How a Boutique Winery Emerged From the Pandemic Better Than Ever
A shift to online forged closer ties to buyers, helping an Israeli vineyard “elevate your quality of life” with—what else?—wine.
Wurtman (second from right) with Bat Shlomo’s management team.
Courtesy: Bat Shlomo Vineyards
At first, wine shops stopped placing orders. Then hotels and restaurants began calling Bat Shlomo Vineyards to take its bottles back. With Israel heading into lockdown in March 2020, no one knew when things might open up again, and they didn’t want to be stuck with an ocean of wine they couldn’t sell.
For Bat Shlomo’s owner, Elie Wurtman, the timing could hardly have been worse: just four weeks before Passover, which—along with the autumn high holidays—is the biggest period for wine sales in Israel. About two-thirds of the winery’s $1 million annual revenue came from the country’s hotels, restaurants, and wine shops, and Bat Shlomo’s sales plummeted 75% last April as those businesses shut their doors. “The world came crumbling down pretty quickly,” says Wurtman, a venture capital investor who in 2010 co-founded the winery in Bat Shlomo, a bucolic hillside town an hour’s drive north of Tel Aviv.