The wineries include Flam and Tulip and Saslove.

I am the US importer for both Flam and Tulip.

In fact I will be in Israel later this month for meetings, tastings, and vineyard visits with these and other wineries.

So…what do I think about their becoming “kosher”?

Well first off and most importantly – this should mean no diminishment in any way of the outstanding quality these wineries are so very capable of. Maybe a little more hands-off winemaking (literally) for the gifted winemakers themselves but I expect the same great juice from them all.

Becoming kosher was certainly a deeply considered decision based primarily in their belief that kosher status will provide access to a broader ready-made audience and kosher distribution channel in Israel and here in the US and elsewhere. This along with the knowledge that “kosher” in itself would certainly not mean a diminshment of the quality work and reputation they have worked so hard to establish…

And it seems clear that this should mean at least an initial significant lift in exports for them.

Someone should ask Castel what becoming kosher did for their wine sales in the US. Do we know? I’m guessing a spike followed by a plateau but I don’t know.

Too many US wine retailers still seem mostly stuck insisting on a “kosher” section (I’ve referred to this as a kosher wine “ghetto” since it tends to be in a dusty corner too often ). But…. Kosher Is Not a Country. Diet Coke is kosher. Cheerios is kosher. Merely labeling a wine kosher and then segregating all the kosher options into one corner without naming and marketing the wine region does (to me) something awful to wine – it DIS-locates a wine, pulling it out of its regional context, its terroir. The other thing a kosher section can sometimes do I feel for general, non-religious wine lovers is reinforce in their minds that kosher wine is for Jews, it’s not-for-me…and didn’t I hear it’s not so good anyway…?

On the other hand, leading wine retailers like Skyview Wines and Kosherwine.com have done much to elevate the quality of wine drinking for observant Jews all across the US with their successful presences both on-line and off.

US Jews are less than 2% of the population and the number of Jews spending significantly on premium kosher wines has got to be something much smaller than that, no?

BUT no doubt these wineries will sell more wine in the US and that’s a Very Good Thing – there are many who will now be able to enjoy these great wines for the very first time!

I just want the wine-loving world to see these wines as so much more than “Jewish wines”.

Israeli wine is Israel’s Great Ambassador, taking people behind the CNN Crtain and into the Real Israel, and we should never forget this when we identify our Ideal or Target Customers. PLUS…much of the wine from Israel is Good, and some of it is even GREAT.

The Judean Hills and Galilee/Golan are 2 of the most ancient and important wine regions in the world. Period.

We need more marketing focused on making strong positive mental associations not only with “Israel”  but also with the Judean Hills and the Galilee.

So…lots of work to be done, certainly new doors will open as they always do, while others may close.

I am excited to see the growth and evolution of these great boutiques! and I am honored to be (even in a small way!) an active participant.

I hope to see you soon!

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.

The wines will ship in a refrigerated container (this is VERY important!!! and something I am committed to) out of the port of Haifa in Israel, exit the Mediterranean, cross the Atlantic Ocean, come through the Panama Canal and up along the California coast to settle in Oakland. There the wines will clear US Customs and be trucked to our warehouse in Benecia, south of Napa. It’s a 30-40 day trek from start to finish.

Here are the wines we expect to be on this next shipment, most of them new vintages of great wines we have had success with here in the US already:

Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay 2008

Flam Classico 2007

Flam Cabernet Reserve 2005

Margalit Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

Margalit Special Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

Margalit Enigma 2006

Pelter Trio 2007

Pelter Unoaked Chardonnay 2008

Pelter Sauvignon Blanc 2008

Pelter T-Selection Cabernet Franc 2007

Pelter T-Selection Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

Tulip Mostly Shiraz 2007

Tulip White Tulip 2008

Tulip Mostly Cabernet Franc 2007

Tulip Syrah Reserve 2007

Tzora Neve Ilan 2006

The wine takes them well behind what I have come to call the CNN Curtain.

If you haven’t heard, we just launched our Proud to Pour Wine Tour  and we’re excited to get the word out!

The Tour is a revved up Members Only Wine Club that takes you on a tasting tour of the Upper  Galilee and the Judean Hills through regular shipments to your door of handcrafted Israeli wines and other goodies, and includes wine discounts and invites to live interactions with winemakers.

I’d like to ask for your help spreading the word about the Proud to Pour Tour.

As a Thank You for helping us change the (mis)perception of Israel and Israeli wine one bottle at a time, we have created a formal Thank You program!

Here’s how it works….

You earn points when you refer people to us who actually then sign-up for either Tour #1 or Tour #2 Membership in the Proud to Pour Tour.

The only way we know you referred them is if they (from their email address) write to tell me you’re the reason they signed up.

You then earn points for the different sign-ups, as follows:

• every sign-up in a Tour #1 Tour earns you 20 points
• every sign-up in a Tour #2 Tour earns you 10 points

At any point after they have purchased at least 2 Member shipments you can turn your points into prizes, as follows:

• 60 points = we set you up with a wine credit (wine + shipping) of $180
• 100 points = we enroll you or someone you gift it to in Tour #2
• 200 points = we enroll you or someone you gift it to in Tour #1
• 400 points = we get you a round-trip ticket to Israel (limited to $1200 value)

So…what do you think?

Will you help me tell people we finally have wines from Israel we can all be Proud to Pour and Proud to Share?

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.

Here is an email exchange (minus the personal details) I have just had with a retailer in Illinois.

Too bad she SO misses the point…but I will update you with her response… IF I get one.

This is sort of a long post (sorry) but I want you to see the self-inflicted Mental Hurdles retailers have placed for themselves (and their customers) that keep people from accessing great wines from Israel.

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Richard Shaffer <shaffer.richard@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi!          

 

Sorry I caught you at a busy time this afternoon.

I would love to meet you.

I live very close to your store.

I am in Boston doing a lecture and tasting in the evening tomorrow and then will be back for the end of the week.

I hope to hear from you.

My cell is 847-924-5523.

She just now wrote back as follows:

Maybe this has happened somewhere else before with Israeli wine but I don’t think so.

Israeli Wine Direct is beginning now to sell Futures (or Pre-Arrivals) of the best premium wines coming out of Israel. “Futures” is just a fancy wine-world way of saying we can let you buy limited exclusive premium wines now for delivery to you later when they arrive (it’s a little more technical that that officially, but fuhgetaboutit…you get the idea!).

This allows me to bring Americans small allocations of amazing wines I discover in Israel for you real-time.

You get the chance to reserve for yourself AT DISCOUNTED PRE-ARRIVAL PRICING some of the wine as we work as quickly as possible to register the selected wines with the US Government and prep them for import.

I’m starting our Futures of Israeli Wine Program with two wines from Flam, the largest boutique winery in Israel, based in the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, now producing more than 100,000 bottles annually.

The two wines now available for immediate discounted pre-arrival purchasing are:

Flam Superiore Syrah 2006 (audiences taste this with me and let out a collective WOW)

Flam Cabernet Reserve 2005 (this baby is some seriously smooth Cab and won a Bronze in Decanter’s 2008 World Wine Awards)

Honestly, I have already sold 3 cases of each of these wines without hardly even telling anyone about them. I will import only 10 cases of the Cab Reserve and 20-30 cases of the Syrah (same grape as Shiraz). So, please, don’t wait if you have any interest in this at all.

If you have any questions about these wines or our Futures of Israeli Wine Program or you have a recommendation for a specific Future wine, just call me directly any time on my cell at 847-924-5523. Matter of fact, anyone can call me anytime on my cell about anything.

Richard

As you know (thanks to my friend Ezra Butler who streamed the event on our blog), I spoke at Flam winery on August 20 to more than 30 reporters during a new wine release party about Israeli Wine Direct, our mission, what we offer that’s unique. I told the audience I founded IWD for 2 reasons – to introduce Americans to great wines and winemakers from Israel, like Golan Flam AND to create a platform for Israeli wineries not currently in the US to access the US market (soon the world’s largest wine market) via DIRECT messaging/marketing and distribution.

I shared my observations about the Israeli wine scene as a person actually quite new to wine (and therefore NOT in a traditional wine marketing/distribution box).

First, there is an incredibly Long Tail of rockin boutique premium Israeli wine that no one (yet) fully knows about in the US. That’s about to change; it has to; I’m going to change that.The Long Tail of Israeli wine is longer and richer than anyone knows.

Second, Israeli wine presents a STORY – an expanded terroir - that no other wine scene in the world can. For instance, I asked, what does Chardonnay taste like when it’s grown in the place where Jesus lived and preached? What does Shiraz taste like from the valley where David killed Goliath? Get it? That’s cool to me. People in the US now more than ever want to find MEANING in their foods (coffee, chocolate, wine) asking Where is it from? Who are the real people who made this food/drink? Israel can respond deeply to these questions. In fact, food and wine are unbelievably powerful tools for connecting people across cultures and experiences.

Second, leading with “kosher” as a marketing category has been a KILLER for great Israeli wine since KOSHER HAS KEPT PEOPLE FROM EXPERIENCING THE ISRAELI ASPECT OF THE WINES. No one can get past kosher to get to the fact that these great wines are from the place where wine was born. It’s damn sad.

I also spoke about some of the trends in the US market making this time THE RIGHT TIME for such things to occur.

Some of the trends:

1) new free beverage laws in key states, allowing us to:

2) gather licenses and channels so we can market and distribute DIRECT to consumers and even restaurants and retailers in many key states

3) the rise of social media allowing us to participate in conversations with normal people everywhere who might just be interested in these cool wines and have not been appropriately interacted with by traditional (boring) wine people in the past

4) the rise of the Millenials (the generation of folks aged 20-40) who seem to prefer wine over beer and imported wine over domestics

There were others but you get the picture!

The audience was great and asked a lot of questions which made it fun.

I wish you had all been there. The wine was (I’m biased but this is TRUTH) — AMAZING. And anyone who thinks you can’t make exquisite wines with Merlot is insane, as Golan Flam proved with his release of the Merlot Reserve 2006 that night.

A great way to jumpstart your biz is to look for people you have things in common with and PLAY with them.

So, here we go…

Doron Rand, former CEO of Israel’s Recanati Winery (he’s on the right in the photo), who lives now in the San Franciso Bay Area, is joining Israeli Wine Direct in our efforts to promote great Israeli Wines in the US.

Doron’s deep knowledge of the Israeli wine scene, his many years of successful experience in branding Israeli wines in Israel and around the world and his contacts in the US wine market will help us  build excitement with Americans about the re-emergence of the Israeli wine phenomenon.

With Doron’s help, we will more effectively expose Americans on the west coast to the  great wines we import.

Doron’s dream of getting the word out about Israeli wine led to his creating a new web site, IsraeliWines.com. The web site launches in September, linking to Israeli wineries, wine-related sites and information about Israeli wine events in the US.

Doron will work with me to lead Direct to Trade sales in California starting next week. So, get ready to  access to some wonderful Israeli wines if you live in the Bay Area!

In addition, as an Israeli he will host IN HEBREW (!!!!) Israeli wine tastings for the more than 100,000 Israelis living now in the Bay area. My hope is that through such events, Israelis living in the US will remain connected to Israel through Israeli wine. How cool is that?! Wine tastings in Hebrew!

I hope to announce more team expansion in the near future…stay tuned. We need someone  HOT and COOL to oversee our Direct to Trade channel nationally.

They actually conferenced me in 1,000 miles away here in Chicago for a few minutes of the tasting.

Listen to Me: Are you getting how small this world can become when we use technology in the best of ways?

We talked a bit about two wines they tasted this evening:

Meishar 730 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay 2007

In one private hidden tasting, The Long Undiscovered Tail of Israeli wine reached across continents and oceans and found itself re-discovered in the living room of a family who has (I believe) never before experienced wine from Israel. An ancient wine land got re-born this evening…this time in modern America over a conference call via cell phone. I don’t think anyone anywhere got together like this to talk about and share an experience of wine from Napa Valley (no, wine was NOT born in Napa Valley…or in France!).

I think what they did tonight was pretty darn cool.

(Um…gosh, it looks like even Bruce’s dog is into the wine – doesn’t it look like the dog is sort of waiting in line for a glass of his own? And Bruce is painstakingly pouring him a glass! Only the best for Bruce’s dog! This just re-defines “man’s best friend” – I mean, it’s hard for me to share wine with my wife…forget about the dog!)

All kidding aside, awakening Bruce and others like him to great wines from an ancient wine land is the reason on this side of the world I founded Israeli Wine Direct.

The reason on the other side of the world (in Israel) I founded this company is so small often family-owned wineries there could access the world’s most important wine market in a creative way they simply could not have achieved on their own.

I have a feeling we’ll hear more from Bruce once he and the dog recover from drinking all the wine they bought from us (smile).

BRUCE: if you’re not still drinking, share some COMMENTS down below!

Here is another photo with two new pals with whom we shared great wine and conversation:

That’s Melanie Notkin on the left (check out her site for Aunts – SavvyAuntie.com) and Rachel Sarah – author of Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from The Dating World.

Shout out to Laura Mayes who did all the hard work putting the event together. She has some great party shots on her blog The Queso, and is a Founding Mother of Kirtsy.

I also made new friends with Ingrid Alongi, very likely the smartest person and Web developer in all of Colorado and also an avid biker. I’m betting we should expect some cool biz surprises from her over time.

PLUS…Wednesday night in San Fran, I had good wine and a chat on everything from religion to Israel to social media with Leah Jones, blogger and new media PR guru based in Chicago.

Oh, yeah, before I forget….in honor of the very cool people we met at the party, we set up two promo codes.

Feel free to use them and to SHARE WIDELY.

Simply enter either kawasaki or kirtsy at Checkout when you visit Israeli Wine Direct and purchase boutique wines from Israel from us online for delivery to your door. There’s a little box at Checkout for Promo Codes.

Guy was nice enough to invite me to pour Israeli wine for his guests.

Here’s a photo Guy took of Tim and me. 

People loved the wines we served and kept returning for more of the same and to try new ones. Most of the guests had never tasted wine from Israel and didn’t realize wine was even being produced there. 

We drank 23 bottles! And we were drinking some serious juice, like Meishar 730 Cab, and Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay, Pelter Sauv Blanc, Margalit Cab Franc and Margalit Enigma, Clos de gat Har’El Syrah, etc. Here’s a shot Guy took of all the bottles we’d killed by the end of the party and laid out on his lawn.

OK, so now….I need to get to the serious part of this post.

It became quite clear to me during the event that Jenny The Bloggess has a pretty flaming crush on me.

This just needs to be said. And now I’ve said it. I’m not surprised, really. In fact, I’d seen this coming for a while. A lot of other people at the party told me they have been aware of the exact same phenomenon and that Jenny seemed to spend more time than usual getting ready for the party before my arrival. A LOT of people said this.

Here’s a photo of Jenny post-Xanax drinking (swear) Pelter Sauvignon Blanc 2007. She pretty much singlehandedly drank two bottles of it and kept sending her gal pals over to drink it, too.

I am convinced now more than ever that Israeli Wine Direct needs to dedicate itself even in a small way (I’m short) to bringing sexy back into the wine industry. (Uhm, was sexy ever in the wine industry?) And at least 3 drunk female bloggers who didn’t really hear me agreed with me when I raised this at the party!

No more snooty sniffing and swirling. No more sport jackets. Come barefoot for Godsakes, throw on some jeans or a sundress, lay down on the grass with someone you love (or someone somebody else loves).

Cuz I can promise you that the orginal wine drinkers from the Original Wine World did not lift their pinkies when they drank or spit the stuff out in buckets or talk incessantly about tannins and terroir.

You know who I mean by “original wine drinkers”, right?

Noah, Abraham, Jesus…and some other serious wine-drinking homeboys.

I hope we get invited back to next year’s party. I know Jenny hopes that, too (smile).

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

Guy Kawasaki invited me to his home next week to pour Israeli wine for – are you ready? – 200 of the top female bloggers. They’ll be in San Francisco for the Blogher Conference. Blogher is an online community for women bloggers.

Guy’s blog How To Change The World and his book The Art of the Start have provided great practical inspiration for me (and loads of others) as we try to make something meaningful happen in the world through Israeli Wine Direct.

Guy was gracious enough to add our little blog to both the Israel Alltop page  AND the Wine Alltop page.

Alltop is a one-stop-shop site providing an amazing aggregation of links to substantive sites on a huge and growing list of topics.

Two of my favorite “mommy bloggers” (start reading these cool ladies EVERY SINGLE DAY): 

Karen Armstrong

and

 Jenny The Bloggess

My partner in all things wine Tim Elliott will be chaperoning accompanying me. We’ll be sure to get you some photos and I bet we do some live tweeting from there so sign up to follow me on Twitter now, guys. I’ll even use TwitPic to post shots real-time via Twitter.

Anyone wondering which wines we’re pouring?

Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay 2007

Pelter Unoaked Chardonnay 2007

Meishar 730 Cab 2004

Somek Bik’at-Hanadiv 2004

What do YOU think about our wine choices for the party?

What % of the attendees will be tasting wine from Israel for the very first time?

Tzora Givat Hachalukim

Yaffo Rouge

Yaffo Cabernet Sauvignon

The Yaffo Rouge has been a surprise crowd-pleaser. We’ve sold a ton of this stand-up juice direct to consumer already.

If you need kosher wine, GET A 3-PACK OF THESE WINES.

And even if you don’t care about “Kosher”, you could do a heck of a lot worse than enjoying these nice food-friendly reds from Israel.

What you experience when you try these wines is SURPRISE and then EXCITEMENT and then there’s that MOMENT when it hits you that you’re tasting something few people have ever tasted…Israel in a bottle, the Future of Wine History, the results of the rebirth of winemaking in an ancient wine land. I know I can be dramatic, but it’s true.

Here’s what Lev, a customer in Cleveland, wrote me earlier today about a 6-pack of Clos de Gat he purchased from us:

Shared my 6 bottles of Clos de Gat last weekend at a huge neighborhood bbq. Of the 150 bottles of wine sampled, Clos de Gat received a 4.5 out of 5 average score and was up against some serious French, Australian, and California competition.

First of all, Lev is a saint for sharing 6 bottles of Clos de Gat at a BBQ (I wish he was my neighbor!). No watered-down, critter-labeled spit-in-a-bottle for this man!

And the experience of his neighbors is becoming more common.

And the best – no – the only way to have that experience is to TASTE the wines. When it comes to wine, it’s like so much of life – you gotta just do it.

If you are new to Israeli wine, a great entry is to look to someone who’s been there before to guide you a little bit.

And that’s what we’re doing for you in a couple ways.

First, join our Taste of Israel Wine Club here. We’ll select representative “tastes” for you from around the country, mixed reds and whites, and deliver you a set of three wines each quarter. We’ll pay half of the ground shipping costs for you, too, and discount the wines some as a way to WELCOME you into the Israeli wine scene!

Second, we have pre-built Sampler Packs for you – themed Israeli wine 3-packs you can choose from based upon your personal wine preferences.

So, come on in, the wine is wet!

By the way, looks like I’ll be doing a House Party in Cleveland late August. If you are in the area, let me know. I’d love to see you when I am in town.

The wine + mainstream media attention to great wines coming out of the re-emerging Israeli wine scene is a blast to watch!

Follow this link to watch a short tasting video from Kim Marcus of Wine Spectator tasting two wines he likes from Israel, including one wine from a winery whose wines we sell Direct to Consumer – Clos de Gat.

Follow this link to buy from a very limited allocation we purchased of two wines from this great winery, which exemplifies the BEST coming out of Israel today.

Hey, we're up to 58 folks all around the world following us real-time on Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking tool allowing people to post short real-time blog-like messages to a network of people who have asked to receive them.

That's actually nowhere near enough folks to LIGHT A FIRE about Israeli wine, so I need your help here.

I ask you to follow this link to sign up and start following me.

You'll get the first scoop on Israeli wine news, plus some insight into who I am at a more personal level, along with links to articles on marketing and wine that I think are hot.

Enjoy!

I think I'm gonna like Fred Tasker, wine writer at the Miami Herald.