It’s always a pleasure to visit , the winery near Binyamina established well over a hundred years ago now and still run by the same family – or rather their descendants. It was a breezy June day when we arrived for lunch and chose our places next to the garden wall decorated with a frieze of – what else? – . A fan next to our table made sitting outside very bearable, while many guests sat in the central area shaded from the heat by the tendrils of an old vine covering the wooden structure.
We left the choice of food to our hosts and several starters arrived very quickly. There was the classic Israeli dish of sliced watermelon with feta cheese, very aesthetically presented with garnishes of cherry tomatoes and greenery (NIS 62). A second starter was coleslaw (served in a cabbage leaf) with a chopstick, and this was pleasantly sweet and not too oily (NIS 56).
And yet another starter arrived, very thinly sliced paté, made from salmon and beetroot, which accounted for the gorgeous purple shade of this dish, with added dots of feta cheese. Maybe we were extra hungry after the long drive, but everything tasted like ambrosia and the crispy fresh whole meal bread added to the pleasure. Of course, as this was a winery, we broke our no-booze-before-6 p.
m. rule to taste a brand new product of the company – a semi-dry rose, dubbed Cabernet Muscat, served ice cold. The mixed fruity overtones were perfect for a summer day lunch.
(NIS 80 a bottle). The next dish to arrive was Au.