One of the most important stories of the Israeli wine world is the quality revolution that took place (and is continuing with continuing improvements) at Carmel Wineries.

Carmel Wineries, founded in 1882, is one of Israel’s oldest producers of wine (and, I suspect, oldest producer of table wines) and certainly the most famous Israeli wine. In fact, it’s fair to say that the story of Carmel is the story of Israel (with several Prime Ministers, including David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and Ehud Olmert, having spent time working at Carmel) and certainly represents the story of Israeli wine – from sacramental to single vineyard.

Because Carmel wasn’t always making the world’s best wine, with the growth of new wineries in Israel, several years ago Carmel decided that they needed to make some changes. As such, they underwent what’s known as “the quality revolution” and today Carmel has some truly truly excellent high-level wines (which are making their way into fine restaurants in the UK and are available in the US and around the world) and some value wines that are also of exceptionally high quality and enjoyable at all price points.

Here are some of the things Carmel has done to compete with the tremendous explosion of Israeli wineries and make up part of the Carmel “quality revolution.”

1. New vineyards were planted in higher altitude, cooler areas – mainly in the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights. Carmel is now the leading vineyard presence in the Upper Galilee.
2. Three new small, state of the art wineries were built next to key vineyards – at Ramat Dalton in the Upper Galilee (2004), Tel Arad in the South (2000), and within the existing Zichron Ya’akov facility (2003). I had a chance to recently visit the boutique winery at Zichron and will be writing more on that later. This allowed for the keeping of the different vineyard lots to be kept separate – allowing the methods and quality of a boutique winery to occur in a large winery.
3. A new winemaking team was employed, including winemakers with experience in France, Australia, California, and Canada.
4. The control and management of the vineyards was totally changed. All vineyards were categorized according to the end-product. Payment for growers was altered to promote quality. Carmel winemakers and viticulturalists began to strictly control all vineyard activity.
5. Carmel decided to focus on wine and ceased production of non-grape products, including spirits and liqueurs (2005). The company name was also changed from Carmel / Carmel Oriental and Carmel Mizrahi to Carmel Winery.
6. Carmel decided to stop producing mevushal (flash pasteurized) wines at the mid & upper price point. Previously, all Carmel wines were mevushal.
7. Carmel became the first Israeli winery to introduce a range of single vineyard and regional wines to reflect different terroirs of Israel.
8. A project was begun to revive two grape varieties with historic significance in Israel. Carmel launched a Carignan and Petit Syrah, using old vine vineyards and reducing yields considerably.
9. A new management team was employed taking the best in business, marketing, and wine.
10. Overall production and the number of wines in the portfolio was drastically reduced. Investment was increased to improve professionalism and quality from the vineyard to the bottle. The vision of the company was changed to focus on quality wines.