Vineyard: Psagot Winery
Wine: Prat A Port style wine. Winner of the Gold Medal in the 2006 EshkolHazahav Competition.
Winner of the Gold Medal in the 2006 Teravino Competition.
Type: Dessert Red


About Port Wine
Very often we think of red wines as dry, full bodied, with a lot of tannin and acidity. We leave the sweet wines to the whites. You know, the Moscatos, Late Harvest wines and so on and so forth. For those who are more adventurous, there is something called "Port" wine. This is a dessert red wine that, in order to posses this name requires specific grape blends, aging rules, and location. Port, as you may have figured out (or not) from the name, needs to be from Portugal. These wines are higher than normal wines in both alcohol and sugar. Legal issues aside, there are many other dessert red wines out there that try to pass themselves off as Port wines while not paying nearly enough attention to the style and quality that they pretend to imitate. Frankly, I find it insulting. There are a few, however, that do a surprisingly fine job.


Psagot Prat
Psagot, a boutique winery, is one of the few who do a fine job. The back of the label reads as follows:

"A fortified wine in Port style that is produced from a unique blend of a number of high-quality grapes. Following in the Port tradition of wine production, the fermentation process is arrested by adding alcohol thereby also preserving the grape’s natural sweetness. The wine is aged for 16 months in oak wood barrels which are placed in the Mediterranean sun. This process adds aromas and interesting flavors to the wine. The wine is characterized by its rich sweetness and subtle velvety mouth feel in which chocolate, coffee, fruits and spices dominate the senses."

Now we must keep a few things in mind. They are not bound by the laws of Port. The name, "Prat", aside from the obvious play on words, is actually derived from a nearby, ancient, water source. I give them credit for not pretending they are a port wine and try to sell themselves as such. What they have done is taken their own blend of grapes from barrels aged for as long as they saw fit, added what they needed to, and made a real good dessert red wine.

Upon first opening the wine, you get an immense aroma of bitter-sweet chocolate with intense deep cherry. I like this. When I taste it, I find the wine to be very smooth for the alcohol content, 20%. That’s right, 20%. That means no driving for the night. This is a much sought after quality in a high alcohol wine and one of the true indicators that it was done right. It also has a surprising amount of tannins, which indicate a further potential for improvement with time. On the finish, the fruit really comes out and is accompanied by a delightful smoothness that coats the throat. Just goes to show you. You don't have to copy to be better than originals. You just have to be better than the originals.


Size: 750 ml
Price per bottle: nis 129
Case: 12 bottles.
Available at Kidashta, 71 Leshem, Kaiser, Modiin. 08-9714968
Hours: Sunday - Friday 9:00 - 1:30.
Sunday. Monday, Wednesday open 4:00 - 7:30. Tuesday Thursday till 8:30