Knowing one's limits Friday-Shabbat, Aug 5-6

Waking up Friday morning, Yossi and I concluded independently but agreed after consultation that we had had about enough of a good thing.  We had not had a bad wine in 2 days, maybe tasting about 60 wines.  I have no idea how competition judges do what they do, but we were doing to take it easy on Friday.


Entrance to the Meister winery



We departed Kfar Blum, had a quick breakfast and drove to Rosh Pina.  There we found the Meister Winery, run by Yaakov Meister, an Ezer Weitzman double who worked for about 40 years for Bank HaPoalim.  He retired to land that had been in his and his wife's families for 3 generations, including some beautiful orchards and caves at Givat Oren (named for his father in law), who as a retired police chief, was murdered in his home in the 90's.

Yaakov has his winery in natural caves (though be excavated down a bit) and the effect is amazing.  He makes 15,000-18,000 bottles a year, primarily Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz (and grows a bit of petit verdot).  He also has many fruit orchards, brines his own olives, sells his own olive oil and makes a variety of fruit liquors (we tried the apricot, but he makes lemon, orange, pomegranate and many others).  The only other thing we tasted was a very nice 2006 Cab Shiraz (90-10) blend, very smooth with light tannins.


One of 2 barrel rooms at Meister



We made our way further south to Pardess Hannah, to take Daniel home, and went to the Dipon winery.  This home based winery, which still raises bees for honey and started out as a honey wine operation, is run by the very mellow Frank.  He spent a lot of time showing us around, and their plans for expansion.  We didn't taste anything, but Frank made us of give of a bottle each, I think in gratitude for Yossi's persistence in trying to visit (he'd been in touch several times to arrange a visit) and for the wine map.  I'm really looking forward to tasting his wine - he's certainly a great guy and I've often found a correlation between the two qualities.


We stopped in Har Adar to look in on Dina's cat Anna, made sure she was fine, and went back to Jerusalem.  We were invited by Alice and Effry Jonah to have dinner with them at their daughter Rachel's brand new apartment in Baka.  We had a lovely meal and enjoyed their company.



Shabbat morning I went to Shira Chadasha, not the friendliest shul in town, but it's a nice service.  I've been going there since 2004, and I don't think anyone has ever come over and introduced themselves. It's also no shorter than an American service (just under 3 hours) and there was a baby naming and the mother actually was the darshanit (speaker).  I had a quiet afternoon.  In the early evening Anita and Giora Shkedi of INTRA came to visit Danny, and its always fascinating to hear what advances they're making in therapeutic horseback riding, particularly with children with autism and people with traumatic brain injuries.  I played the role of house boy.



Saturday night my friends Rinat Hugi and Orit Shoham-Mandel can to visit and we went out to Tal Bagels, my first visit of the season.  The food is still good, but the friendly service they were once known for has disappeared.  It was very disappointing.  The company, however, was great.



I came home and wrote a bit (it was nearly midnight) and then did some planning for Sunday, a pretty busy workday.