In Israel, the Sommelier Expo signals the start to the new wine season. For many Israeli wineries, this is their opportunities to launch new releases and get merchants interested in selling their product to the public. The event used to be only open to people within the business (liquor stores, restaurants etc) & press. For the last 2 years they have opened the event to the public as well in the evenings after the pro section is over. From what I can tell, this year, most wineries served the same wines for the most part to both sets of attendees – an improvement over last year.

There are hundreds of wines to taste and even if you were to attend both days for the full allotted time, you wouldn’t be able to properly taste through all of them without some sort of palate fatigue. So I did not even attempt to taste through everything – omitting things that I have previously tasted (so even though I love them, I skipped the 2016 Carmel Kayoumi Reisling & the 2007 Yarden Late Disgorged BdB etc.) or I knew I would be tasting at the upcoming Zur/KFWE Israel next week. I also tried did only whites on day 1 and reds on day 2 which allowed me to sort of keep my palate in check.