A gastronomic tour is like a hand beckoning to food lovers, and this tour to the gastronomic Galilee attracted a busload of hungry journalists.Shady olive groves and green vineyards running down mountain slopes in Tuscany-like landscapes breathed promises of wine tastings and delicious local fare. Cool breezes made purple thistles and yellow mullein sway by the roadsides, and as our bus climbed up Israel’s wine country, it was easy to imagine goat’s milk cheeses from boutique dairies, colorful salads and fruity olive oil to sop up with crusty fresh bread. In fact, we were getting hungrier by the minute.We first stopped at the Tulip Winery in Kfar Tikva, overlooking the Jezreel Valley. A lush breakfast of fresh salads, a variety of local cheeses, brown bread and tastings of four wines awaited us at the visitors’ center. Although the tastings were generous, I was sad to sip only a little of each wine – a necessary measure if I was to keep a level head for the rest of the tour. Kosher since the 2010 harvest, Tulip produces prizewinning libations. Especially notable are its flagship Black Tulip and the innovative White Franc, which has an unusual light bronze color and refreshing tingle.Next on northward road was the Spicy Way spice and herb farm in Beit Lehem Haglilit. After viewing a short movie on the history of the farm, we had a quick talk about the herbs and spices grown there with Shoshan, the farm’s English-speaking saleswoman.Is the produce organic? “The farm’s fields are never sprayed with chemicals,” explained Shoshan, “But since neighboring farms do spray, we may not call our products organic.We use the term ‘ecological.’ Of the 200 or so spices we offer for sale, we grow about 20. We make sure the imported ones are organic.”All farm-grown herbs are air-dried to preserve quality, and no preservatives are used on any of their products.Viewing the rows of green stevia plants growing outside, Shoshan offered us a little of the herb to taste. “It has to be dried, not used fresh, for maximum sweetness,” she said as we took pinches of the dried leaves. Chewing, a stream of sweetness invaded the mouth. We also tried a little pungent dried za’atar, which is much like oregano and grown on the farm.“Za’atar enhances memory and the ability to concentrate,” said Shoshan, drawing on local folklore.We wandered between displays of cookware for home and camping, local cheeses and honey. A large area was dedicated to bins full of spices for every palate and herbal remedies for every ailment. I picked up a spice blend to sprinkle on baked potatoes, which proved delicious at home the next day.The Spicy Way farm is dedicating this month to culinary workshops, where Arab and Jewish chefs will lead participants through the mysteries of Middle Eastern, European and even Mexican cuisine and pastry-making.For registration and more details, go to www.derech-hatavlinim.co.il.THE ADIR boutique winery and goat’s milk dairy was our next stop. We drove to the edge of the Kerem Ben-Zimra vineyards, with their magnificent, sprawling view of Mount Admon and red-roofed villages dotted here and there in the valley. We walked among the vines in the dry heat, observing the bright yellow St. John’s wort and branching horehound bushes that spring out between the rocks in uncultivated parts of the hillside. Those medicinal wild herbs made it easier to believe that the hard, dry earth could nourish grapes to eventually swell, take on color, and produce sweet juice that Avi Rosenberg, Adir’s winemaker and a member of the original founding family, will coax into big wines.“All our grapes are handpicked and only lightly pressed to produce freeflowing juice,” said Rosenberg. “Some are returned to the skins to ferment, as with our shiraz wine, and some undergo malolactic fermentation, as with our chardonnay.”Ready to taste again, we entered the bright, airy visitor’s center and settled down at the bar. The cheeses we tasted this time were produced in Adir’s own dairy, which has the largest herd of goats in Israel. Soft, spreadable labaneh, cream cheese, feta, and semi-hard Tom and Admon cheeses topped slices of baguette bread. All were delicious, but the goat’s milk yogurt sweetened with date honey was an especially toothsome surprise.To accompany the cheeses, there was wine, naturally. We sipped at Adir’s shiraz, merlot and chardonnay wines and were treated to more exclusive blush port. Adir’s wines have a relatively high alcohol content and are considered more “green,” in the New World style, than subtle. Again, it took a certain amount of self-discipline to only sip.We were next ushered into a room where tables were set with Primus burners, fresh goat’s milk and plastic baskets for pressing cheese. Each reporter cooked the milk with lemon juice, pressed the resulting curds through two muslin-lined baskets, and voila – handmade cheese. A more extensive workshop is available, but that one was quite fun, with everyone giving a shout of astonishment as the perfect little cheeses were revealed.WE WERE no longer hungry, and swore we’d never manage to eat the splendid lunch waiting for us at the boutique Amirey Hagalil Hotel, where Gili Altman runs a gourmet chef’s restaurant. Set in the middle of a forest, near Moshav Amirim, it’s a charming hotel and spa with an ambiance of rural peace and luxury. Somehow, we made the supreme sacrifice and ate the grilled fish wrapped in grape leaves, entrecote with roasted, herbed potatoes and mushrooms, uniquely seasoned and delicious humous and baba ganoush.Maybe the sight of the house bread, brown and round and temptingly fresh, woke our jaded appetites up again.The Upper Galilee is full of culinary surprises. In May there is the regional wine festival. Come fall, there are tours of the grape harvest, and in October or November, there is a regional olive festival. The Galilee has no need to invite the trend that maintains that terroir applies not only to wine, but to food as well. People living there have always known that.A tourist determined to eat his or her way across the Galilee can spend a day or a week indulging in wine tastings, cooking workshops, or meals with Jewish, Druse and Circassian families.Or he might choose to simply flake out at a gourmet spa hotel like Amirey Hagalil. With over 6,000 guest accommodations to choose from that range from family-run B&Bs to major hotels, there’s no reason to resist the lure of the gastronomic Galilee. And 44 percent of Israelis prove it, by choosing to vacation in the Galilee over other regions in Israel.Those who prefer an organized culinary tour can easily find one to their taste at www.galileat.com, Culinary Tours of the Galilee, which offers workshops and tours based on Arab, Druse and Christian cuisines (with one kosher tour); www.galileecuisine.co.il/Site/pages/homePage.asp for cultural encounters and cooking with locals; or via GoGalilee’s day tours of Druse and Circassian villages, which always include meals and tastings of ethnic dishes, at: www.gogalilee.org/ daytour.asp?p=10388.For more information, visit the tourism association on the northern Galilee’s site: www.galiland.co.il The writer was a guest of the Foreign Ministry’s tourism department in conjunction with the Land of the Galilee tourism association.
