Much of our expansion in 2009 will come through growing our team of employees and partners. For instance, we are very close to announcing a sales director for the West Coast who will focus on Direct to Trade selling and consumer education in California. And we are also actively seeking additional alliances with retailers both in the US and Israel, like the one we have with Derech Hayayin in Tel Aviv now.

But I want to get more of YOU involved with IWD, as well! 

One of the things I have learned about wine from Israel is that people are more likely to bring some sort of emotional responses to Israeli wine than they are to wines from, say, Chile or Argentina (and I love wines from those places, by the way).

People attach to wine from Israel their hopes, dreams, and associations to the place (both positive and negative).

Do you agree?

So, here is the start of an outline for an Israeli Wine Ambassadors Program, a way for you to help the cause, spread the word and, once you do……..get access to great wines from Israel for yourself and your family in the process.

Here’s how I am thinking this will work:

1) Tell me you want to join the program. Then let’s talk by phone to get to know each other. Feel free to email me at richard@israeliwinedirect.com or call me on my cell at 847-924-5523. I’m looking for people who truly love wine from Israel and have experienced these wines in the past. 

2) If we agree the program is right for you, then I will create and give you your own unique Promo Code - we’ll use your first name, probably. The Promo Code will be worth an 11% of savings off of any wine purchase

3) All I ask you to do is to freely share your personal Promo Code with people you know, people you will be able to share your passion for Israeli wine and Israel with, and then help them acquire these wines at a discount.

4) Those sales are all trackable if people use the Promo Code with your name! A percent of those wine sales get added to your Ambassador Account. Every so often (quarterly?), I make available to you that amount so you can use it to buy boutique Israeli wines from us directly.

5) Once we get running with the program, we will create and post competitions between Ambassadors.

Throughout the year, Ambassadors get access to things like:

a) special wine offers

b) invites to Conference Calls with me and/or Israeli winemakers to learn about what’s happening in the Israeli wine world behind-the-scenes

c) co-hosting Israeli wine tastings with me in your town

d) private meet-ups with me and other Ambassadors when I am in your town

What do you think?

I want to hear from YOU.

If you like the idea, tell me WHY and add to it!

If you  don’t like the idea, tell me why and make it better!

2. Bring LOVE to whatever game you are in. Selling wine, selling flowers, being a doctor/teacher/plumber. This is true really all of the time but definitely even more now. Most businesses get depressed and rude when everything is falling apart all around - DON’T be “that guy”! Smile. Be nice. I am amazed that so many people just are not nice. To me, LOVE is the new currency. LOVE IN THE NETWORK. Basic courtesy and humility, a sense of humor, a genuine desire to help people come closer to their goals and dreams.

3. Help your customers or clients find and connect with something Meaningful to them - something bigger than they are - in a world that feels upside down and “random”. A lot of Americans for the first time care deeply about their food (this includes wine), for instance - where it’s from, how it was produced, who the suppliers are. We intend to keep telling the story to everyone we meet of the unique terroir and history of Israel, the way it attaches people to Meaningful Place, and produces wines that smell and taste different, that have sunshine in them.

4. Humanize your technology. It’s not your website that people care about. (Websites are sort of YESTERDAY, anyway). It’s about the PEOPLE you wrap around your site and your product or service…and whether or not they show people LOVE and bring people together (notice how wine brings people together?). For instance, I believe in 2009 Israeli Wine Direct will set up a phone line with someone on the other end who will answer 24/7 and be able to fulfill wine and other premium products from Israel to most of the US adult population.

5. Enter into alliances where it makes sense to. When economic times are tough, find a partner, find an ally, find someone’s value chain to connect your own to. I sought out and entered into an active alliance with the leading wine retailer in Israel. They sell gift packages comprised of our wines to their Israeli customers who want to send gifts to Americans and we fulfill them here in the US.

6. Refuse to abandon your Dream. It’s till YOUR dream. And this is still YOUR time to live it regardless of the “economy”. If you drop the banner that’s your Dream, no one else is likely to pick it up.

7. Start your start-up. Start it now while everyone else is playing scaredy-cat waiting for things to “get better” before they start theirs. Then when they finally come out of the corner, you’ll be that much further ahead, won’t you? Look, wine sales of premium wines are down - way down in restaurants, people are buying down to cheaper wines, and wine imports are down, too. Sounds dreary, huh? We’ll take to heart #1-6 above to make it happen.

I’d love to hear what you think I might be missing in this list.

In November, International food and wine critic Daniel Rogov, who lives in Tel Aviv, released his latest ranking of what he believes to be the Top 10 Israeli Wines Released in the Last 12 Months. 

I’m pleased to tell you that 2 of this past year’s Top 10 are in our portfolio.

In fact, the winemakers are preparing the two of them right now for import, affixing labels we had approved for them by the TTB so we can pick them up and take them to the Haifa docks within the next couple weeks.

Here are the two wines:

Flam Cabernet Reserve 2005

and

Margalit Special Reserve 2006

The Flam wine is available from Israeli Wine Direct NOW for ordering at a discounted price on a pre-arrival basis. We have already pre-sold 4 of the 15 cases ordered.

Flam has quickly become Israel’s largest non-kosher producer. Winemaker Golan Flam represents the latest-generation of Israeli winemaker, often studying abroad then returning to Israel to combine the latest winemaking technique with an ancient land that knows how to wine, as I like to say!

Soon Margalit’s Special Reserve will be live on our site for you to purchase, as well. Until then, while we have sold out of the Margalit Enigma 2005, we have about 10 cases left of the Margalit Cabernet Franc 2005, which wine critic Robert Parker rated 89. (You know how much wine scores drive me crazy but they’re a reality of the wine world right now!)

We sell wines we are preparing for import as “futures” to you, at a modest discount from what they will retail for once they land and get into the warehouse. I’d be pleased to sell the remaining 12 cases of Flam Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2005 before the ship lands in Oakland! Come on, let’s do it!

We’re not going to stop until the BEST boutique wines from Israel are in this country and on your table!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahuvah is a beautiful genius and now I just need a picture of her in one of these t-shirts…working on it!

P.S. JUST RECEIVED Ahuvah’s pic!

If you are anywhere near any of this action and you care to join us just call me at 847-924-5523, or email  me, or message me on Twitter.

Here goes…..

December 3 - Israeli wine tasting at Webster’s Wine Bar in Chicago

December 7 - private event with the Pelter winery family in LA

December 8 - public event with the Pelter winery family in Chicago

December 9 - private event with the Pelter winery

Dedcember 14 - Launch of MyWineTxt in Chicago - just email me for details and an invite or friend me on Facebook for an invite. MyWineTxt.com is a new start-up I co-founded with my gal pal Leah Jones that lets you order wine via text messaging for  home delivery.

Deceember 18 - private event in Chicago where guests will be able to sample  A LOT of wine from Israel and we might even combine it with a dash of fashion from NYC (stay tuned for more details on this one). We have VERY limited availability here

Introducing Americans to great wines from Israel is all about getting these killer wines down the throats of as many people as possible.

So that’s how we roll…

Last Saturday night after an amazing hike in the sunshine outside of Boulder with my pal Ingrid Alongi, my pals Aimee and Bryan hosted an Israeli wine house party in their home in Denver.

We had a blast, drank A LOT of wine from some of the best boutiques in Israel today, chatted about the history and sprituality of wine, and even let Aimee try her hand at MyWineTxt, our new platform that lets you order wine for home delivery via text message.

And we did ALL of this quite comfortably in our PJs, while eating PBJ sandwiches and even streaming live over Aimee’s Ustream feed.

Here’s Aimee’s post of the event, complete with some sweet pics.

Next stops for us include Chicago, Houston, LA, and NYC.

Recently, I wrote about the birth of my new company called MyWineTxt.com, founded by my pal Leah and me.

We just picked our final logo by an Australian designer named JD through Crowdspring.  We love the logo.

It’s whimsical, fun, surprising.

And now it’s time to play with the new platform in live party settings, along with messaging our growing database with special wine offers.

Israeli Wine Direct  is, naturally, the first client, but we are in active talks now with retailers and others who might be interested in licensing the platform in a fully  branded way with their own customers.

MyWineTxt.com is a wine messaging and wine ordering platform allowing you to buy wine via text message in around 3 seconds. Over time the data we gather about the kind of wine you like will let us to introduce you to other wines you might also fall in love with and then let you the buy them with a simple Reply text message.

Cool, huh?

Soon I will raffle off wine gifts to randomly selected people who register on the mywinetxt.com site. (more details on that next week). The site is getting a makeover tonight and tomorrow!

Events where we will likely be using MyWineText technology in the near future:

Denver

Chicago

Houston

How about your neighborhood?

The more people we have in mywinetxt “tasting and texting” parties the better.

Call me if you want to learn more about mywinetxt.com technology at 847-924-5523.

I think what makes a wine a good value (or expensive) is in part a measure of the quality of the wine (how friggin’ good it is) to the sticker price - this is what wine industrry people call the QPR (i.e., the Quality to Price ratio). Though of course no one would argue that, say, $1,000 or even $200 isn’t “expensive wine”.

There’s no doubt the economic swings in our nation will affect in various ways the amount people are able and willing to spend on things like wine. Restaurants especially are already getting squeezed as businesses cut back on expense account spending and consumers do more retail wine buying to pair with their home-cooked meals instead of eating out as much.

Many have leveled a general criticism to wine from Israel as being overpriced for what you get, so I have a particular interest in hearing from you on this topic! 

QUESTION FOR YOU (let’s get some answers and strong opinoins in the Comments section, ok?):

How do YOU define “expensive wine”?

Tomorrow, the 2009 edition of the ONLY annual guide to Israeli wine, written by international food and wine critic Daniel Rogov, is released. 

NO ONE has cataloged the re-emergence of the Original Wine World like Rogov has.

Additionally, no one is as pleasant a friend for lunch!

There are sure to be some surprises!

He makes me think.

And he has a pithy way of taking complex wine concepts and market dynamics and packaging them up into verbal shorthand.

In his column in the November 15th issue, called ‘Some Truths of Our Time’ Kramer writes that wines today are either ‘pre-installed’ or ‘alternative’. 

What does he mean by that?

Kramer is referencing the fact that when it comes to traditional post-Prohibition wine distribution an ever-smaller  number of wholesalers/distributors (read: Southern Wine & Spirits of America) decide what wines entire swaths of the country get to drink.

Let me repeat that so you can understand how this deal works.

Distributors (who frequently give a lot of CASH to state legislators) at the end of the day act like wine buyers for entire regions of the nation, like the guy at dinner who kidnaps the wine menu and starts eagerly ordering without your input.

This is the world of what Kramer calls Big Wine.

Soon Southern and their pals will be distributing (read: deciding) 38% of the wine on retail and restairant  menus nationwide.

WOW!

I don’t know about you but this has become is a freedom issue for me.

WHY do wholesalers get to decide what adults in this country drink?

I think that middlemen generally speaking can be great at fulfilling demand (i.e, moving wine from point A to point B between suppliers and end customers) but how good are they at GENERATING DEMAND.

It’s the Communist central planning approach to wine!

Kramer’s point is that this translates into most of the wines you find in stores being, in effect, pre-installed, decided for you by, well, Southern!

I’m experiencing this market constraint myself right now.

I have a major retail buyer who visited Israel this summer.

They fell in love with a particular wine I am about to import.

They want to carry it in their 100+ stores.

But they feel like they need to work with their major distributor - Southern. I’m open and willing to work with them, of course. The customer is the cusromer.

But here’s where things get complicated.

You see, even though we have an interested buyer (this large retailer) and an excited supplier (a great Israeli winery) until Southern decides to formally place the wine on their "menu" we cannot sell the wine to this retailer!

Southern management has to first decide to include this wine in their "book" (wine menu) before we can get

Now Southern has done nothing (in this instance at least) to generate demand in this product. Nothing. The Israeli government paid to send this retailer to Israel. The winery produced and poured the wine!

Things were humming along until we actually started to give the customer what they wanted.

By the way, Israeli Wine Direct has a clearing wholesaler set up in this state (and in others) - an arrangement that lets us do what we do best with the wineries (i.e., generate demand) and recognizes that the wholesalers can provide useful services fulfilling that demand in a compliant manner.

I’ll keep you  updated on this specific case.

But my point is that if you want ot get off of the pre-installed wines and start thinking and exploring wines for yourself off the traditional map you have to work at it. YOU MUST GO IN SEARCH OF THOSE ALTERNATIVE WINES FOR YOURSELF THROUGH THINGS LIKE WINE EVENTS, VISITS TO WINERIES, JOINING WINE CLUBS, SEARCHING THE WEB, MEETING PEOPLE LIKE ME.

I look forward to seeing all of you in the “alternative” wine world! Where the quirky crazy unique wines reside!

It’s a lot more interesting here, trust me.

Moshe and Anne Celniker founded Yaffo Winery in 1998 and today the winery is housed in their basement on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Their grapes come from the Judean Hills which, along with the Galilee and Golan Heights, produces the highest-quality grapes in all of Israel.

Currently, Yaffo produces 10,000 bottles annually. The son of Moshe and Anne trained in winemaking in Bourdeaux and now joins the winemaking team in Israel.

The family is now busy building a beautiful winery in the Jerusalem Mountains not too far from where Tzora and Flam are located.

I’m proud as can be that our man in Israel, Tamir Ronen, discovered this hidden boutique winery inside the Original Wine World and convinced them to join our team.

We currently import and market two of their amazing wines, both of which have been smash hits with customers who like “big” fruit-forward full wines that walk right up to you and introduce themselves. And these wines are not bashful. I love them. If you like Cali or Aussie reds, you need to try Yaffo wines. If you like to sniff and taste plums, berries, spice, and currants in your glass, these wines are for you.

Yaffo Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

Yaffo Rouge 2005

The reality is that Yaffo wines ROCK!

Wilfred Wong of BevMo in California rated the Yaffo Rouge a 91 !!

The success of Yaffo in the US proves that the “long tail” of Israeli wine is longer and richer than anyone has ever known.

It’s moving to me that we’ve been able to connect great wines coming out of Moshe’s basement in Tel Aviv to homes all across the United States, and a grocery in Oakland, and a retailer in New York! And we’re just getting started here in the US!

Wineries like Yaffo are the reason I founded Israeli Wine Direct. I want small premium producers to be able to access the US wine market, reaching as directly as possible into US homes, retailers, and restaurants.

Yaffo wine just happens to be kosher  but ANYONE who likes good Bourdeaux-style wine needs to try Yaffo.

And while you are visiting the store, feel free to use Promo Code    kawasaki   to receive 11% off of your purchase.

IF YOU WANT TO ASK MOSHE AND ANNE A QUESTION - LEAVE IT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION AND THEY WILL RESPOND TO YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Turns out that our humble little blog ranks #18!

Not too shabby…

Makes me want to be sure to do an even better job churning out interesting content for all of you!

One of the MUSTs for any emerging wine region is the development of a literal wine route where people can explore your region, see the sites, and generally feel a part of the PLACE. Yes, wine tourism is a good thing.

Groups in Israel are hard at work on that now. Which is a really good idea since there are almost 200 wineries in Israel now.

There already exists a book version of an emerging Israeli Wine Route called The Wine Route of Israel, edited by Yaron Goldfisher and Eliezer Sacks. (I’m waiting for Sacks’ English translation of his beautiful text on Israeli honey!).

At a recent trade tasting I did in collaboration with the Israeli Consulate in Boston, we raffled off a copy of the book.

My pal and food and wine writer Richard Auffrey won it!

This morning he posted a review of the book. Enjoy!

(The pictures are of me at the beautiful home of my friend Tamir Ronen and his wonderful wife in Israel this past August. In addition to being a friend, Tamir oversees the work of Israeli Wine Direct in Israel! Editor Eliezer Sacks is the man in the chair)

I like sites that aggregate info for readers on a narrow niche topic of interest.

Here’s a fresh makeover of such a site — Israeli Wines - Pride of Israel.

The site is owned by Israel Preker, who wrote me recently and was kind enough to include a logo link to our site at the bottom of his home page.

Preker’s site gathers essential news on Israel’s rapidly re-emerging wine phenomenon.

Add the site to your Favorites. (I didn’t see the ability to subscribe to a feed.). Read it!

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.

This is my pal Sharin (yes, Sharin with an “i”) from Oregon.

She’s (no lie) an amazingly talented opera singer with the Portland Opera - now performing in La Traviata.

You must click here to see her singing LIVE for a local news show.

Thanks, Sharin!

If you live in Portland, OR, please message me since I am (seriously) planning a trip to OR before the end of 2008.

I hope to see you there at our Israeli Wine House Party!

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.

There’s been another person spotted wearing an Israeli Wine Direct t-shirt, this time in Philadelphia.

Here’s my Twitter pal Reuven Fischer sporting one of our T’s and drinking some kosher wine from Israel in his sukkah!

If you follow his Tweets, you know he is all about the JOY of Good and Right Living (which includes a healthy dose of good wine….along with the wish that we might be personally transformed in as deep a way as the grape gets transformed into wine).

And hey……I have  a lot more t-shirts!

You just have to ask me….really!

I mentioned in a post on Twitter recently that I have been reading (and just finished) a memoir by leading wine importer Neal Rosenthal called Reflections of a Wine Merchant.

I loved this book and hopefully learned a few things from it, too.

One of the things the book led me to reflect on is…..how I select(ed) the wines we carry in the Israeli Wine Direct portfolio.

How to go about selecting winery suppliers is a MAJOR issue for me or anyone else selecting partners to work with in a tough, competitive international business.

It’s a selection you don’t want to get wrong since, well, wine is VERY expensive, for one. And it takes a team, I believe, of importer/marketer and winery/winemaker to grow a following here in the US - where we have too much wine as it is! You need to give Americans a reason to care about wine from Israel, and one of the best ways to do that is to sit them down across from an Israeli winemaker with his or her great Israeli wines and get the wine down peoples throats while they warm up to the Israeli winemaker.

And you don’t want to do that kind of intensely personal work with a person you don’t play well with in the sand box.

In addition to finding suppliers I personally like, I also look for:

1) wines that in some way are SURPRISING

2) wines that taste like the place they come from, that represent the emerging Israeli style and a particular spot of land (terroir!) in that ancient wine land

3) to get #2 achieved, you gotta have wines that have not been manipulated or covered up with oak by the winemaker

4) wines that  give you a great experience for the money (this does not mean the wines are “cheap” that we pick; it means that we select wines that provide what wine people call great QPR - quality to price ratios)

I have already been in a position with more than one Israeli winery where I LIKED the wine but didn’t feel any particular affection (or maybe didn’t particularly even like) the winemaker or the management team at a particular winery.

And every single time that has happened I have NOT bought the wine, though, frankly, the wines may have done well commercially.

Rosenthal writes (page 114): “I also know that we don’t have to appeal to the mass market; all we have to accomplish is to find a niche because we don’t have massive quantities of particular wines to sell.”

There are a handful of audiences we are developing and trying to build community with - Israelis living in the US who could feel better connected with Israel through Israeli wine and wine events; “Millenials” here in search of niche wines from exotic places like Israel, The Birthplace of Wine, etc.

They key is to be patient - and expect that level of patience and boots-on-the-ground active participation from any winery we work with. And I only want to go down that path with people I love. And right now I love the winemakers and winery management teams (and their families) with whom we work. I aim to keep it that way!

I’ll have more to say about other topics Neal covered in the future…stay tuned.

Meanwhile, pick up a copy of the book, or if you have read it, I’d love your comments.