Maybe, just maybe, someone in the Israeli wine industry has started reading this blog. I have been writing about the availability of good everyday wines in Israeli supermarkets for over a year. In my opinion, the key to making Israel a normal wine producing and consuming country is via the supermarket distribution channel. In virtually all of the world the vast majority of wine is purchased via supermarkets. Walk through any supermarket in Europe and you will see aisles and aisles of wine and liquor. Even in the US where many states have restrictive wine distribution laws, sales via specialty stores make less than 20% of wine sales. All other wines sales happen via Walmart, Costco, various supermarket chains, and so on. Of course in the US, the kosher consumer has none of these options. Jews for the most part treat wine as a beverage to be consumed on Shabbat, holidays, and special occasions. In countries with good distribution, like France, this is not the case at all. Walk in to your local supermarket and you will find tons of kosher wines on the shelves – priced competitively enough to warrant shelf space in non-kosher markets. In Israel, the market has evolved slowly. Until recently, what was available on supermarket shelves here were Kiddush wines, undrinkable wines imported from Chile, or wines that were mass produced by the large wineries without much care for quality. As the Israeli market has matured, producers realized that the only way to grow the market is to change the culture and make wine a drink consumed daily rather than on weekends and special occasions – and the key to that is providing drinkable wines available in the supermarket –and we have started to see nicer options from the local industry. You can now find nice options from Recanati, Carmel, Teperberg, and Vitkin on your local supermarket shelves. That’s not to say that some of the big producers aren’t still producing drek – they are and it’s as bad as ever – but if you are willing to look past the 25-35 shekel bottles, there is now a wide variety of wines that cost 50-60 shekels and even a few decent wines in the 35-50 shekel category. This has led the importers to try and find ways to compete for some of that market share – and until now I would argue with only mixed results. What has been missing is the largest player in imported kosher wines – Royal. In Israel, Royal wines are imported exclusively by Zur, which for all intents and purposes is the Israeli arm of Royal in terms of imported wines. (Israeli domestic wines are another story, and most Israeli wines imported by Royal in the US use local distribution other than Zur here in Israel – the exceptions being Psagot, Shiloh, and Jezreel.)

For whatever reasons, until recently, prices here in Israel for Royal’s wines was INSANE. Truth is, on the higher end French wines, prices still are! But on Spanish and Italian and on some of the lower end French wines, prices are becoming more reasonable. But most encouragingly, Zur has decided to engage on the supermarket front. This started about two years ago with the entry of the excellent Elvi Herenza Rioja Semi-Crianza which looks like it has been selling well. Now Zur has added some French and Italian to the mix, and I couldn’t be happier, as all of the wines I have seen from Zur/Royal in supermarkets have been excellent so far, unlike much of what we have seen from other importers looking to enter the supermarket space. Why is this so significant? Well, it’s my belief that Royal/Zur can fundamentally alter how wines are sold in Israel if it wants. In the US getting into the supermarket space is likely not a huge opportunity. Jews in the US are far from making wine a part of their everyday consumption – and even then you would be relegated to the “kosher” isle in most locales. Even in the NY metro area where you have super large Kosher supermarkets, they often do not bother carrying wines, as consumption is so low, the hassle of getting a liquor license isn’t worth it – and when they do carry kosher wines, it is a limited selection (though there are notable exceptions). In Israel though, with rare exception, all supermarkets are fully kosher, all major wineries are kosher, and even 90% of the small boutique wineries are kosher. Being kosher isn’t a specialty thing here. It just IS. And so, in Israel Royal has the opportunity to act like a major regular importer of wines and sell through every major supermarket chain. Eventually, like in large supermarkets in the US, you will see chains having larger and larger liquor isles with greater and greater variety. In fact, Zur could do in Israel with other French producers what Royal does in the US with Israeli producers, and that is import from a number of producers that it has relationships with ONLY to Israel (I’m looking at you Taieb!). That could be truly revolutionary and allow supermarkets to be stocked with excellent reasonably priced French wines – something that even the US can’t currently claim! But I’m getting ahead of myself and that is all still just a dream. For now, let’s celebrate what we have, three new wines that are entering the market – all excellent values that sell between NIS 50-65 – and let’s hope that this segment continues to grow.