Is the wine worth the money?

Asif Dessert Red 2005

Reviewed by Adam Neustadter

Issue of August 7, 2009 / 17 Av 5769

We often think of red wines as dry and full bodied with lots of tannin and acidity. We leave sweet to the white wines — the Moscatos, the Late Harvest wines and so on. For the more adventurous there is Port, a dessert red wine with higher than normal levels of both alcohol and sugar.

Port, as you may have figured out, must be from Portugal in order to bear the name. Also required are specific grape blends and rules governing aging and location.

Legal issues aside, many other dessert red wines try to pass as Port while not paying nearly enough attention to the style and quality they pretend to possess. Frankly, I find it a little insulting.

A few, however, do a surprisingly fine job. Asif, a boutique Israeli winery, is one of those. Keep in mind, so long as the wine is not called Port it is not bound by the aforementioned rules. I give the winemakers credit for not pretending to be selling a Port wine. Instead, they have taken their own blend of grapes from barrels aged as they saw fit and produced a really good dessert red wine.

Upon opening, there is an immense amount of bittersweet chocolate with intense deep cherry. I like this. When I taste it, I find the wine to be very smooth for the alcohol content — 18 percent. (That’s right, 18 percent. That means no driving for the night.) The smoothness is a much-sought-after quality in a high alcohol wine and one of the true indicators that it was done right. There is also a surprising amount of tannins that indicate further potential for improvement over time. On the finish the cherry really takes over and stays with you; it maintained an almost chewy sensation for about 45 seconds after the wine was out of my mouth.

The upside to this wine is that, right now, it is very affordable. There are two downsides, however. The first is that I can’t find it in the U.S., so I can’t tell you whether it’s worth the money you would have to lay out. The other is that it only comes in a 500 ml bottle. If I had to guess, I would put a price on the bottle of about $30-$37.50, given what other wines of this quality are going for and taking into account the small bottle. In Israel it goes for about 70 shekel. As for what that is worth in dollars on the day you read this, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.

Asif Dessert Red 2005 is available for sale online at www.i-deas.co.il (click on wines, then dessert wines). A Google search this week revealed no other online sellers currently. There is a shipping charge but that still keeps the price below where I believe it should be.

Just goes to show you. You don’t have to copy to be better than an original. You just have to be better than the original.

Adam Neustadter is an export consultant to Israeli wineries. He has taught about wine and was a sales executive for the Royal Wine Corporation for 15 years until his aliyah in 2006. He and his family live in Chashmonaim.