I have a friend who loves sports and the good life, and the good life category includes fine wines. Several times he asked me to choose good Israeli wines for him and I did so, but once he decided to give me a recommendation as well. He told me about a wine from a winery called Yara that he really liked. I admit that to my surprise I did not know this winery.
I hastened to check on the internet and found out that there is indeed a winery called Yaara and it is located in Moshav Karmi Yosef. This is a small boutique winery owned by Shmulik Ovadia and his wife Hadar. Shmulik, the winemaker started making wine as a hobby in 2009 and today the Yara Winery produces several types of wine that amount to about 10,000 bottles a year.
After several attempts to arrange a tasting visit with Shmulik and Hadar, we decided that I would come to visit them one of the Fridays at lunchtime. In the spacious yard of their house, which overlooks a magical landscape that includes a small valley full of vegetation and green hills, there were several tables scattered around and several couples sat there drinking wine while tasting a rich hospitality palette that includes a variety of hard and soft cheeses, vegetables and breads.
Hadar welcomed me with a warm welcome and immediately brought a pampering dinner plate to my table. Shmulik surprised me and instead of starting with an orderly tasting, he suggested that I choose from the open bottles that were standing in the corner of the garden and taste “whatever I like” and in whatever order I want.
I was a little surprised by the approach, but I poured in… I started tasting the six bottles that were offered for tasting that day and these are:
- Vin Rouge Sec 2017
- Merlot 2017
- Shiraz 2017
- Vin Rouge Sec 2019
- Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
- Vin Rouge Sec 2018
Among the wines that I tasted particularly stood out:
Merlot 2017
Red crimson color, aromas of vanilla with some berry fruits, mainly raspberries, and a taste of raspberries and blackcurrants in the mouth. Round, smooth in the throat with pleasant acidity and tannins.
Vin Rouge Sec 2019
A wine whose color tends to dark red, aromas of spices and herbs with a little clove. In my mouth I tasted black plums with bazooka gum and spices. The wine is round, rich and not tannic.
After Shmulik made sure to provide wine for all his guests, he made time to sit at my table (but did not join the wine tasting) to answer some of my wishes. First I asked what brought a businessman (dealing in the field of printers) to produce wine? Shmulik replied that he started doing it to relax and it also fit in nicely with his and his family’s move from the city of Petah Tikva to the pastoral Yosef Farms. And so after he attended the wine making course of Sorek Winery he also started producing his own wines.
It was only in retrospect that I realized that in fact Ya’ar is not really a winery but mainly a place to eat in the yard of Shmulik and Hadar’s house and that to this day he produces his wines in the Sorek winery which is also used as a service winery. I also had difficulty understanding from him who really decides when to harvest the grapes in the vineyards where the grapes come from. For example, he said that in the Vin Rouge Sec 2018 wine made from four grape varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Merlot), he received all the grapes together and therefore decided to ferment them all together.
I didn’t get an answer to the question of who decided to harvest all these grape varieties that day, but Shmulik bothered to point out that he makes sure to age all his wines in oak barrels for two years and another year in the bottle before he puts them on the market. On the other hand, he does not make the same wines every year and it all depends on the grapes he receives from vineyards that are not his. In addition, he said that sometimes he also uses the grape skins left over after fermentation, adds anise and fennel to them and makes arak from them.
Shmulik’s very flexible and very informal approach surprised me a bit, but what made the taste of his pleasures particularly disappointing was the fact that I only discovered towards the end of our conversation and it was the price of pleasures. Well, the price of Yaera Winery wines starts at 180 NIS per bottle and goes up to 200 NIS and more.
When I commented to Shmulik that in my opinion this is an excessive price for Israeli wines in general and domestic wines in particular, he did not seem too excited and replied that the wines are sold to a list of regular customers in Israel and to his delight he even manages to export them to customers from around the world who wait every year for his wines (despite the fact that they are not kosher).
I have no intention of questioning Shmulik’s words, but if this is indeed the reality, it is a certificate of poverty for us consumers. Because when a domestic producer who produces nice wines for his own pleasure dares to ask for close to NIS 200 per bottle (about 50 Euros in Europe) and accepts, then we ourselves give a hand to the exorbitant prices that some of the local winemakers charge arrogantly, brazenly and without any justification.
And one more little note to finish. Shmulik claims that he has no problem selling his wines every year, but the fact that most of the wines he offered for sale at the time of my visit were already 4 and 5 years old indicates that consumers are not in a rush to buy his wines and perhaps even spoils his idyllic story.
And one more small anecdote to finish. Remember the friend from the beginning of the article. Well, it turns out that he actually meant a wine called “Yara” produced by the Shurat winery called “Mehadrin Vineyard” which produces wines for Carmel Wineries and at a much more reasonable price!