Hey friends! In less than 24 hours from now my flight leaves O’Hare bound for Tel Aviv! I’m excited to get back to Israel to see friends and colleagues, take a deep(er) dive into the wine scene there, and drink some great wine. PLEASE JOIN ME FOR A WINE MEETUP MONDAY JULY 19 at 8pm [...]
israeli wine, israeli wine direct, richard shaffer
This past Tuesday we held a highly exclusive (12 people only!) Margalit vertical tasting at The Tasting Room in Houston This hip spot is one of the top wine bars in the US and I’m proud to have a handful of wines I import on their menu, including Pelter Trio. Enjoy the pics! We tasted [...]
Here’s the 2nd in a series of posts from my pal Esther Cohen, leading Israeli Wine Guide and owner of start-up My Israel Wine Tours. ********** It is well known that there is no sense of personal space in Israel because everyone is a part of a bigger family. What I’ve learned about the Israeli [...]
I tell people all the time how much I love people from Texas. I think Texas people and Israeli people have a lot in common and, in fact, if you pull out your maps, you will discover Texas and Israel share the same hot latitude…. and the same hot attitude, too! I’m in NYC this [...]
The world’s best wine regions seem to all have active wine tourism along established wine routes. There’s a kind of reinforcement that happens for serious wine lovers when they step foot inside the spots whose wines they love. While Israel has been producing wine off and on for thousands of years, and today is home [...]
I’m very excited about what I’m doing in NYC on Sunday May 23rd ! Margalit winery, led by father-son team Yair and Assaf, remains the leading Israeli “cult” winery, and one of the top wineries in the eastern Mediterranean today. Yair kindly sent me a set of “verticals” (a bunch of different vintages of the [...]
I was struck today (again) by the fact that none of us fully understands all that goes into creating a bottle of wine and then getting it from (in my case ) Israel onto your kitchen counter or into a restaurant. This morning, I learned the details of the actual vessel that will be transporting [...]
Where in the world is Israeli Wine Direct’s next wine order? Well that’s a really good question! I had hoped the 500 or so cases of premium boutique Israeli juice I have just ordered would be in my US warehouse south of Napa by now. But the TTB wine label approval process and a few [...]
Most of the story or “narrative” we hear about Israel is highly-charged, political (left-leaning), filled with violent images. Often the narrative is of the supposed Big Bad Israeli Soldier mistreating the defenseless Palestinian. Or the whacked-out unshaven settler ruining the lives of otherwise perfectly happy moms in burkhas. Or ungrateful Israeli leaders who won’t get [...]
