Domaine du Castel Winery — Attraction in Mate Yehuda Regional Council

As in the whole world after a long year that lasted like an eternity in which we were forced to stop our lives and avoid social contacts because of the COVID-19 virus,

I finally went out to have a little fun and chose to refresh the taste of returning to my favorite routine of life by raising a glass of wine, after all there is nothing like a good wine to make a human heart happy.

I went to visit the Castel boutique winery in Moshav Yad Hashmona in the Judean Mountains, established by Eli Ben Zaken, and has been in current residence since 2015.

This is a modern winery that uses an optical sorting machine for grapes, and an absorption system that allows grapes to be received in containers by gravity only without pumps. The winery prepares its wines from grapes of the types Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Syrah and Petit Verdot grown in vineyards planted with clay and limestone in the Judean Mountains, at an average height of 750 meters. The vines grow very densely and produce small, high-quality crops that are harvested by hand.

The winery produces six wines:

three red wines, Castel Grand Vin which is the winery's flagship wine, Petit Castel and La Vie Rouge, Rosa, as well as two white wines,

C 'Blanc du Castel' made from Chardonnay grapes and aged for about a year in French oak barrels and La Vie Blanc , Sauvignon Blanc based blend.

The winery bottles about four hundred thousand bottles of wine every year, when from 2003 all the winery's wines are kosher.

I came to a wine and cheese tasting tour that I set up easily and conveniently through the winery’s website (130 INS for person).

I was greeted by a graceful guide with a glass of fresh, cool white wine that fit just like a glove next to the morning and the warm weather.

The tour of the winery is short and exhaustive, with the cool and pleasant wine storage cellar being the highlight.

The wine barrels in the cellar are neatly arranged and uniquely painted for a winery that creates a particularly endearing look.

From the tour of the basement, we happily moved to wooden small tables in the well-kept and shady visitors' plaza, overlooking an open view of the Judean Mountains and the nearby settlements.

A plate of delicious cheeses accompanied by rustic walnut bread was served to the table and the guide began pouring wine glasses from a selection of winery wines with a delightful explanation of the type of grapes and aroma of the wine served.

I will conclude my experience in three words: it was fun and great!

Highly recommend as a refreshing and joyful experience

... And if there were any errors in my writing, I apologized ... I'm still perfumed by the...

We have been to wineries across the world and Castel happens to be one of my favorite wines. We signed up for a tour and a tasting and I was quite disappointed with the tour. I cannot even say you can call it a tour, we didn't really have a chance to see where the wine was produced. In total the "tour" was 10 minutes that included mainly pictures on a wall of the history of the winery and the owners. The tasting was average (no complaints about the taste of the wine), nothing special compared to other places I have been. If I would have known this, for the price I would have went else where and stuck to purchasing a bottle of the...

A wonderful light experience! A covid19-safe experience - much more than 2-4 meters apart is easily achieved (came for the 10am tour).

A visit to the winery (reservations necessary) will reveal how and where wine is made, not getting into too much details - just the right amount of it.

Later on you will sit in their beautiful courtyard, which is very very spacious, shaded, and overlooking the beautiful green mountains nearby.

You will be served with several different wines of the winery, along with cheese and bread. The wines were wonderful, I enjoyed only 1/3 cheeses, and the...