If as what’s been suggested that Israeli wine is going through a cultural and technological revolution, how can you tell when the revolution is successful. Maybe it’s when the powers to be, the guardians of the status quo, come full circle and agree with their critics. So when the Carmel Winery, Israel’s largest winery by far, admits that it has had a well deserved reputatation for making wines of low regard and little character and lots of it and they’ve launched a game changing amount of measures to salvage its image by striving to be not only the biggest but one of Israel’s best wineries, it deserves the attention of the wine drinking public and wine writers like me.
Carmel’s Historic Winery in Israel’s most famous wine village Zichron Ya’acov
Now many wine writers tend to shy away from writing about big wineries. It’s challenging on several different levels. First, a winery like Carmel in Israel has so many labels there’s no way to practically taste them in a day. Second, larger corporate wineries can often lack the charm and romance of “boutique” wineries. Additionally, it can be far more difficult to talk directly to the winemaker or owner of the winery which with smaller wineries is often the same person. A lot of times you get shuttled around by a well meaning Public Relations spokeperson whose knowledge of wine doesn’t much exceed that of any internal corporate literture. Additionally, larger wineries often have received so much previous attention what angle does a writer take to make their story fresh, relevant and appealing to the reader.
So Much Wine, So Little Time: David tasting the large portfolio of Carmel
So with some initial trepidation, I went to tackle the task of covering Carmel, not only Israel’s largest winery but at about 15 million bottles producted yearly, they’re responsable for 30 to 40% of Israel’s wine production on any given year. As recently as 20 to 25 years ago Carmel was producing about 90% of Israel’s wine. So in writing about Israeli wines, there’s no way to avoid Carmel coming up in the context of talking about other wines so it was important at some stage for me to take on the challenge of exploring their portfolio. “On the Road Less Travelled” of wine writing, better sooner than later. That being said if Carmel had been making the same wines they were making ten years ago, I may have found a good reason to avoid this story just the same.
When wine magazines such as Wine Spectator and Decanter & wine writers like Robert Parker and Mark Squires talk about Israeli wines making a revolutionary change in quality, they were talking about in contrast to the lowly regarded 90% of Israeli wines Carmel used to make. Carmel today says they too are part of that revolution but as a student of history I like to see it as a counter-revolution since when you are the wine establishment and one of the last wineries to make drastic changes, it’s hard to say you’re leading the revolt. To Carmel’s credit though, it’s been a Herculian endeavor and an investment of ten of millions and ten of thousands of man hours in the vineyards and wineries to have made the dramatic changes that they started almost ten years ago that is just in the last few years starting to show results.
As an example of it’s commitment to change, they’ve managed to halve their production from a high of 30 million bottles to 15 million bottles, a great indicator that “the monster of the Israeli wine marketplace” is reigning in the beast of bulk wine making and mending their ways and is starting to seriously attempt to stress quality over quanity. Much of this transition was enacted by shying away from flooding the kosher wine market with mass quanities of not very profitible “kiddush wine”(sacramentel wine for Jewish holidays and rituals). A de-emphasis on other food products such as grape juice and olive oil also has allowed it’s upper management to focus on the task at hand of making better wines. The significance is that if Carmel can redeem an image of it’s wines as sweet, syrupy liquid religion to that of a large producer with a wide range of price points with relative quality and value, it’s place as Israel’s largest producer can only improve the image of all Israeli wines.
Carmel has also made significant changes in it’s selection of vineyard location and how it manges the grapes it harvests. First, it’s made huge investments in planting new vineyards in the Galiilee, considered onr of Israel’s premier grape growing appellations. Historically, they were getting most of their grapes from lower alitude regions that were suitable for high yield bulk wine production. In fact, according to Carmel they are now the largest grower of grapes in the Galilee and this has given them the flexibility to make better wines and a to make awider variety of wine single varietal wines. Their affiliated and renown Yatir Winery with vineyards in the Judean Hills and the Negev, two other respected wine regions, also provides Carmel with choice grapes that weren’t available as recent as ten years ago.
Carmel’s Well-groomed & Valued Kayoumi Vineyards in the Upper Galilee
Carmel started off and continues in many ways as a collective of as many 250-300 growers with a management team directing winery and marketing efforts. Lior Laxer, the chief winemaker of seven who work at their wineries, explained it was an uphill battle for the wineries management to convince the growers to switch to lower yield grapes for higher qulity wine than the bulk producing yields they had been accustomed to. On e way was to pay per dunam, about a quarter acre lot, rather than pay per ton. another was to pay the grower on the quality of the grapes being produced. This merit system linked what which Carmel series the winemaking team decided the grapes quaified and the higher the value of the wine (and the more the winery could charge) the more the grower got paid. Some of those families have been tending to high-yield vineyards for over 100 years.
Yet, many of the lowland vineyards were more suited to bulk production so new vineyards in the Upper Galilee, the Golan Heights, the Jerusalem Hills and the Negev desert (yes, the desert) have been planted and now are producing higher quality grapes. Additionally, much of the wineries equipment was suited for bulk wines so it was a huge expense to invest in equipment that was better suited for smaller higher quality production. Where as recently as 10 years ago Carmel barely made any wines with a smaller production of 50,000 bottles they are often making wines of just a few to several thousand bottles in the top three premium levels (compared to their three entry to mid level wines). An additional winery facility (Carmel’s fourth if you include it’s premeir sattleite Yatir) gives it the capacity to get the grapes form the field to a nearby winery anywhere it grows grapes. This protects the flavor, sugar, acid, tannin profile the winemaker’s expected before harvest that could be disrupted through long hauls from a remote vineyard to one central winery. The additional facities and fermentation tanks allow each single vineyard harvested to get it’s own tank and treatment and allows the winemakers the ability to monitor how each field was managed and how that manifests in the wine. This allows for informed changes in future vineyard practices and more refined blending options as well picking the best as special single vineyard releases.
First, let me say that my recent visit at the Carmel Winery in Zichron Ya’acov exceeded my expectations on several levels. The only wines I had from Carmel previously were their entry level Selected and Private Collection wines that most people have had, wines many Jews have had at a Sabbath dinner or Passover dinner or Bar Mitzvah. Those “supermarket” wines, at best, may have been considered good value wines but represent what Carmel wants the public to believe were their the bulk wines of Carmel’s yesteryear. This day I tasted the wines Carmel hopes will change it’s image of being a bulk, Kiddush (Jewish sacremental) and table wine manafacturer to that of a winery that doesn’t make just make kosher wines as good as they can but rather great wines that just happen to be kosher. Of course this mantra is now being touted by every kosher winemaker I’ve talked to in Israel. But with the mass of Carmel’s postion in the marketplace, as they change their image for the better they can’t help but but bring the image of Israeli wines in general into a more flattering light.
I asked Lior about the one vineyard Carmel has in the Golan Heights since they’ve invested so much more into the compatible climate of the Upper Gaililee. Carmel claims through recent efforts to have become the largest wine producer in the Galilee when previously their holding were focused on the southern coastal plains near Tel Aviv and the northern coast aaround Zichron Ya’acov. I wondered if the government had been talking to the wineries who are some of the largest employers in the Golan what would happen to their investemets in their vineyards if the Golan is returned to Syria in a peace agreement. Lior confirms my suspicion that “no one in the government has talked about it” and suggests about planting vines and building facilities in the Golan that “it’s a big risk.” A sentiment that other wine executives in Israel share regardless of their political inclinations whether Israel should return the territory captured in 1967 and recaptured in 1973.
Carmel’s Chief winemaker Lior Laxer tasting the fruits of his labors
Appellation
Carmel Ridge
Single Vineyard
Limited Edition
Late Harvest Gerwurtzraminer
Lior explains about this dessert wine that “it’s not the most profitable wine for the winery” because dessert wines in general don’t sell as well as table wines and that this wine has such high expenses. The high expenses are mostly due to the low yield of these late harvest grapes are 450 to 600 kilos per dunam (about one quarter of an acrea) compared to up to 5 tons an acre for sone table wines. That’s about one-tetn of a yield in just the weight of the grapes. Then Lior explains “there’s also less juice that’s pressed per ton because so much of the water/juice is already gone. There’s so much sugar in the grapes in contrast to juice that you can hear the presses straining to get the juice out”.
There’s so much sugar that this wine when finished has 120 grams of residual sugar after fermentation compared to as much as only for 4 grahms or less for a dry table wine.
Carmel Winery
Zichron Ya’acov Telephone: 04 6390105
Rishon Letzion Telephone: 03 9488888
www.carmelwines.co.il
