By David Amzallag
The global rosé revolution, unfolding slowly yet thoroughly, is reaching us too. For the first time, we are encountering a serious rosé wine – a product we have never really known here – a new type of wine with structure, complexity, depth, and softness. Itay Lahat’s new rosé offers an exceptional drinking experience and marks an important milestone in Israel’s wine journey.
I’ve always loved rosé wines, and only in recent years have I better understood why. I think it’s mainly because of the transformation it is undergoing. Gradually, rosé is shifting globally from one type of wine to another – from a simple, trendy product to a refined wine category with terroir character and worthy of ageing. These are two very different kinds of wines, each with its own audience and purpose, and both are valid forms of rosé made through entirely different processes.
On one side is the basic rosé, the one most of us know well: grapes harvested at optimal ripeness, gently pressed to avoid extracting color, fermented at cold temperatures in tanks, and bottled early to provide the freshest, brightest wine with aromas and flavors of red berries and grapefruit. A wine that barely gets to “see” the winery before being bottled and shipped shortly after harvest. It’s delicious, highly popular (rosé accounts for about 10% of total global wine consumption, and most of it is this style), usually pale, light, and often lacking in character. It is a drink associated with fun, summer, and Instagram – especially due to Provence style marketing dominance that prioritised color over complexity, often resulting in rosés with little depth, structure, or individuality. This is the one category of rosé wines.
The other side of the current revolution is rosé wines made with entirely different goals and production processes. Winemakers now produce rosés through deliberate stylistic decisions – skin contact, barrel fermentation, ageing on lees, and even amphora maturation – to build wines with texture, complexity, and ageing potential. Darker rosés, once dismissed, are being reappraised. The Tavel region in the Rhône Valley, adjacent to Châteauneuf du-Pape, has always been known for its rosés (I still remember Château d’Aqueria Tavel) and is now flourishing again thanks to its bold, innovative wines. This is another category of rosé. These wines are no longer fashionable trends but expressions of terroir with deep cultural and regional roots. Increasingly, producers in France (Provence, Tavel, Languedoc Roussillon), the US, Australia, Lebanon, Romania, and the Balkans are making serious rosé wines with the same precision and intention as their reds and whites – wines that decouple our tasting perception from color alone.
In between, a mixed category has emerged: well-made rosés with precise planning and effort, but intentionally kept without significant complexity or depth. It is a fascinating process that will lead to a far better wine world overall. This post is mainly about us – about the rosé revolution happening here, in Israel, and about Itay Lahat’s new rosé, a wine with structure, complexity, depth, and softness. It is the first truly serious rosé made in Israel.
Here too, we already see early signs of rosé’s journey towards a richer and more dignified future. “Garage de Papa” by Ido Lewinson (Caladoc, 12.5% alcohol, stainless steel fermentation with four months in oak) and Raziel’s rosé by Eithan Ben-Zaken (Mourvèdre, Grenache, Syrah; hand-harvested, six months in oak, 13% alcohol) are two prominent examples from the mixed category. Both are high-quality, highly enjoyable rosés with distinct characters and excellent presentation (pale pink color, delicately designed labels, and bottle shapes that demand attention). Both were made through carefully planned processes – from variety selection, vineyard work, harvest timing, fermentation policies, barrel choices, to criteria for bottling. They could have been made differently to fit the second category and serve as serious main-course wines, but were intentionally kept lighter, aligning with what Israeli consumers know and expect. It is a wise approach, matching product identity to winery strategy and clientele.
Now we have Garrigue, Itay Lahat’s new rosé. A serious wine, fit to accompany the main course at Friday dinners and destined to improve with age. This is precisely a second-category rosé, and its release marks a milestone in our local wine journey. For the first time, we are moving from the pleasant lightness of rosé to a true wine – a product we have never known here: a rosé with structure, complexity, depth, and softness.
Why a milestone? Because from now on, we can think of rosé differently. From now on, rosé can be both serious and immensely enjoyable. From now on, we can talk about ageing rosé. And from now on, Israel joins the small list of regions participating in this evolutionary and innovative rosé transformation.
Garrigue 2024 is, above all, a wine – pink comes second. A blend of almost equal parts Mourvèdre, Syrah, and Grenache, with 10% Roussanne adding a beautiful oily, brioche-like finish. It underwent ten months of meticulous barrel ageing (both each variety separately and later the assembled blend), aimed at enhancing complexity and stabilising its color, aroma, and flavor – the kind of extended winemaking usually reserved for deep, culinary wines.
It has a gorgeous dark salmon color, a rich flavor palette, delicate herbal aromas, perfect acidity, and excellent ageing potential. A brilliant wine.
Unlike other rosés, it should be served at around 16°C. So if, like me, you store it in your kitchen fridge (4°C), open it and let it rest and sweat for about half an hour before serving – trust me, you’ll experience it fully then.
And why Garrigue? Because that’s what the French call the low wild vegetation growing among vineyards in the Southern Rhône – lavender, thyme, rosemary, sage, and more – which imparts a natural, almost wild herbal touch to local wines. Similar vegetation grows in the vineyards of Elkosh and Peki’in in Upper Galilee, and this wine beautifully captures those aromas.
Where to get it? Directly from Itay Lahat and at many wine stores and chains (official launch: July 22, 2025).
Price Range: 1 (up to NIS 100), 2 (NIS 100– 150), 3 (NIS 150–200), 4 (NIS 200–300), 5 (above NIS 300).
Itay Lahat is a vine agronomist, oenologist, and winemaker with thirty years of experience. I first met him years ago when he left his role as head winemaker at Barkan Winery to establish his own premium private brand, producing wines that reflect his personal philosophy and aesthetics while teaching and consulting for numerous wineries nationwide.
Itay is a quiet man, a lover of the Hebrew language (his logo font was intentionally designed in Hebrew), deeply committed to his professional path. His wines are sometimes easy to understand and sometimes require more reflection and time. His first white, Lahat White (Roussanne, Viognier, with a touch of Marsanne), was made in 2012, followed by Lahat Red (mainly Syrah with some Cabernet Sauvignon) in 2014. Since then, he has added Leichter (Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, Marsanne) and Leibo (his blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre), as well as Roussanne (amphora-aged) and Syrah, creating two trilogies – white and red – each telling a precise, complete story of Mediterranean Rhône varieties grown in Upper Galilee. Now, after years of thought and planning, the rosé joins them as a natural bridge between the two trilogies.
I have been drinking all of Itay’s wines, both whites and reds, for years and enjoy them immensely. And because this is my personal post, I will add that my favorites so far have been his Syrah 2022 and Roussanne 2024.
From the outset, Itay’s winemaking strategy has been built on two goals: to express the Western Upper Galilee region clearly, and to express his personal wine philosophy. His reds have medium-full bodies, balanced yet lean, or they are “big band” wines, where the ensemble is far greater than any individual component. And now, the rosé. He calls this a personal terroir.
Lahat does not yet have his own active winery; he produces his wines at Kishor Winery in Misgav Region. The fruit comes from Upper and Western Galilee, mainly from Joel Ben-Ayon’s Elkosh vineyard. Recently, Tempo Group and Barkan-Segal Winery became partners with Itay, acquiring part of his operation to build the future Lahat Winery. This will enable him to make more excellent wines, pursue further innovation, and finally host customers at a dedicated visitor center – something impossible until now.
The rosé revolution (which I will dedicate a separate post to soon) actually began when a group of producers in France (mainly in Tavel and Bandol), California, Australia, and Spain got fed up with the industrial, characterless rosé coming out of Provence and sought a higher-quality way to make rosé. Some of them (for example, Château Simone in the small Palette wine region near Aix-en-Provence or Domaines Ott in Provence, who in my opinion were among the first) began making rosé wines from Mourvèdre, Grenache, Syrah, and Cinsault with intentional, unapologetic skin contact, lees ageing, and barrel maturation. The resulting wine was completely different – with structure, complexity, and ageing potential. But what now? The wine was excellent, with depth and softness, but anyone seeing its pale pink color expected something entirely different. We are talking about around 2010–2015, and the world (certainly Southern France) was used to and very fond of “that other” rosé, and people simply did not associate pink-colored wine with quality, complexity, and depth in the same way they did with red and white wines. Then, around 2018, Elizabeth Gabay became involved, and the revolution took a turn, gaining clear vision and, most importantly, growing acceptance. Elizabeth is a Master of Wine who serves as an authority and leading voice in the world of rosé. She is an active contributor to Decanter and the most important wine magazines globally, and is a sought-after judge at today’s leading wine competitions (including Decanter’s Annual World Wine Awards).
As with any innovation-driven transformation, Elizabeth faced – almost singlehandedly – many prejudices, worldviews, and winemakers and wine regions worldwide to describe, change, and build a better wine world; a world where rosé is first and foremost a wine, only then pink. A world where there is no conceptual distinction between serious red, white, or rosé wines.
Her two books – “Rosé: Understanding the Pink Wine Revolution” (written in 2018 as a thorough, in-depth exploration of the history, regions, and production processes of rosé wines) and “Rosés of Southern France” (written in 2021 with Ben Bernheim about the serious-category rosé producers in Southern France) – are foundational texts shaping the future of rosé.
Thanks to her, the wine world will be better and of higher quality. And now, so will our wine world here.
For more reflections by David Amzallag, see www.winethoughts.blog
This post was originally published on July 3rd, 2025 on the Israeli wine blog Wine Thoughts. This was the first post in Hebrew on Serious Rosé and it comes as an intro for the Israeli wine audience. The post also present Itay Lahat’s new Rosé (that will be launched officially on 22.07.2025 in Tel-Aviv), the first serious rosé in Israel. This document is a one-to-one translation of the post to English. The original post can be viewed (in Hebrew) at https://www.winethoughts.blog/post/garrigue-by-itay-lahat
About the Blog
Wine Thoughts (www.winethoughts.blog) is a weekly wine blog, but it rarely behaves like one. It offers personal reflections on wine, people, books, and the hidden strategies that shape the global wine industry — strategies often invisible to drinkers, yet central to what ends up in their glass. With a distinctly unorthodox voice, Wine Thoughts drifts across borders and disciplines, pairing Syrah-Viognier from Australia with thoughts on field blends in Israel, the business model behind Vivino with the poetry of wine-focused literature, or the entrepreneurial spirit of Napa with quiet revolutions in Galilee.
Both local and global in scope, this is a blog unconcerned with trends or reach — and yet, it has quietly become a widely read platform among winemakers, industry professionals, and curious wine lovers across the Hebrew-speaking world. Remarkably, it has done so without the use of social media. An English-version is expected soon, but at its core, Wine Thoughts remains a place for readers who want to understand more, not just know more.
About David Amzallag
David Amzallag is the writer behind Wine Thoughts — a multidisciplinary tech entrepreneur whose career has spanned Deep-Tech, Telecom, Healthcare, Fintech, and Energy, often at the helm of large scale worldwide technological transformations in both startups and global corporations. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and has long but devoted love for wine.