Meet Roy Yitzhaki of Tulip Winery

Posted on August 24, 2008

Ha’aretz’s Family Affair section in the weekend paper profiled Roy Yitzhaki, owner of Tulip Winery, last month. Yitzhaki, 30, started the winery while still in college (in his mid-20s), and also runs a marketing company with Saslove in Tel Aviv. Very interesting to see a true entrepreneur. Tulip, whose first release was only in 2004, is a top winery in Israel.

Family affair / Roy Yitzhaki

Moshav Beit She’arim

By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami
  • July heat: From the distance one can hear mooing (or perhaps it’s the sound of furniture being moved?).
  • The cast: Roy Yitzhaki, 30, who is waiting on the marble steps at the front of his house.
  • The house: New (completed a month ago; the construction leftovers still have to be cleared away), situated in the moshav’s “small-scale enlargement plan” (near the clubhouse and grocery), devoid of greenery (still). This is a 220-square-meter structure (discounting the balconies) on a 550-square-meter plot. The facade was built with ancient stone (”200 years old”) mixed with plaster (”a cross between rural and modern”). Beyond the heavy wooden entrance door (made by a carpenter from Ramat Tivon) is a large space with high-ceilings and furniture from ID Design (from Kibbutz Ga’ash). The entrance level has a gray floor (granite-porcelain tiles), a living room, a kitchen and two (potential) children’s rooms. The upper level has hardwood flooring. The (potential) master bedroom will be here. Everything is ready.
  • Ready: Roy, divorced (three years), won’t object to someone adding pictures and rugs (”I call it a feminine touch”). Till now his female friends (wives of friends) have assisted him in matters of interior design and furnishings.
  • Choices: The living room has two sofas, a long gray one (chaise longue) facing a 42″ TV; the second is smaller, brown, opposite two greenish leather chairs. Nearby is a living-room table (”natural bamboo”). The kitchen is made by Topaz (at the Check Post) with “smoked maple” cabinets and a butcher-block island with tall bar stools (plastic and metal). Along the wall is a black table (painted oak), which to Roy’s surprise arrived too high (”will be shortened”). The stainless-steel oven is a De’Longhi, 90 cm. (”When there isn’t any money left, you don’t buy La Cucina”). The shutters are electric. All the contents were purchased in a single day of shopping in Ga’ash (”including the tiling and plumbing”). Only the bed and fridge were brought from his previous, rented apartment (”60 meters squared”) in Tivon (”It was fun”).
  • Real-estate history: Intended to be a dream house, designed with his ex-wife. The price of the lot, five years ago, was $100,000; construction cost more than NIS 1,000,000.
  • Livelihood: Roy is the owner of the (boutique) Tulip Winery, which he established five years ago. Roy: “A month ago we were ranked the best wine in Israel by the American magazine Wine Spectator.” According to him, this is a publication that sets global trends.
  • Winning wine: Sira (NIS 89).
  • Winery: Founded in 2003 in Kiryat Tivon before moving to Kfar Tikva, whose residents are disabled (”adults with special needs”). Roy first proposed the idea of the move to Moshik Gross, general manager of Kfar Tikva. Gross rented out an abandoned building to Roy and the business began to prosper. Today the winery produces 100,000 bottles annually (red and white wines) with seven workers, four of whom are residents. Roy: “They do everything.”
  • Everything: Caring for the grapes, emptying barrels, cleaning, maintenance. Roy pays the salaries to the Kfar Tikva management and his employees receive them from the finance department (”like on kibbutz”).
  • Duration: Roy works six days a week. He leaves the house at 7 A.M., finishes at around 8 P.M. and only returns home at 11. In principle he doesn’t bring his work home with him. Drives to and from work in a 2007 Honda Civic (15 minutes each way), and is in Tel Aviv three times a week, to visit his marketing company Dark Red (in partnership with the Saslove Winery on Kibbutz Eyal).
  • Biography: Born in Kiryat Tivon, November ‘77, younger sibling of a brother (engineer and vintner) and sister (social worker). His (”amazing”) parents were born in Israel, are originally from Haifa, and live in Tivon. His father (Dan), an engineer, works as a consultant for large engineering firms, after many years as chief engineer of the construction company A. Arenson Ltd. His mother works in the education department of the Haifa Municipality. Roy attended the Kiryat Amal elementary school and ORT Greenberg high school (physics track), played water polo (also in a junior league), and generally remembers his childhood as happy. He served as an air-traffic controller in the Israel Defense Forces in the control tower of the Ramat David base. Served two additional years in the career army.
  • Traffic controller: “I don’t get stressed out easily.” Called for reserve duty 30-40 days a year, doesn’t ask for any discounts (”It is quite problematic for someone who is self-employed”), but notes that the IDF does not call him up during the grape harvest.
  • Biography cont’d: Released from the army in 2001, flew to the United States, traveled extensively in the western states with his girlfriend (whom he married two years later), and in the summer of 2002, following three weeks in Europe, returned to Israel to begin studying economics at the College of Management in Rishon Letzion. At the end of that school year he established the winery.
  • Establishing the winery: “I grew up in a family of wine freaks,” he relates. His father Dan became interested in the field in 1973, after a French waiter in a Parisian restaurant was horrified when he ordered beer with his gourmet meal. In time, Dan dragged the family along to tours of wineries in Europe (Roy: “I couldn’t stand wine then”). One day in 2003 Dan and his two sons happened upon a wine festival in Jaffa (in the Scottish House), were impressed by the small-scale wineries (”producing 1,000-2,000 bottles at home”) and wondered to themselves: Why not us? Roy: “I told Dad I would take it upon myself.”
  • The project: The father provided the initial sum of money (a few hundred thousand shekels) and Roy began gathering equipment. He had, in his words, three (”ambitious”) objectives: “uncompromised wine-making, modest pricing and community involvement in the project.” Everything, he says, came from his gut. He relates that the business plan was also intuitively drawn up. And so, with the aid of a vintner named Dr. Arkady Papikian (”a wine genius”), with whom he traveled to wineries in Italy and France, Roy began to get the business in gear. At the same time he did three important things: moved to the building in Kfar Tikva, finished his master’s degree in economics and got married.
  • The wedding: June 2003, at Kav Hamayim (a special-events garden), in Mikhmoret. The bride was his high-school sweetheart (the one who traveled with him to the States). She was his first girlfriend and he was her first. They had dated for nine years; two and a half years later they got divorced. He is left with one conclusion: “Sometimes it doesn’t work out.” The long time together (along with the families’ acquaintance) didn’t make things easier. The breakup, which was sad, he says, gave him strength. Alongside the difficulty he was given the opportunity to get to know himself (”I was alone for the first time”). It took him a year and a half to get over it (”I am past it today”). The intense work, he says, allowed him to recover (”not drown in it”). Working as a tutor at the college in Rishon (macroeconomics) also helped.
  • Winery cont’d: The equipment arrived in the summer of 2003 (from Italy and France). At the same time, the building in Kfar Tikva was renovated. The first grapes arrived in September from Moshav Kerem Ben Zimra. Family and friends all pitched in and, together with workers from Kfar Tikva, under the direction of Dr. Papikian and Doron (Roy’s brother), the first bottle was born (on September 4, 2004). Seven-thousand bottles were produced from that same harvest. The label was designed by a fresh graduate of the Neri Bloomfield Academy of Design and Education in Haifa (”We went to the graduate exhibition, asking for the year’s best student”). They also remember the first buyer (”someone from Maccabim”) who gave them a NIS 100 bill and didn’t ask for any change (”It is framed”).
  • Tulip: His mother suggested the name. (”‘Yitzhaki’ is not very appealing.”)
  • Routine: Roy wakes up at 6:45 A.M., doesn’t eat or drink, shaves, puts on a pair of jeans and a button-down (or polo) shirt, sprays on some Armani Mania (”I bought it at the duty-free”) and heads out. At 7:30 he arrives at the winery, where he drinks his first cup of coffee (instant, one sugar). The workers arrive at 8. They sit and talk. At 8:30 they start working. There are days when Roy drives to Tel Aviv and days when he bottles wine or washes barrels (oak wood from France), or helps with packaging. He eats lunch in the kitchenette. The workers stay until 6 or 7 P.M.; he stays on.
  • Evening: He visits friends or family straight from work (”The house is empty”). Sometimes he will go out to eat at Frangelico (an Asian bar) in Ramat Yishai. At around 10-11 P.M. he gets home, showers, watches TV shows (”‘Friends’ and the like”) and falls asleep at around 1 A.M. in front of the National Geographic Channel. Books? Not really. He sleeps well.
  • Chores: Cleaning lady once every two weeks, NIS 200 a visit. (”I am a top-notch cook.”)
  • Dreams: “Raising a family.”
  • Clothes: Castro, Celio, Zara (”I choose”). His mother’s cleaning lady handles the ironing.
  • Friends: All from Tivon (”We would die for each other”); most are at the first-child stage (”I represent bachelorhood for them”).
  • Girlfriends: “I get fixed up.” He’s been on three blind dates already. Many women, he relates, take an interest in him (”I am a people person”).
  • Preference: Someone who looks good, not too old (”A 39-year-old tried to hit on me, I don’t feel like it”), and who would be happy to raise children in Beit She’arim.
  • God: Doesn’t believe, likes tradition (”the wedding ceremony, too”).
  • Romance: “I’ve already forgotten.”
  • Happiness quotient (on a scale of 1-10): 9.The place
  • Beit She’arim - a moshav in the Jezreel Valley, founded in 1926. With about 500 residents, it includes a communal neighborhood named after a town from the Mishnah period, which was the seat of the ancient Sanhedrin.
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