Asif 2023 — The Wine That Came in Waves

Wine festivals can become a blur.

One table, another bottle, another pour. You taste, you listen, you move on.

And then, every once in a while, something makes you stop.

For me, this was one of those bottles.

Asif 2023 by Elul Vineyards.

The first thing that surprised me was something incredibly simple: the number on the bottle.

14.5% alcohol.

I knew it was there.

I just couldn’t feel it.

There was no obvious alcoholic heat dominating the wine, no moment where the strength of it pushed everything else aside. Instead, the wine felt remarkably composed.

But that wasn’t what made me remember it.

It was what happened next.

The best way I can describe Asif is this:

it came in waves.

One sensation would appear, then fade. Something else would take its place. The intensity would rise, settle down, and then come back in another form.

It wasn’t a wine that gave me one clear flavor and stayed there.

It moved.

And I loved that.

I wasn’t standing at the festival trying to identify twenty different aromas or prove that I could find a specific fruit somewhere in the glass.

What fascinated me was simply the experience of drinking it.

Every few seconds, the wine seemed to show another side of itself.

Only later did I discover what was actually inside the bottle.

Asif 2023 is a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Each variety is harvested selectively by hand and fermented separately with wild yeast before the wine spends approximately 18 months in French oak.

The winery describes red and black fruit, spice, tobacco and gently toasted oak. Other tasting notes add darker, earthier elements such as forest floor, rosemary and plum.

Suddenly, the feeling I had at the festival made a little more sense.

Not because there is a list of flavors I’m supposed to taste.

But because there really is quite a lot happening inside this wine.

This is the part that made me like the bottle even more.

Elul Vineyards grows its organic vineyards near Tel Gezer, in the foothills of the Judean Mountains.

And the name Asif isn’t simply a beautiful Hebrew name chosen for a wine.

At Tel Gezer, archaeologists discovered one of the most fascinating agricultural texts from biblical-era Israel: the Gezer Calendar.

Its ancient inscription describes the agricultural cycle of the land — sowing, harvesting, pruning and gathering.

Among its first words are:

Yarho Asaf — the months of gathering.

The asif.

Thousands of years later, grapes are once again being grown in this landscape, harvested from this soil and turned into wine carrying that same word on its label.

That’s difficult for me to ignore.

Because this is one of the reasons I started JulVino.

Wine, for me, isn’t only about what’s inside the glass.

It’s also about where the glass can take you.

To a vineyard.

To a person.

To a story.

Sometimes, even thousands of years backwards into the story of this land.

Asif is not memorable to me because I can give it a score.

I don’t want JulVino to become a collection of scores.

It stayed with me because I tasted something, became curious about it, and then discovered an entire story behind the bottle.

A wine made from organically grown grapes, fermented with wild yeast and matured for 18 months in French oak. A wine rooted beside ancient Tel Gezer. A kosher Israeli wine whose name connects directly to the agricultural language of this land.

And before I knew any of that, it had already caught my attention for the most important reason:

I enjoyed drinking it.

The knowledge came afterwards.

Maybe that’s exactly the order it should be.

Taste first.

Get curious.

Then follow the wine wherever it takes you.

This time, it took me to Asif.