New Wine In Old Bottle

Between Swigs And Swirls, A Tasting Session In Israel Shines A Spotlight On The Drink’S Storied Past And Its Modern-Day Credentials

Wine tasting provides the perfect occasion for getting drunk and acting posh at the same time. But wine tasting in Israel isn’t simply tannins and body and acidity. It’s tannins and body and acidity wrapped up in the Bible, the Torah, and national self fashioning. Can viticulture explain the broader culture? I won’t claim to have unlocked the DNA of the volk whilst degusting a citrusy Sauvignon Blanc and an unoaked Chardonnay one crisp evening in Jerusalem. But that wine tasting was certainly more than just sophisticated humbuggery.

In a room lined with expensive looking bottles Efi Kotz asks if we have ever tasted Israeli wines. None of us has. Until arriving here I hadn’t even heard that Israel made wine, let alone make it well. Between us we have tasted old-world wines and new-world wines. But how do you adequately classify a very new nation of a very old vintage? “[Wine has] been here pretty much from the beginning,” says Kotz, the sommelier in charge, by way of an introduction. We are now entering Old Testament territory.

The modern wine industry is young, but don’t let that fool you. The original viticulturist was Noah, who after disembarking from the ark, promptly set up a wine yard. “And that,” says Kotz, “is the first vineyard mentioned in history.” Kotz, the in-house expert at the Mamilla Hotel, where the wine lesson is unfolding, is a jovial young man with a Jesus haircut. He aerates the stodgy pretentiousness of the exercise with this opening apocryphal lesson. “It’s a biblical story, so it’s a bit exaggerated,” he says. “But after he was saved from the flood he got drunk.”