One of the most "fun" annual wine festivals and an excellent opportunity to taste wines, tour wineries and talk with winemakers has traditionally been the festival of the Judean Hills. This year, the 12th in a successful series will start on 1 October and will consist of several major parts.

At eight this morning (Tuesday, 10 August), I found myself in the well tended and exquisitely set vineyards of the Teperberg winery, there with several colleagues in the company of Motti Teperberg and the winery's two winemakers Shiki Rauchberger and Olivier Fratty, both of whom had taken time off from a very hectic harvest period to meet with us and to unveil the winery's 2008 Malbec release.

Yesterday evening (Sunday, 8 August), I attended the unveiling of three wines in the Rechasim series of Segal, each of those from the 2007 vintage. These were re-tastings for me, the wines having earlier been tasted as barrel samples in each case as well as advance tastings in two cases. To my pleasure, each of the wines was showing better now than at my earlier tastings. Simply stated, whatever it is that has to be done is being done very well indeed by winemaker Avi Feldstein.

Founded by the Kharich family and set in the village of Gush Halav (Jish) in the Upper Galilee, this family-owned winery released its first wines from the 2004 vintage. The extraordinarily attractive boutique winery currently relies grapes sourced from various sources in the Galilee but its own vineyards, those containing Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Dabukki grapes will be coming on line in the next year or two. Current production is about 6,500 bottles annually and plans are to grow to an annual output of 20,000 bottles.

Not too long ago, I wrote about the newly released rosé wine of winemaker Gaby Sadan's Shvo Winery. That thread can be found here Yesterday, I made my way to the village of Gush Halav (Jish) to visit Sadan and to do one advance tasting and a series of barrel tastings.