Tzora Vineyards, Misty Hills, 2012 (Feb. 26, 2021)

This is a proud member of the second wave of Israeli premium reds. When the Misty Hills was launched with the 1999 vintage, we had had about a decade's worth of Katzrin, Castel and Margalit (plus a few vintages of Segal Unfiltered that had begun in 1988 and had been resurrected in 1999). The Misty had few contemporaries. Flam's first Reserves were 1999's and Recanati Special Reserve's first vintage was the 2000, but the Flam Noble came along almost a decade later, as did Vitkin's Shorashim. 

All the above have been fairly consistent regarding their goals and quality control, with a few tweaks. Recanati started focusing on non-Bordeaux grapes about a decade ago, as did Margalit and Castel a few years afterwards. What Tzora did, basically, was hire Eran Pick, who has been on a slow, steadfast crusade of quality improvement and exploration of terroir. I was a customer back in the days, and I drank a few Misty Hills from 1999 to 2002. Oddly enough, despite all that has happened since, in the choice of vineyard and grapes, there is a consistent fingerprint, something that I've always thought of, in my own romantic way, as a taste of the Judean Hills: a whiff of ground rock and pine sap. The palate plays a tricky hand, controlling the typical ripeness of Israeli reds (Pick always harvests earlier than the average winery) and eking more savoriness out of the tannins. Israeli wines don't have to struggle for richness, but they do have to make an effort to make that richness count. The Misty Hills consistently does so, with the complexity and depth of a great wine.

I try to buy doubles or more of the Misty each year. I had only bought one bottle of the 2012 and only noticed that after I had opened the bottle. A shame, that, it lives up to the name and all I've written above and it has almost a decade of life ahead.