The great, new Jerusalem culture guide, Jerusalemite, has an interview with Avi Ben in honor of the upcoming Jerusalem wine tasting at the Israel Museum this week. Avi Ben was one of the important figures in raising wine culture in Israel over the past few decades and expanding the Israeli food culture in Israel. He especially gets credit for bringing wine culture to Jerusalem and is considered one of the founding fathers of modern Israeli wine.

Avi Ben, a former sommelier, opened his first alcohol store in Mahane Yehuda and then a wine store in Talpiot in the mid-1980s. But, in 1993, he opened a wine store in the Nachlat Shiva pedestrian area near Ben-Yehuda right when the Israeli boutique revolution was just beginning. Yair Margalit and Eli Ben-Zaken had just started planting and releasing wine, but very few people had yet known about them and others would not begin releasing wine for several more years. According to Ben:

All across Israel, the wine culture has changed, it has developed, and I was one of the pioneers of this development, one of the people at the forefront of this change, because of my own personal affiliation with wine, my personal taste for wine and the wine business.

Ben is also one of the founders of the Jerusalem Wine Festival. The Jerusalem Wine Festival started only in 2003, at the height of the Intifada, but it has already become an anticipated wine tasting event. Why a wine festival in Jerusalem and how does it differ from a wine tasting in Tel Aviv? According to Avi Ben:

In Jerusalem you have people that really love wine – not posers. Here, people really come to enjoy the wine. The combination of Jerusalemites, the museum and vendors all contribute to the event. We have wineries here who display their wares all over the country, and they say it’s different here. The air is magical here in Jerusalem – there’s nothing you can do about it.

This is one of the appeals of the festival, that young people come too, people that don’t really know wine, they come to the festival and learn. These young people mix with the wine snobs, religious mix with secular, students with businessmen and lawyers. It’s this type of kibbutz galuyot (ingathering of exiles) which makes the event really special. It’s not just for those that know – it’s a festival for all people. People come to enjoy and to learn, not just to drink and leave. There are some people that come back every night of the festival. All different types of people, that are connected by wine and by the festival’s magical atmosphere. This, by the way, is also what makes the festival unique to Jerusalem, because in other places, only the snobs would come. Here everyone comes and is greeted with blessings.

For the rest of the interview, check out Jerusalemite. And I hope to see everyone at the Wine Festival at the Israel Museum, which is running Tuesday through Thursday night.