July 17, 2013
Abby, who spent Tisha B’Av in Jerusalem while I spent it in Zichron Yaakov and Binyamina, met me at the airport for Judy’s arrival on Tuesday. Judy’s flight was on time unlike ours (thank you Lufthansa, and no thank you Air Canada), and we started our trek to the north; we are staying at the guest house in Kibbutz Farod (or Parod, no one seems to know). It was about a 3 hour drive, and we were all fasting, so we stopped at a supermarket in Karmiel to get something to break fast with, nothing fancy. We get to the kibbutz, the area around the guest rooms is sort of deserted, but we reached someone by phone and managed to get settled. We were told about a nice pub on the kibbutz, so after we ate, and it was only around 9 pm, we decided to check it out.
Mel’s Pub. On our way there we encountered a bovine member of the kibbutz (and I don’t mean a fat person, I mean an actual cow) who it appeared, to use a jailbreak (or camp day off metaphor) went over the wall) and was grazing on the lawn of a nearby cottage. We felt obliged to report the escapee to Mel, who shrugged, said it happens and didn’t bother to call anyone. Mel advertises that he has over 400 whiskies which is likely true. Distilled spirits here are expensive, but he charges for a drink prices that are higher than hotel prices - I ended up with a small draft beer (which was nice, and still about $6) and a bag of cashews. We didn’t see any cows on the way back. Judy said if we had passed a place like Mel's at home, we never would have gone in.
We woke up in the morning, and breakfast was brought to us in our room at 8:30. It was a full buffet in a basket with rolls, labane (a thick
dairy spread, 2 kinds actually) yogurts, cereals, tomato cucumber and a red pepper, hard boiled eggs, herring all in separate little containers and 2 kinds of bourekas. It was lovely and one of the local cats enjoyed the herring immensely.
Our first stop was the DeKarina Chocolate factory at Ein Zivan. All the bon bons and truffles are handmade and delicious. The 22 NIS tour (about $6) includes a film, watching the people make candy (we saw how Mekupelet is made by hand) and a tasting of 5 different chocolates. It’s quick, only about a half hour and we did it with another family of three from Brooklyn. Next door is the Bahat winery, a kosher, family-owned winery making about 10,000 bottles a year. I tasted 2 wines, an exceptional Pinot Noir (which in the past has not done so well in Israel) and weird tasting Sangiovese, only disappointing because its a variety I love, and a very nice Merlot.
From there, on our way to the Har Odem Winery we stumbled upon a fairly new visitors center at a junction called Wasset. It’s a lovely enclosed compound with some artisans, restaurants, a wine shop/tasting room run/owned by Bazelet HaGolan (but selling other local wines - we neither tasted nor shopped there) and we walked around a bit. There was a cool spice shop where I bought some sugar free halva and spicy paprika. Then we went on to Har Odem, a winery high on my list to visit 2 years ago and we ran out of time. It is about as far north as you can go in the Golan, and worth the trip. It is a family owned and run operation, making about 80,000 bottles a year. Our host was one of the winemakers and sons of the founder, Yishai Alfasi and he was a terrific guide and host. I really enjoyed spending time with him and when he saw what I knew and how I enjoyed it, in addition to the 6 wines on the bar of tasting he went and got a mashgiach to get us a taste from the barrel of the 2011 Syrah, which has just been removed from its various barrels and transferred to stabilize before being bottled later this fall. It is amazing, and my guess is it will be an expensive wine when it comes out. It’s young but it will really be something. As a big Shiraz fan, I left with one of those in my bag. I have notes on the other wines and I’ll publish them later.
We headed to Katzrin a bit late in the day, it was already after 3 when we got there, and had lunch at a cute dairy place called Blueberry (which was really funny because there was a picture of 2 cherries on the menu). The multiple spelling errors on the English menus of Israeli restaurants is a course of huge humor for me, so it was fun to read while deciding what to have. I had a great Feta omelette, Judy had a mushroom omelette, Abby had a Mushroom pie, kind of a mushroom stew on puff pastry. Yes I ate my salad and drank about a liter of water.
We got to the archeology museum about 45 minutes before it closed so rather than pay the whole admission we look at some carved basalt columns and other stuff in their courtyard, and decided we would get our dose of archeology tomorrow at Zippori.
Not exactly on our way down to the valley, we stopped at an artist village Amiam. It was quaint - you have to have a lot of patience to work out on the edge of the country, with little publicity and wait for people to come and buy - I don’t think I could do it. We walked around a bit.
We drove down toward the Kinneret and back up to see if there was anything to see in Rosh Pina (there wasn’t much) so we headed back to Farod. Judy went for a stroll and found tonight’s escapee, and I sat down to do this.
Tomorrow is another day.
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