Culinary tours - Israeli Wine

Israeli Wine - the taste of excellence and ancient quality

Cooking Vacations that will lift the spirit!

The land of Israel has been a scene of wine making since the Days of Yore, and a Cooking Vacation to Israel must include a taste of some of its finest wines. Grapes are one of the Seven Species enumerated in the Bible as being special products of the land of Israel and throughout history the locals have been growing grapevine and making their own wine. The numerous archeological sites that show remains of wine presses indicate that it was extremely popular and the famous biblical saying "every man under his vine and under his fig tree" implies that the soft vines covering one's terrace was a common sight.

Cooking Vacations to Israel - the taste of history

During the days of the Othman Empire, however, wine making and vine growing in Israel came to a complete stop, since alcohol is forbidden according to Islam. Only in the 19th century did it get back on track, when two major vineyards were established by the great benefactor the Baron Edmund De Rothschild, one in Zikhron Ya'akov, a town located south of Haifa, and one in Rishon LeZion, then a small settlement on the central coastal plain. Most of the wine manufactured in those two vineyards was sweet Kiddush wine. It was made using French methods and was mainly sold to wealthy European Jews. For several years, when Israel was making its first steps, wine products made up most of the export of the newborn economy. Our culinary tour will include some of the most prominent vineyards in this beautiful country.
 
 

A Culinary Tour in the beautiful scenery of Israel

Today, Israeli wine is among the very best of world wines today. The beautiful hilly areas of the Galil and the Golan host the majority of Israeli vineyards, as well as the Yehuda Mountains and the Jerusalem Mountains. Cooking Vacations to Israel bring us to some of the most picturesque settings in this country. Among the bigger wineries, some of which will be part of the Israeli Wine Culinary Tour, are the famous "Carmel" vineyard, "Barkan", "Ramat Hagolan", "Dalton" and "Binyamina", but there are also several boutique wineries that make limited edition wines that are made by the country's best winemakers and continue to win numerous awards worldwide. Perhaps the most highly recommended of these boutique wineries are "Margalit", "Flam", "Kastel", "Suson Yam", "Vitkin" and "Tulip".

Cooking Vacations to Israel also offer the rare opportunity of enjoying the local variety of fancy cheeses and the irresistible combinations they make with local wines. It is happily recommended, for example, to enjoy young Israeli goat cheese with a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc and to combine the more mature and ripe cheeses with the more mature red wine, as we will find out on this intoxicating culinary tour.

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