Growing a gold-medal winemaking industry
S WE CELEBRATE I s r a e l ’ s f o o d and wine, it is remarkable to think how diff e r e nt things c o u l d h a v e b e e n . W i n e making in Israel almost disappeared for hundreds of years. But all that changed when the Golan Heights Winery won the Best Winery Award at Vinitaly 2011. Considered one of the world’s most selective competitions, Vinitaly awards just 71 medals for more than 3,700 wines submitted and just one grand prize. The Golan Heights Winery scooped up more gold medals at Vinitaly 2014 and continues to attract attention at international wine showcases.
This is not the first time that Israel has won international recognition for its wine. The Ancient Egyptians recognised that the region had “wine more plentiful than water” and the grapevine is one of the seven biblical species indigenous to the Holyland. So great was the vine’s importance that place names throughout ancient Israel make reference to viticulture, as in Mount Carmel (Hill of the Vineyard of God) and Nahal Sorek (River of the Vine Tendril), for example.
Winemaking flourished during the Second Temple period and Josephus Flavius the historian (37 CE to 95 CE) wrote of the Galilee, in the north, as producing “fruits in a wondrous manner”, describing the vine and the fig tree as “the kings of all the fruit trees”.
However, with the fall of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from the land, the plethora of vineyards lay abandoned and in ruin.
The Arab conquest in 636 brought with it Islamic rule, forbidding the consumption of wine. Vineyards were uprooted and winemaking more or less ceased.
With the beginning of modern Jewish settlements in 1882, immigrants escaping the pogroms and antisemitism of Europe began arrivi ng i n Palestine. Baron Edmond de R o t h s c h i l d , t h e philanthropist and wine expert, saw the potential of returning viticulture to the Holyland and funded the beginnings of a wine industry in Rishon LeZion near Tel Aviv and Zichron Yaacov in the north. Wine production increased and the Carmel Winery was born.
By the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, there were about 14 active wineries in Israel. While the quality had a long way to go to reach international standards, the wine industry had begun in earnest.
The turning point came with the rediscovery of the agricultural potential of the Golan Heights region — and the story of how it happened has a magical, fairytale quality. In the early