Caitlin in Jerusalem: Wine Tour

On Tuesday I went on a full-day tour of wineries in northern Israel! Kind of random for someone who doesn't drink wine, I know, but one of the people at Shabbat dinner every Friday is Eli and Eli is a wine connoisseur. In fact Eli gives tours of wineries as a job, and he invited everyone from Shabbat dinner to come and he would give us all a tour! So Patrick (another LDS Hebrew U student) and I decided, what the heck, why not? Sure, we can't drink the wine, but it was going to be a great opportunity to see some of the beautiful vineyards in northern Israel.

So Eli, Naomi, Dina, Patrick and I stuffed ourselves in a little car and drove the three hours up to the Galilee and Golan Heights area and we went to three different wineries: Adir, Golan Heights, and Naftaly. I was surprised to discover that I really didn't mind spending all day learning about wine! Each winery was completely different from the previous, different in size and location and feel, and we even focused on a different part of the wine-making process at each place. It went from Natfaly, a little winery in a small town that the guy ran as a hobby, producing 10,000 bottles/year to Golan Heights which was a huge company, producing 8 million bottles/year.

We learned all about growing grapes, how the slightest differences in climate, sun, soil would produce grapes that make an entirely different wine. We learned about sorting the grapes, the fermentation tanks, the aging in oak barrels; everything I could possibly want to know! And then ended each tour with a wine tasting (or in my case, I could say that I have become an expert wine-sniffer!). I learned all sorts of skills I will never use such as the need to aerate the wine ("let it breathe, let it breathe!"), but I loved it at least partially because of the beautiful vineyards and scenery. Israel is a little country but very diverse, you have absolute barren desert in the south, rolling Judean desert hills in the middle around Jerusalem, and green and forests in the north. And it was so nice to be in an area with a little more greenery!

The first winery (Adir) was also a dairy farm, and perhaps my favorite part of the day was the lunch meal we had there! They brought out a platter with 6 different kinds of cheeses, fresh bread, strawberry jam, eggs, fresh salad with pesto and my new favorite thing "pomegranate goat yogurt"!! It was amazing!!!