 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Oct. 30, 2003
/4 Mar-Cheshvan, 5764
U.S. film producer rewrites the script for Israeli wines
By Fred Tasker
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT)
When Avi Lerner visited the old Eliaz Winery in northern Israel in 1992, he didn't know much about wine.
"I had no idea except that I like to have a glass of wine at lunch. I was not one of the more knowledgeable persons about it.''
But he knew what he didn't like.
"It was one of those sweet wines they make for Jewish holidays. It was so terrible I got heartburn.''
So he did what you can do when you're a big-shot Hollywood producer. He bought the rights, tore up the script and had it rewritten. That is, he and fellow Hollywood producer Danny Dimbort joined Tel Aviv businessman Itzhak Shani to buy the winery, rename it Binyamina Wines, and pump $13 million into it.
| HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
|
|
• 1999 Binyamina Special Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Galilee: oak and cassis; powerful, intense fruit; big structure; big, ripe tannin; $17.
• 2002 Binyamina ''Fall'' Chardonnay, Samaria: crisp and lean, green apples and limes, bitter almond finish; $7.
• 2002 Binyamina ''Fall in White'' Semi-Dry White Wine (75 percent emerald Riesling, 25 percent sauvignon blanc), Lower Galilee Vineyards: soft, delicate and off-dry, with vanilla and honey flavors and a citrus finish; $7.
• 2002 Binyamina Special Reserve Chardonnay, Galilee: oak, limes and green apples; lean; $13.
• 1999 Binyamina Special Reserve Merlot, Galilee: oaky, with black cherries and black peppers, quite varietal, firm tannins; $17.
• Nonvintage Binyamina Dessert Muscat, Samaria: flowers, oranges, honey and spice; viscous and very sweet; well-balanced; $11 per 500 milliliter bottle.
Note: Binyamina's regular wines are kosher for Passover and mevushal; its special reserve wines are kosher for Passover but not mevushal.
| |
"I knew I couldn't do any worse.''
Lerner had the bucks because he's maybe the biggest, most successful independent film producer in Hollywood. His corpus de obra at Nu Image/Millennium Films includes The Howling, American Ninja, Prozac Nation and more than 100 others. His next: an action thriller with Wesley Snipes.
Lerner took his cue in part from writer-director Francis Ford Coppola, who bought an old Napa Valley wine estate that today produces a fabulous, $140-a-bottle cabernet sauvignon blend called Rubicon.
''It's very much like making a movie,'' says Lerner. "It's an artistic endeavor. The general manager is like the producer of a film. The master winemaker is like a movie director.''
Calling the shots at Binyamina is respected Israeli winemaker Sasson Ben-Aharon.
Lerner pushes the metaphor further: "In both industries [movies and wine], you concentrate on making a good product. Then, the success or failure of the product rests on the success or failure of the packaging and marketing.''
The $13 million investment has built a state-of-the-art winery that has switched from inferior, low-altitude, hot-weather grapes to top-quality fruit produced in cool, high-altitude areas such as Mount Carmel (altitude 1,791 feet) and Upper Galilee, where Mount Tabor reaches 1,929 feet.
The product is ready now, and Binyamina's wines are in foreign syndication — that is, arriving into national U.S. distribution.
Awaiting reviews, Lerner adopts a Hollywood pro's philosophy: "Both films and wines are a matter of taste.''
Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Fred Tasker is a columnist with The Miami Herald. To comment, please click here.
© 2003, The Miami Herald Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
|
