Every year a new wine festival opens in Israel, from the southern tips of Eilat to the northern tips of the Golan Heights. But it is no exaggeration to say that Israel’s most important wine festival is Tel Aviv’s Sommelier.

This giant Israeli wine festival has now been held for several years, with wines from Israel and around the world featured on three floors of Tel Aviv’s Heichel HaTarbut. While the event featured non-Israeli wines like the kosher Herzog to the non-kosher Yellow Tail, the highlight is kosher and nonkosher Israeli wines from wineries such as Chateau Golan, Carmel, Yatir, Avidan, Yafo, Dalton, Recanati, Golan Heights Winery, Rimon, Barkan, Tabor, Binyamina, and more.

Primarily for the trade, the event gives wine buyers, restauranters, journalists and critics a chance to taste wines both new to the market, as well as those wines not-yet-released to store shelves. It was also a chance for the general public to taste great wines, such as the single vineyard releases of Yarden, including the 2001, 2004, and unreleased 2004 Yarden El Rom Cabernet Sauvignon.

Other notable presentations included the presence of smaller boutiques such as Miles and Kela.

Interesting wines that I discovered included a sparkling wine from Rimon, Binyamina’s new Zinfandel (still a relatively uncommon grape in Israel).

Did you attend? What did you think?