, the one for those of us with niche interests we may have not yet connected to available products or services we may not even know exist with our names on them.

And I am loving discovering those people through this adventure we’re on. For me so far, it’s a dentist in Manhattan I now enjoy talking regularly with, an executive from Florida who summers in New York, an Israeli high-tech adult movie distributor in Silicon Valley, the evangelical Christian family in Ohio who fell in love with an Israeli winemaker’s family when they visited the Holy Land, an IT director at a major university in Ohio who will be hosting a major house party with me in August. I just think the world of these good people!

Israeli Wine Direct has connected me not only to a Long Tail of great wine from Israel but a growing long tail of great people never before on anyone’s radar for traditional wine marketing (but who pays attention to boring stuffy snooty wine advertising anyway?). And in the process my world is thankfully bigger than it ever was before at a very personal level.

You know what I think the secret sauce is (in addition to the fact that the wine tastes good thank God)?

I think the secret sauce is that when someone discovers something they never knew existed, they somehow feel discovered and uncovered themselves in the process.

And I think that when you have a product with MEANING THAT PEOPLE WANT TO CONNECT WITH that’s a secret sauce also. And wine from the ancient land where wine was born, where people like Abraham and Jesus and King David themselves walked around drinking wine, a land re-born only 60 years ago yet having accomplished so much… is meaningful in a way that Napa Valley just isn’t.

As I write this evening (morning?), I am listening to a CD from a contemprary Israeli singer/songwriter/pianist named Karen Peles sing in gorgeous Hebrew (the language God used to create the Universe, a ”dead” language for hundreds of years only refreshed and reborn 60 years ago! Anybody speaking Latin anymore? I don’t think so.)

The story of the rebirth of the Israeli wine phenomenon parallels the story of the rebirth of the country of Israel herself, as she celebrates her 60th anniversary as a modern state.

That’s the secret sauce people all over this country in the Long Tail of actual and potential customers of ours are responding to in part (in addition, as I said earlier, to the fact that the wine tastes GOOD). That’s the kind of meaning that is scalable that Hugh McLeod has written about, that can start fires inside of people and networks of people. You should have seen people connecting with Israeli winemaker Golan Flam in a home in Highland Park, IL. It went beyond wine, I can promise you. They all have plans to visit him in Israel now!

Email me richard@israeliwinedirect.com if you want to have a wine party with me in your house. I’ll bring the wine. You bring the people. Together we’ll connect the long tail of wine with the long tail of people eager for good juice that also means something for a change.

One of the things Dr. Yair Margalit was quoted as saying in the article was that, "the future is in the small wineries."

And my question (with a lot of self-interest of course!) and I have thought about this one enough to have my biases in place is….WHAT is the proper marketing plan for wines from small wineries, whether they are Israeli wines or not?

If you caught my sort of fired-up YouTube video post earlier this week you may know my answer to this question.

First of all, in any business start-up I believe NICHE is the only way to go.

Niche + Community Development is THE marketing plan.

(Gary Vaynerchuk spoke about this at yesterday's TECH Cocktail event)

I don't think traditional distribution makes much sense for premium small production brands like the ones we're marketing from Israel.

As a general rule DIRECT TO CONSUMER and DIRECT TO TRADE are the right channels for these fine wines.

In fact, a major Napa producer wrote this in response to a note from me asking about his preferred distributors in key states:

Hi Richard,

I love your request.  With all due respect, there is no such animal as a distributor that I like.  They are a necessary tool but as a small brand fighting for shelfspace, the job is best done by yourself and not by a distributor who is naturally beholden to much larger interests.  Sorry to bear this news but self distribution via the internet is the means to survival and success in the new age.

Hope my message is not too direct to digest.

talk soon,

xxxx

This is not a small production winemaker – you'd know his name, you've drunk his wines.

What an unbelievable message from a winemaker who, given his size and scale, needs to work with distributors all across this country and beyond.

Mostly since I believe that small production wines are a labor of love by the winemakers and their families and unless the person on the receiving end of the wines is feeling the love (i.e., the of intermediaries is either ZERO or something close to zero), no one will give a damn about these dreams-in-a-bottle.

So your marketing plan for these Israeli wines has to answer the question (get ready for this)……

How do we market someone else's love affair? How do we market someone else's Dream? How do we then monetize Passion + Love in the marketplace?

Because these wines are the Dreams and Love Affairs from these winemakers and their families. And that's what we're selling.

There's just not enough juice from most of these small wineries from Israel for a major wholesaler to care – and as the number of wholesalers thankfully shrinks they'll even have less attention span for small production wines, don't you think? I've said before that commercial wineries SPILL more wine than these boutiques produce.

What's a guy to do?

create on-line substantove CONTENT about wine from Israel that's not "salesy" (stay tuned!)

and

create live experiences for more and more people to:

1) TASTE THE WINES

2) EASILY PURCHASE THE WINES

3) SHARE WINES AND WINE FEEDBACK WITH OTHERS

4) MAKE PEOPLE FEEL SOMEHOW A PART OF THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE MAKING THESE GREAT WINES IN ISRAEL

5) FIND WAYS FOR CUSTOMERS TO CO-CREATE CONTENT AND EVEN PRODUCTS (stay tuned for some cool stuff in this area)

6) TALK ABOUT LOVE AND DREAMS

What else?

Enjoy!

The next post will cover organic wine production in Israel.

I was glad to be asked!

Here's the first from me in a short series about wine, Israeli wine, and organic Israeli wine.

Here is his response – follow this link to check out his blog HaKerem: The Israeli Wine Blog (I especially admire the great winery photos you will find there):

The wine world has been experiencing some environmental shakeups, most recently with the California frost that has destroyed many fine wines in northern California. Israel, too, has experienced a bit of temperature fluctuation over the past few weeks, but nothing to the extent – or damage – of California. More proof perhaps that Israel’s climate and terroir is natural for wine growing?

During the week of the Passover holiday, the entire country was in the middle of a sharav – a heatwave. Even in Jerusalem, not far away from the great wineries in the Judean Hills, temperatures were hitting the 90s and 100s, while Tel Aviv was even hotter. In the ?old world? of Zichron Ya’akov (home of Carmel and Tishbi wineries, among others), temperatures were soaring.

Yet, immediately after the holiday ended the temperatures dropped dramatically – not into the 30s or 40s of California, but rather twenty to thirty degrees lower into the sixties and seventies – prime weather for the vineyards.

In addition, Passover signifies the end of the rainy season in Israel. At the beginning of the holiday, the Jewish liturgy switches from praying for rainfall in the land of Israel to simply praying that the land will be blessed – but we don?t pray for rain again until the holiday of Sukkot, in the fall, when the rainy season will begin again. Yet, these past few months have been pretty dry.

While Israel’s current water crisis is bad for a lot of agriculture and environmental reasons, it actually spells good prospects for grapevines. Prime viticulture and high quality wine comes from little water. While it reduces yields and so, from what I understand dryer weather (as long as it?s not a total drought) could result in a smaller harvest, the harvest that occurs will be of a higher quality as it forces the vines to struggle and pushes them deeper.

All the more reason that Israel is a natural and great environment for making wine!

More than a year ago, I posted an interview with winemaker Golan Flam. At the time, I remember being impressed with his personal passion and commitment to state-of-the-art winemaking equipment and consistent quality wines. He trained in Italy and brought back with him an attention to detail and commitment to help transform the Israeli wine scene.

Since that time, I have met him, spent time with him in his winery, and………..we now import his wines for you! You can actually order them now from us while they ship to the US.

To skip the photos and story and just pre-order some of Golan’s great wines, click here.

Here are some photos (the first from my visit with him in August ’07) and excerpts from the March 2007 interview.

If you email me questions, I will get answers from Golan for you and share them with our readers.

When did you know you wanted to be a winemaker?

I was born in Stellenbosch South Africa while my father (Israel Flam) studied wine making in South Africa and then at UC Davis California….. so probably since I was born…

How did you learn to make wine?

I am a graduate of the Hebrew University faculty of agriculture and studied for Master of Wine in Piacenza Italy, then practiced in Tuscany at Carpineto winery and in Australia working for Hardys Maclaren vale-south Australia.

What do you like best in your work?

To feel the land and vineyards, to follow the whole process from vineyards to vats to barrels and final blending to the bottle.

How did you pick the land for the vineyards where you grow your grapes? Describe where you are located and the geography.

I have done some pilots from the Negev(south) to Upper Galilee(north) to gain better understanding where can we grow premium vineyards for premium wines, the main goal is to reach the best result in the bottle, today we focus in two main areas Judean hills and upper Galilee, these 2 areas are elevated areas from 400m above sea level -780m above sea level with varied soils from terra rossa in Kadesh valley/upper Galilee, volcanic soil in B en Zimra/upper Galilee through rocky/clay soils in Judean hills.

How does climate affect the wine?

Climate effects a lot the wine, I prefer to work in cooler areas in Israel to achieve long ripening period which will keep the right level of acidity/ph and at the same time we will reach full maturity, if we choose the right site for vineyards we are very lucky in Israel, the harvest period is always dry and we can achieve great results in the vineyards/winery.

What does “terroir” mean to you? How does it come through in Flam wines?

Type of soil, climate, rainfall, yearly average temperatures, we try to understand the benefit of every teroir in the two main areas we work (Judean hills and upper Galilee)and to maximize final results while enjoying these two areas.

What’s the major role of the winemaker in affecting the taste of the wine?

Major role of the winemaker is to work very hard in the vineyards the whole year to achieve good results for good start in the winery during harvest time, than in the winery the first period of fermentations is very very important,it depends on the style of wines I want to have while receiving the grapes I can have first idea on the type of wine I would like to have,Than great importance is the blending process which is very personal ,it depends on the filings and soul of the winemaker (one likes Rock music, funk or jazz). usually after tasting the wines from barrels

What do you want people to experience when you drink Flam wines?

Consistency in high quality, elegance, balance between fruit and oak in the red, freshness and crispiness in the white.

How much wine do you produce in a year?

7000 cases

Describe a week in the life of a winemaker. How about the seasons and activities over a year for you?

Harvest time starts at late July and lasts till the third week of October in this period we devote our selves to the winery activities whole week long almost 20 hour a day in order to make sure that everything is done on the best way ( perfect maturation in the vineyards,arrival of the grapes in their best condition at the winery/crushing desteming, fermentation regime, keeping track of analysis, finishing racking the wine of its sediment and moving it to barrels).

November-racking the wines for several times

December-moving the wine for aging in oak barrels.

January-April- controlling pruning in the vineyards , taking care of previous vintage wines by means tastings, analyzing and preparing the blend for bottling. Filing the wine in bottles and putting them in lying position for bottle aging in our temperature controlled warehouse.

May-July-working in the vineyards and maintenance preparations in the winery for coming harvest.

Second week of July summer vacation… and to action…

What are a winemaker’s biggest worries?

I am worried in the vineyard during the maturation period that all will go right to achieve perfect maturation, than fermentations not to get stuck, eliminate oxidation,keeping all the varietal characters fruitiness aromas ,avoid bacteria spoilage,in order to make sure the product we are nursing so much will reach the bottle in best condition.

Why aren’t more great Israeli wines available in the USA? How can we help?

Some of the greatest wines made in Israel even though are made under kosher manners are not under rabbincal supervision, and have a limited access to the traditional Jewish market in the US. In order to reach the general market we need to expose the wines to major critics in the wine world to evaluate and to recognize the quality of our wines.

O
nce we have such recognition will arrive at demand and interest will arrive in wines like ours.

The two wines we have available in our first shipment from Flam Winery are:

Flam, Classico, 2006

and

Flam, Sauvignon Blanc + Chardonnay Blend, 2007

I will personally be pouring Flam wines at the Umami Food & Art Festival on April 18th in SoHo.

Enjoy!

A few comments on the Wine Advocate tasting…

1. Overall Israeli wineries should be pleased. Scores over 90 for Israeli wines have been rare, particularly in the United States. It was a big plus that the Wine Advocate decided to taste Israeli wines and whether you like it or not, this publication has enormous influence.

2. Obviously it is important to realize we have not arrived just because of this, but think where we were 15 years ago, and where we might be in 15 years time. Be encouraged and push forward.

3. It was just one tasting though, and we have to follow up with more generic tastings in the important wine capitals of the world. Lets hope the Wine Advocate decides to taste Israeli wine once a year and that other major publications like Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Decanter write features on Israeli wine. Anyone importing or marketing Israeli wine should encourage this by using their best contacts, remembering they are representing the Israeli brand as well as the wineries they distribute. It is important to achieve continuous recognition for Israel through regular tastings or articles.3. I was obviously personally pleased that Yatir Forest was judged the best red wine and that the second label Yatir was considered one of the best value wines. Also Carmel’s overall performance showed the enormous strides made by the historic winery of Israel. However I was also genuinely pleased to see other wineries do well. Strength in depth is good for the Israel brand and no less than four wineries managed to get two wines with 90 points or more: Castel, Yarden, Carmel and Yatir. I really believe the more Israeli wines that are successful, the better it is for all of us.

4. The branding of Israel is so important. Israel needs to be marketed as Mediterranean, Israeli wine, rather than Jewish, kosher wine from the Middle East. Israel really is the quality representative of the Eastern Mediterranean, but wine lovers don’t know this yet. Our wines should be placed with the better wines of Greece & Lebanon on the shelves. For instance Carmel & Yarden should be displayed alongside Boutari, Tsantalis, Ksara & Kefraya. In the same way, on wine lists, Yatir & Castel should be written next to Chateau Musar. It is important we have a region we can be considered part of, as often shelves & wine lists are divided by regions.

5. In the kosher world, Israeli wines should all be on the shelves together, ideally with an Israeli flag or under the heading ‘Israel’. Everyone placing wines in kosher sections of Liquor Stores should be requesting this from the retailer. I am convinced Israel makes outstandingly the best quality and the finest range of kosher wines in the world. Better than some of the famous French labels, that make small batches of kosher wine. Important we have the self confidence to push the Israeli brand to the fore even in this market.

6. Mark Squires made some good comments about the quality price ratio. Wineries would do well to take this into account. However Israel must not be compared with Australia, Chile, Argentina or South Africa etc. We simply do not have the volumes or prices to compete in the volume market. So we should consider ourselves niche wines for a niche market and be prepared to ‘work the niche’. New Zealand is a better example for us to follow.

The tasting represents an an excellent start and we should be encouraged. However we should feel humble when we see the lack of awareness of Israeli wine in the big wide world. We have so much work to do.

If you have not yet picked up a copy of Rogov’s Guide to Israeli Wines 2008, do so immediately!

I have yet to see it in many of the Chicago bookstores, but grab yourself a copy off of Amazon.

I’ll save fuller comments and observations for a bit later.

But meanwhile, if you have any interest at all in the Israeli wine scene, you absolutely must read this AND you must read it every single year to keep up with the constant changes on the ground there.

If you are planning a trip to Israel anytime soon, this is the real Wine Route of Israel book for you.

The wine marketing prize will go to the team that can crack the code of marketing to Millenials – cool kids in their 20s and 30s who buy more wine, prefer imports over domestic brands, and like wines at higher price-points than older generations.

BUT Millenials want to be marketed to with approaches way different from the stuffy, high-falutin (BORING) methods of your average wine marketer.

THINK: experiential marketing.

Millenials want experiences, to feel connected to the winemaker, the winery, even the land itself.

No one I know of has tapped into the Millenial phenomenon more than Courtney Cochran, owner of a company called Your Personal Sommelier, host of a blog you should read called Hip Tastes Blog, and author of a new book (her first!) called Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine due out October 4th.

In spite of an incredibly hectic schedule launching her book, she was kind enough to hang out with us and answer a few questions about herself, her new book, and how to market to Millenials. Along the way, she shared some ideas about effectively launching Israeli brands in the US.

Enjoy!

1. When did you first fall in love with wine?

I’d have to say in college, when I spent an amazing semester living in Paris. I think it was the way in which food and wine are such integral parts of life in France – I just fell in love with the whole thing. On weekends I would jump on trains to France?s most storied wine regions – the Loire Valley, Champagne, Burgundy – and just soak it all in. Quite literally, in fact! It?s been onward and upward ever since.

2. What is it about wine that?s of interest to you? How is wine different from other foods?

I love the way that wine smells like so many different things. As people we can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 different things, and wine exhibits a ton of those aromas. That’s the key way it’s different from other things you eat and drink – few things on this planet transmit as many aromas as you find in your average glass of wine. It’s like a little gift for your senses every time you pop a cork.

I’ve always loved expressing myself in words, and I was driven to pursue my sommelier studies so that I would have a “tool kit” to explain all this fabulous stuff. Now, I can ramble on and on about what I pick out a particular glass – some people think it?s cool (colleagues, mostly) while others find it a little tiresome (friends)!

3. On October 4^th, your first book Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine will be released. Tell us about it.

Gladly. Hip Tastes was inspired by my San Francisco-based special events company, HIP TASTES Events. Through it I offer stylish wine tastings in local bars and restaurants that have attracted a strong following among folks in their twenties and thirties. The idea was to host wine tastings in places where young people are going out at night anyway – as such putting wine in a familiar context. I took the idea even further with my irreverent themes; I’ve hosted a tasting called Old School, where I paired wine with Mac ?n Cheese, PB&J sandwiches, Tater Tots & Gooey Chocolate Cake.

The book is written for this audience – folks who are looking for a new, fresh way to learn about wine that’s free from stuffiness and stigma. It breaks out the basics anyone new to wine should know, interspersed with funny anecdotes and a breezy style I think is perfect for today’s oenophile. To learn more, check out my brand new site dedicated to the book, hiptastesbook.com.

4. Who are the Millennials? What?s unique about their wine buying habits? Why should wineries and wine marketers care about them? What do Millennials want from wine?

Millennials are folks who’ve turned 21 after the year 2000 (the Millennium – so it’s not just a cute name!). Studies show that this group is drinking wine more frequently and buying it at higher price points than any generation before them at the same age. This is tremendously good news to wine producers and marketers, but it?s also difficult to appeal to this group when it comes to wine. Their go-to brands that resonate emotionally might include Apple and MySpace, but most definitely not Domaine de la Romanee Conti.

But increasingly, I’m seeing more wine brands try to appeal to this group, and I think some are doing a really good job. Packaging is really important to this group – much more so than point scores or what any one critic says about a particular wine. This hasn’t traditionally been the case with previous generations, so it’s interesting and encouraging to see some “older” brands striking out with fresh new designs and creating marketing campaigns with Millennials in mind. I expect we’ll see more experiential marketing done (parties/events, tasting seminars), and – as I’ve done with Hip Tastes in bars and nightclubs – folks bringing wine into contexts familiar to this group – even previously uncharted territory for wine.

5. Describe some great strategies for marketing to Millennials.

Well, I just outlined a couple. I think that another worth noting is alternative packaging, which is also non-traditional for quality wine but really resonates with this group. I’m talking about boxed and single-serving wine, mostly. These have the added “green” benefit of being good for the environment, something that really resonates with Millennials.

6. What?s the best way to get American sommeliers and wine directors excited about boutique wines from Israel (or wines from small wineries anywhere for that matter)?

I think there’s no better way than tasting and education. And that’s something that can be done a few ways – and I’d recommend a tiered strategy for most effect. Naturally, meeting wine directors and somms face-to-face is incredibly valuable, but it can be difficult to get a great message across in the sometimes brief meetings distributors and sales reps have with them during sales calls.

This is why also offering trade tastings (ideally, where vintners fly in and meet them, too) is a good idea, as is leveraging the far-reaching effects of video. For vintners who can’t come from Israel to meet and greet, I’d encourage them to produce videos of themselves, their properties and the goings-on on a day-to-day basis. Just about everyone has a computer these days, and this is also a very hip way to get the message across!

7. We think that some consumers are interested in the story of the winemaker (the people behind the bottle) and want to feel connected to the winery and the winemaker. Do you agree? How do we best tell winery and winemaker stories?

How funny – I think we’re on the same page here based on your questions. I think just about ALL consumers are interested in the story behind wine. It’s such as experiential product – we enjoy it with friends and family at times of celebration and relaxation, after all. It’s the nectar of life. So that’s why conveying the back story to consumers is key – they’re looking for ways in which they can feel even further connected to a wine by “getting to know” the folks behind it.

8. How do you recommend that someone new to wine begin to learn about wine?

Drink, drink, drink! Besides that, there are some great podcasts and vlogs available where you can learn quite a bit just by watching and listening. I like the Rat Cast pod cast and those from Bottlenotes.com as well as Gary Vaynerchuck’s Wine Library TV. After that, tasting with friends is a great way to extend your knowledge and spread out the cost of your “experimentation!”

9. How can a person enhance their ability to taste the nuances and complexity in wines?

For that I recommend taking live classes. There are some great ones listed at the national site localwineevents.com

10. How does a small winery get noticed in a sea of literally thousands of domestic and foreign wine options?

I think the Internet affords a great opportunity to spread the word to a literally limitless audience with very little money. The trick here is to be unique in terms of content and then aggressive in terms of promotion. You’ve got to get your links around, and your search engine rankings up. One thing I’d recommend – especially for winemakers from an emerging region like Israel – is to become an “expert” in something that people are searching for. Happily for your gang, there is a ton of interest in Israeli wine in general right now. Winemakers who disseminate information about the region while also promoting their brands will reap the spoils of this enthusiasm.

11. Tell us about some of the greatest wines you have enjoyed in the last year.

You know, I wish I could name some terrific Israeli wines right now given the context of your blog, but unfortunately I’ve just not tried all that many! I DID get my first taste of several this year, and I’m very much looking forward to learning and trying more soon (and hopefully finding some favorites amongst the bunch) – I just got my Rogov’s guide, so I?m off to a great start!

In other wine news, I’d have to say the best wine I’ve had lately was a rustic red from southwest France, from an appellation called Corbieres. The producer is Castelmaure, and it was their 2004 “Grande Cuvee” bottling. It totally rocked! When I was a kid my parents would BBQ steaks during the summer with a very specific herb/pepper rub, and the wine tasted exactly like that rub, along with some bacon-y gaminess. It doesn’t surprise me given that Syrah is likely a part of the blend, and it tends to have spicy and meaty nuances. THIS is why I love wine – I can taste thousands of wines a year and each is unique – and might even take me back to childhood.

I also loved a Cabernet Franc Detert Family Vineyards in Napa Valley that’s produced in tiny quantities on a family-run estate. It showed amazing varietal characteristics and was soft and plush and round – just delicious. Another California wine also caught my eye not long ago L’Angevin, a Chardonnay from Sonoma’s Russian River Valley that’s rich and creamy (super full-bodied!) but balanced by a fabulous burst of acidity. It was nothing short of show stopping.

12. Which wine regions and nations are producing exciting wines today in your opinion?

Spain is doing great things with reds and roses especially, and I think Australia’s Tasmania is also a great region to watch for sparkling wines and great Gewurztraminer. Western Australia, as well, is making strides with beautifully balanced wines that are reminiscent of those from Europe, and I just tasted some wonderful wines from Brazil. Really, it?s a fantastic time for wine in the world today – hopefully I’ll start seeing more Israeli wines on the shelves before long so I can sing their praises, too.