A boutique winery is a small winery that produces less than 100,000 bottles a year. The origin of the name is in the term ’boutique’, which means a small store that specializes in marketing to a small number of customers. Some wineries produce only a few hundred wine bottles a year and consider themselves as mini-boutique wineries. Others produce some 200,000 bottles of wine a year but still use this term. Most wineries use the name boutique to accent the personal touch that they give to each bottle.
Many wine lovers turn their hobby into a profession and start producing wine for self-consumption, and for marketing to outside clientele. In order to justify the existence of the winery, a higher quality is required, therefore, many of the boutique wines produced are considered to be of a higher quality. Most of the time they are non-kosher, therefore they are sold in the winery itself and in stores that specializes in wine sales. Boutique wineries have existed in Israel since the 1950s. Up to the 1990s, there were only four of them, but in the past ten years, their number has increased to over a hundred.
In the past several years, there has been a significant increase of about 10% in the profits from selling wine in Israel. A major part of this increase can be accounted for by the boutique wineries that provide the Israeli wine market with a significant advantage. The improvement of the quality of life in Israel, the exposure to other cultures, and the influence of the global consumer culture have accelerated processes of adjusting to the Western culture in many areas in Israel, including the wine culture. The number of wine lovers has increased and there is a growing demand to increase the type of wine varieties. The wines in the boutique wineries are considered of a higher quality since the boutique wineries produce wines almost solely from the best varietals and try to insert new varietals in different areas of the country. That is in order to create a difference between them and their competitors, to increase the wine variety, as well as to increase the sales. Interestingly, due to that, the boutique wineries are the experimental farms of new varietals and different blends.
The boutique wineries appeal to a clientele that is looking for quality wines and is willing to pay for it. Considering that the market of boutique wineries has massively increased in the past two years, it is estimated that their numbers will keep increasing due to the demands of the Israeli consumer of boutique wines. Other than their prime purpose of making wine, the boutique wineries also serve as sites for tourism, and for teaching and spreading the wine culture.
