Negev Part 2

The adventures continue.  On Thursday morning we got an early start to the BGU Campus at Sde Boker to learn about their research in desert viticulture.  Originally, we were scheduled to meet with Dr. Aaron Fait,who’s runs a project called From the Desert to The Bottle. Aaron was ill, and my other contact in the lab was bereaved of her mother, so we met with an outstanding PhD student from Ethiopia, Kedane Reta. Kedane explained his research to us.  They are experimenting with using brackish, salty water for irrigating grapes in high temperatures, to see if there is such a thing as too much water (there is), whether introducing salt to the vines will mitigate the effect of the excess water (it is) to help improve the quality of vineyards in Ethiopia, where the vines get too much water mix of the time, and the possibility of using salty water in Israel without it hurting the quality of the grapes and the wine it makes.

We walked in the vineyards, tasted the Shiraz grapes and then tasted various wines that had been irrigated with various concentrations  of salt in the water to see which wines we preferred.  It was eye opening and I learned a lot. The research will benefit the wine industry in Kedane’s native country, because they get an excess of rain, and introducing salt will improve the quality of the grapes.  Some of Israel’s aquifers are brackish, so using that water to irrigate won’t hurt the vines, in fact it improves them. 

We then went to the Kibbutz Sde Boker visitors center to meet with Zvi Remak, the winemaker at Sde Boker.  I met with him about 7 years ago and things haven’t changed very much.  The kibbutz limits his output. I tasted a blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz that was very good and a Shiraz that was very good but not the best I’ve had.  Zvi is a very friendly guy, he’s now running the whole coffee shop at the visitors center and he offers wine tastings of several Negev wines there.

We went to visit several of Yossi’s friends from his days volunteering at Sde Boker in 1980-1981 and had a nice visit meeting these people who commuted their lives, careers and sometimes families to the Negev.

Our last winery, that we missed on Tuesday, was Rota. The winemaker Erez is a nice guy but it seems he’s nearing the end of his winemaking activities.  He’s making fewer than 10,000 bottles a year, we tasted a red blend that was pleasant, a Muscat white dessert wine and a cognac/brandy he’s been aging for 7 years.  I’m not a dessert wine person; the brandy was very good, but he’s mostly making wine for a few friends and regular customers and not for the broader market or restaurants.  

We made our way back to Beer Sheva, picked up our stuff at Daniel and Gili’s, said our thank yous, filled the car with gas and returned it to budget.  One employee tried to say that the tank wasn’t full, and they wanted me to go top it off (even though the gauge registered full.  When I went to take the car back two guys said, “what are you doing, it says full?”  I made them come in with me to the desk, we were cleared to go and we were on our way to the train station back to Binyamina.