Why don’t winemakers elsewhere make Cabernet Franc Blanc de Noir or blend Gewürztraminer with Sauvignon Blanc like Tulip Winery does?
This is David Bar-Ilan, the winemaker of Tulip winery since the 2012 vintage. He didn’t come up with idea of blending Gewürztraminer with Sauvignon Blanc to make the bone dry ‘White Tulip’ of Tulip Winery with it’s wonderfully vibrant bouquet of grapefruit and discrete tropical fruit notes, but he was the man who perfected it’s seriously refreshing personality (with just 12.5% alcoholic content!) that perfectly fits the Mediterranean climate of Israel. He also didn’t come up with the idea of making a Blanc de Noirs from Cabernet Franc and a dash of Sauvignon Blanc to add crispness to ‘White Franc’ and balance the hint of grape sweetness in this wine from Tulip Winery, but he perfected the style and color (see the photo below) of that wine too.
Actually Tulip Winery, an hour’s drive north of Tel Aviv on the inland side of the northern tip of the Carmel Mountains, is best known for its red wines. Quite rightly so, for they are technically impeccable and full of personality right across the range from the fruit-driven and supple, modestly-priced 2012 ‘Just Merlot’ right up to the imposing and tannic, but still elegant (in spite of 15.5%) 2011 ‘Black Tulip’, a red blend that doesn’t quite fit into any of the established international stylistic categories.
It was a difficult tasting for David, because his right-hand man in the press house kept bringing samples of the 2014 red wine that was being pressed right then for him to follow the progress of the pressing, and he had to make some important decisions about it. Then, just as we reached the last of the red wines in the tasting, a truck loaded with French Columbard grapes (some of the last of this year’s harvest) rolled up. That’s the reality of the sharp end of winemaking!
All of this was quite a contrast to my first Israeli Riesling Moment (IRM) and an astonishing choc-non-choc experience at the Imperial Craft Cocktail lounge in Tel Aviv. Not that I expected any of this when we parked the car, because this bar is in the Imperial Hotel located in an odd part of Downtown Tel Aviv. The electrical system of the building next to the parking lot where we left the car was hanging out all over the facade like so much spilled guts. Across the road was an historic building that was in a depressing state of dusty decay and boarded up as a result. That nullified the effect of the astonishing news that this had just been voted the best cocktail bar in the Middle East and Africa – interesting, but so what? Once I got into the imperial all of this was instantly forgotten.
This photo is one of my many attempts to capture the atmosphere in the Imperial, I think the best, because other images my be slightly sharper (I mean more in focus), but they don’t quite capture the civilized, urban hedonism of this remarkable bar. Not being a cocktail person, and being too thirsty to risk refreshment through a high-alcohol cocktail, I decided to order a glass of white wine before I moved on to one of their complex creations. Then the IRM happened. “Do you want Sancerre or Riesling?” asked the barman and, of course – what else could I do? – I went for the latter. It turned out to be the ‘Dr. L.’ from Dr. Loosen on the Mosel, and it was indeed as titanically refreshing as I had hoped it would be. Then I was in exactly the right mood to move on to the ‘Tobago’ cocktail pictured below.
Although the ‘Tobago’ contains no chocolate at all it had an aroma which reminded me totally of the best Venezuelan bitter chocolate (e.g. Domori Puerto Mar). And I loved the presentation which half-pretended that it was a cup of coffee, and half-pretended that it was some kind of exotic chocolate-based chai. I apologize for the quality of the photo, but the low lighting in the Imperial pushed my new camera (an Olympus Pen EP-5) to the limits of its capability. This comes with the territory if you are a hard-core blogger trying to capture things as they happen in their full unruly and mind-bending “thisness”. If you want to do that seriously, then you need to roll with those punches and hit those curveballs, somehow. But, to be honest, that’s great training for life as a whole.
