Experience or training? What makes a winemaker?

Tue, Mar 4 04:45 PM

Israeli winemaker Eli-Ben Zaken counts his age in vintages. Robert Parker, founder of The Wine Advocate magazine, counted Ben-Zaken's three wines among the best in the world.

Parker rated the trio -- Domaine du Castel Grand Vin, Domaine du Castel 'C' Blanc du Castel, and Domaine du Castel Petit Castel -- all 90 or above in his recent issue on Israeli wines.

Such ratings would thrill most winemakers because they translate into buzz among the wine cognoscenti and an immediate sales spike. But Ben-Zaken is not most winemakers.

"We did very well," he conceded. "I don't make Parker wines. The marks are high for someone who doesn't make Parker wines."

Ben-Zaken said his wines are more elegant and more finesse and are not the blockbusters of the Medoc, St. Emilion style.

He started making wines when he was 52 and owned a restaurant in Jerusalem. Unhappy with the wines he was forced to offer his customers, he thought he could do better.

That was in 1988. His first production consisted of two barrels. Today, the self-taught winemaker produces about 100,000 bottles annually. He has no desire to produce more. Better, perhaps, but not more.

"I measure my life in vintages and wonder how many I can make," he said.

VARIETY SPICE OF LIFE?

While Ben-Zaken has decades of experience, Assaf Paz, 35, the junior winemaker at Israel's Binyamina vineyards which produces close to 3 million bottles of wine, has studied winemaking and worked in several countries.

Paz, who like Ben-Zaken was at a Kosher wine and food festival in New York, began as a pastry chef. But after university, he turned to wine making.

He studied in Bordeaux, including an apprenticeship at the Grand Cru classed Chateau Pontet-Canet in Pauillac.

"After I graduated, I had offers from winemakers in Israel, but I thought I had the title, but not the experience," he said.

So he set off for California and worked in Medicino for Navarro Vineyards. Then he went to Australia where he worked at a contract winery in the Yarra valley.

"It's a new world country, where you don't have many rules and limitations, so you are free to do what you want," he said.

At Binyamina, he works with chief winemaker Sasson Ben-Aharon to "make wines more approachable, to get the best fruit that we can from each vineyard and to always think of who is going to drink it."

Israeli winemaker Yaakov Berg, 31, combines Paz's youth with Ben-Zaken's experience at his family's vineyard, Psagot, where he has worked since he was a child.

"When you grow other fruits, you want them big and round and you want size," he said during the festival. "But in wine grapes it's completely different. You want small, you want compact."

His nine wines reflect where they are grown in the hills north of Jerusalem and where they are kept. His barrel room is an ancient cave that he believes imparts an essence to his wines.

"In California they speak of caves 50 years old, in France, they claim 1,000 years. Here, they're 2,000 years old. It's wondrous," he said.

"We try to mix the old world - the really old world - with the very new world to make a wine that is very fruity, very elegant."

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