Rating Rogov

By MARK ZANGER

Rogov's Guide to Israeli Wines 2005
By Daniel Rogov
278 pages. Toby Press. $14.95.

Thirty years ago, this would have been a very, very short book. As many readers know, the wine industry in what became the State of Israel was originally intended to produce sweet sacramental wines. Although dry wines can be just as kosher, sweet is the more ancient style in Mediterranean climates. An early supporter of the Israeli wine industry was Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Chateau Lafitte, but his best information was that Israeli wines should be made from warmer-climate grapes from southern France. It took a full century to learn that Bordeaux varieties such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot make better wines in the Middle East, if not yet up to what those vines produce at Lafitte.

Before reading Rogov’s book, I would have thought the breakthrough for Israeli wines came with the acquisition of the cooler-climate areas of the Golan Heights in 1967 (although vineyards were not planted there until 1976). But in fact, what has turned Israeli wines around is a combination of California technology and a group of California-style enthusiasts who started making small lots of serious wine in garages and boutique wineries. They in turn inspired the five major wineries to upgrade and introduce high-quality bottlings.

Present to encourage and record this revolution in taste has been Daniel Rogov, wine and restaurant critic of Haaretz. Rogov is a French-raised gourmet of the old school, but his wine writing is more in the style of the contemporary American, Robert Parker. For example, Rogov describes the Recanati 2000 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon as “still young and with plenty of oak and tannins balanced nicely by rich black fruits and overlays of fresh picked truffles," adding that "the wine promises to broaden with time, revealing additional aromas and flavors of coffee, tobacco, and perhaps leather. Long and comfortable. Score, 92.” My own notes confirm the leather and youthful tannins, and the lingering flavor, and score it around 88.

I obtained samples of a few of the more than 1,000 bottles rated in this little book, primarily from Ruby Wines, a Massachusetts wholesaler that is developing a specialty in fine Israeli wines. In general, Rogov seems to me to give about a 5 to 8 point hometown handicap to Israeli wines. That is to say, on bottles Rogov considered to be between 85 and 92, my ratings would have been 75 to 88. He certainly slams some wines in the book, and on his website. We were closest on the reds, converging on the Recanati Merlot Galilee 2000, which is an 86 in Rogov’s book and the same on my table. This wine has a great deal more oak than American dating-bar merlot, but that gives it a nice balance of caramel and fruit flavors. (The more expensive reserve bottling of 2000 Recanati Merlot gets a 91 from Rogov, but only an 85 from me, because I felt the oak overwhelmed the fruit flavors despite a hint of eucalyptus.)

Oak aging has been an issue for kosher wines, which have to be supervised continuously by Sabbath-observant Jews until they are bottled. For much of the world’s kosher wines, this means a crew of Orthodox men coming from a nearby, or not so nearby, city to take over a winery for a Sunday-Friday rush of crush, fermentation, and bottling. That’s not so noticeable with light whites and reds like gamay, but it is a real handicap for major grape varieties that benefit from months of oak barrel aging. There are some work-arounds, and I recently shared an extraordinary kosher bottling of 1999 Chateau Yon-Figeac. With this Bordeaux, the kosher winemakers must have stayed over Shabbat to ensure a longer fermentation, and evidently found an acceptable way to seal away the kosher barrels for aging. But in general, Israeli wineries which operate with kosher supervision can seize an edge on aging in oak barrels.

Incidentally, not all Israeli wines are kosher, and this includes Jewish-owned wineries which are not under kosher supervision as well as a few vineyards that were part of Christian Arab monasteries, some as large as the 300,000-bottle Domaine de Latroun. If Rogov’s theory that Israeli wines can find a place outside the kosher market as “niche” wines, like the new and improved wines of Sicily and Greece, proves true, these cheaper-to-make non-kosher wines may lead the way. I was unable to obtain any in Masschusetts, although I have an old bottle of Latroun brandy from a returning traveler.

I found Rogov’s ratings less reliable on white wines. Some of the Israeli whites I sampled generally lacked acidity—a problem with warm-climate white wines—or had the press-wine flavor and nutmeg aroma of the weaker California Chablis of the 1980s. Some promising exceptions were the Yarden Blanc de Blancs 1997 (Rogov, 90; Zanger, 85) which had a lovely chardonnay aroma and flavor but lacked the fine bubbles and yeasty complexities of the best champagnes; the Yarden 2001 Gewurtztraminer, (Rogov, 86; Zanger, 82) which had a rich nectarine aroma but lacked acidity; and the Recanati 2003 Chardonnay (not yet rated by Rogov, but other vintages in the high 80s, and I gave it an 82) which has a clean green-apple nose and a flavor enhanced by toasty oak.

Rogov does not allude much to the politics of Israeli wines, which have something for everyone. Peace Now-niks can refuse to drink anything grown outside the 1967 borders, and serve-up bottles like the 2000 Barkan Negev Pinot Noir (Rogov website, 85; Zanger, 80), grown by drip irrigation at high elevations in the Negev. If you want to throw your wine dollar behind the settlers’ movement, look for something like the Ephron’s Cave label from Hebron/Qiryat-Arbah (not rated by Rogov). In between are the highest quality areas in Galil, Golan Heights, and “Judean Hills” (around Jerusalem). Because the large Golan Heights winery (Katzrin, Yarden, Gamla, Golan) was so important in raising the profile of Israeli wines, Rogov discusses its possible future if the Golan Heights were returned to Syria by treaty, and notes that the winery has moved toward including grapes from the Israeli Galilee.

Rogov has an unmatched knowledge of the Israeli wine scene, and rates vintages back to the 1976. Of recent vintages, the 2003 is his favorite, with wines just coming onto the American market. A number of wines released since the book went to press are rated on his website, and an updated 2006 book is scheduled for September 2005 release.