If your significant other is a wine person, or a tree-hugging hippie, or both, and you’re looking for a Valentine’s Day gesture that your special someone won’t see coming-have you considered having a grapevine planted in their honor? Neither had I! But it’s a sweet idea, no? Grapevines are flexible and resilient, they live very long lives, and they bear luscious, sexy, very fermentable fruit-it’s not a bad move as symbolic gestures go.
Wine on the Vine will help you out by planting a grapevine in your choice of several vineyards in Israel. For under $20 you can dedicate an honorary vine to your person (or hey, yourself) and have it planted for you-a portion of your moolah will be donated to charitable causes (schools, social justice organizations) and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you contributed a little more oxygen to the atmosphere and a little more grape juice to an industrious winery. They’ll send you a nifty certificate you can present to your loved one so you can bask in the glow of your own beneficence. Yay!
Wine has been made in Israel since… well, Old Testament times, with much of the modern wine scene owing a debt to Baron Rothschild of the Lafite wine dynasty. Varietals being produced there include Cabernet Sauvignon, Muscat, Chardonnay, Merlot, Rieslng and Syrah among others, and the region is an experimental one that has seen rapid growth in the last 20 years or so. The combination of ancient roots and recent growth makes it an exciting place to make a micro-investment, and c’mon, it’s kind of romantic to think that when you’re a wrinkly old curmudgeon and possibly long after that, somewhere far away you will be making a solid contribution to helping people get schnockered. Right?