French restaurant in TriBeCa serves Israeli wines

[Pan]

I wasn't sure where the most appropriate place would be to post about an article about the pairing of Israeli wines and French food, but on reflection, decided it would be of most interest in this forum. Capsouto Freres, a French restaurant in TriBeCa, in downtown Manhattan, has 13 Israeli wines on its list out of a total of 130 wines, and Jacques Capsouto, one of the three eponymous brothers of the restaurant, loves them. The following article is on Haaretz.com:

Carmel - selected in Tribeca

And here are some excerpts for you to chew on:

[...]To prove to the doubters that Israeli wine goes with French food, he suggests tasting what the restaurant has to offer. We open with a terrine of dried tomatoes, red and green pepper, eggplant, smoked mozzarella, goat's cheese and balsamic vinegar. He offers it with a 2002 Yarden Chardonnay.[...]The wine is also suitable for sole in meuniere sauce and almonds.[...]

For dessert, Capsouto suggests a walnut souffle with creme anglaise. Again he recommends combining this with an Israeli wine, this time Yarden Muscat.[...]

Capsouto says that his cuisine, although classic, uses light sauces.

Have any of you tried Israeli wines with French food? If so, how did you find the result? And do you agree with Capsouto that "wine lovers[...]will come to admire wines from Israel, as they now do wines from Chile, Argentina and Australia"?

[ademello]

Having spent a few days in Israel earlier this month following Daniel Rogov's advice on where to drink and dine, I have to say that I was incredibly impressed with the quality and variety of Israeli wines. Even more impressive was the pride and enthusiasm exhibited by local sommeliers when talking up the local wines. While there is still a fair amount of plonk being producer (Carmel Wines being the largest culprit), many of the fine wines do an incredible job of emulating French styles (Bordeaux and Rhone primarily) while preserving the terrioir that makes in unmistakeably Israeli. Despite its current lack of favor, they are doing some incredible things with Merlot (spicy!) that breathe new life into the varietal.

Tasting a good Israeli wine gave me for the first time in a long time that "Wow! This is new and interesting" vibe which is all too uncommon these days. As for value, from my limited experience you still need to be in the $20-$40 USD bracket for a good Israeli wine.