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July 9, 2004/Tamuz 20 5764, Vol. 56, No.42
Israeli winemakers thirst for French market
PHILIP CARMEL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jean-Paul Trouslard holds the glass up to the light, pushes the wine around his palate and, with a flourish, spits it out into a nearby receptacle.
Then he pronounces his opinion.
"It's pleasantly surprising," he says, hastening to refill his glass with a different white wine.
As chairman of the Paris Association of Oenologues - or wine experts - Trouslard was one of many figures from the French wine trade to attend a recent tasting held in Paris.
This time however, the event did not contain the usual Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne for which France is famous, but a range of quality wines from Israel.
Sponsored by the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, the event featured about 20 Israeli producers all eager to enlighten the French experts with wine from the Jewish state.
Marc Duverneuil, chief wine steward at Paris's Intercontinental Hotel, was smitten by the quality of the wines, paying perhaps the ultimate tribute to an Israeli red wine produced in the Judean hills near Jerusalem.
"This is very close to Bordeaux and could very well compete," he says. The wine, Duverneuil says, had "good body" and was "well balanced" - "even if the price isn't."
Others were less diplomatic.
"The grapes are grown in a hot climate, so the wines are often full and rich but they're quite far removed from French standards," says Sebastien Durand-Viel, author of "Foreign Wines in France."
Durand-Viel was sharply critical of the tendency of Israeli growers to concentrate on grape varieties that didn't adapt well to the climate of the Middle East.
He also suggested that the Israelis adapt to using rarer varieties such as those found in Sicily or in the New World, as countries outside Europe are referred to in the wine business.
According to Adi Adiri, the general manager of Yarden Wines, almost all of the 5 million bottles per year his company produces are sold to Jews. But even in France, where Adiri is keen to expand the market, around 95 percent of the wine goes to Europe's largest Jewish community.
However, that fact also meant quality was still an important factor, as wine importer Ricardo Cohen pointed out.
"Let's not forget that French Jews are also French. Israeli wine is still the best quality kosher wine. They appreciate that," he says.
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