July 18, 1:30pm This is my last day in Tel Aviv and I am hoping to finally have time to enjoy the beach. After a well rested night I had a meeting with Daniel Rogov at 10am at Arcaffe in Tel Aviv. It was only a 15 minute walk from my hotel and the weather was beautiful; 85 degrees and sunny.
I had briefly met Daniel Rogov about three years ago when I was in Israel for Israexpo, a yearly convention for the Israeli wine industry. But this time I finally got to sit down and talk about the industry and get to know him. Its true what everyone says about him, he is a heavy smoker and loves his coffee. He almost cut my head off when he found out that I don't drink coffee!
I have a lot of respect for the seriousness he has for his job. He takes careful notes of all of his tastings and stores them for 7 years. I can only imagine the response an Israeli winery might give him if he were to give a score that they are not happy with. Moral of the story, if you are a professional Israeli wine taster you must be prepared for weekly lawsuits and a lot of yelling. One thing we both agreed about the Israeli wine industry: the wines are great, but we would like to see more value wines being produced. Enough of these $20 and above wines!
I'm now back at my hotel and will be checking out shortly then hitting the beach. I can't beleive I have been staying right across from the beach this whole week and still have not seen it. Plans for the rest of the day is to relax on the beach and then wash up and go to the airport at 10pm. I'm dreading my 22 hour travel time back to chicago. I have a layover in Paris for 7 hours - NOT FUN!


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