The "Martin Sinkoff Wine Interview" with Roni Saslove

Roni Saslove is a special person, blessed with brains and beauty. She is an enchantress in a trade without much enchantment, all in all, and a trade that takes itself very seriously. Roni knows how to laugh and how to change. She has done it all. She had made wine, sold wine, marketed wine and now she is developing herbal remedies with the same passion and with the knowledge of how to smell, how to taste and how to breathe. 

Roni, where did you grow up? 

Tel Aviv, it's my home, but I have lived all over, San Francisco, New York, the Golan Heights and elsewhere. 

Where did you go to school and what did you study? 

My first degree was in Animal Science at the Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot, I planned to be a veterinarian. Then, I worked for three years in clinics and the dream and reality were too far apart.

Ten years later, I went to Brock University, Ontario, Canada to study Enology and Viticulture. Ten years later, I went to Broshim to study Clinical Herbalism and Reflexology which I now teach. In Hebrew: קמפוס ברושים לרפואה משלימה ). . 

Did you move to Israel to study? What is the connection between Canada and Israel and your family? 

My father, Barry, is Canadian and I was born there. We moved to Israel when I was just a few months old. I went back to Canada to study winemaking and look for my roots (no pun intended). 

When did you become interested in wine? 

When I was 2 years old! I always loved wine. When I was 14 years old my father became interested in wine, bought 100 kg of grapes, and my sisters and I stomped them with our feet. I was fascinated by the whole process. Since the age of 14, every year, I worked during the harvest and at my father's winery until deciding to join full time in 2002.

You have done nearly everything that can be done in the wine trade from making wine, writing about wine, marketing wine and lecturing about wine. Is there one part of the trade you prefer to others? 

All parts of the wine trade fascinate me and have meaning for me. Each stage has suited one or more parts of my life. 

Your website is impressive and beautiful. Which of the programs attracts the most interest? 

My two main activities at this time are private wine tastings, custom planned for a specific event like the birthday of a wine lover or a fun get together for companies of all kinds, and my courses and lectures which I conduct for serious wine amateurs and collectors. 

Tell us about "mindful wine tasting" please. 

In my Bachelors degree in science, I was most fascinated by neurobiology and behavior. I learned of the pathways by which our senses receive and transport information to our memory, how it is analyzed and translated. It is fascinating. Later on in life I went to a Vipassana meditation retreat. After 10 days of silent meditation, focusing on the physical sensation our mind creates from thoughts, I had a personal and better understanding of these pathways: experiencing an event where our senses pick up information (its enough to think about one, it doesn't actually have to be present) - the search in our memory for a similar event and their outcome (enjoyable or not, safe or not)…what happened to me after I smelled/tasted/heard/felt something similar and its translation to a physical reaction (smiling from smelling cloves that remind me of my grandmother's cake or aversion from smelling cloves which remind me of the dentist). 

It's all about the translation, and the translation depends on the personal history. You will like or dislike a wine due to nostalgic reasons. And that's what I'm interested in, why? Why do you like this wine and not the other? I love the fact that a glass of wine is a stroll down memory lane, if you continue your neurological journey to the left hemisphere which is also responsible for naming things. Most of us can say "the wine has some smell (if it's above our threshold), most of us can say "it smells nice" but only those who practice these connections (a mindful practice) can say "it smells like fresh butter on toast". 

The wine tells a story, a story of what grapes it's made of, where they grew, when they were picked, how wine was made from them and even how old it is. I love teaching how to read this story, it's easier than it seems at first and it's lots of fun. And all of a sudden, a bottle of wine becomes a story, which raises personal memories and creates such a deep and beautiful experience. The fact that wine has one component, grapes is mind-blowing when you think about it, it's so simple and so very complex. Beauty is only apparent when recognized, I like to shine light on that beauty.

The nice thing is that we don't need any knowledge or experience to say whether we enjoy a glass of wine or not, our senses are doing it for us in a second. I like to understand what happened along the way to come to that conclusion. Once we know ourselves better, ordering wine to our liking in a restaurant or describing what we are looking for in a wine shop becomes easier.

This is my short answer, ha-ha.

And tell us about your new interest and work with herbal medicine. Do you feel it was a natural outgrowth from your work with wine? 

Do you still work with animals in some way?  

Full time, I have three cats and two dogs. But that's as far as it goes.  

Which wine did you select to taste with me? 

*Terroir, (French from terre, 'lands') is a French term used to describe the environmental factors that affect a crop's phenotype, including unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop's specific growth.