Noa Argamani gets bittersweet taste of wine named after her
Wine on the Vine project works with hostages’ families to spread awareness of their plight
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
A few weeks after her rescue from Gaza by special forces, former hostage Noa Argamani and her friends opened a bottle of Jezreel Valley wine, specifically one of a line of wines labeled with her photo as part of a hostage awareness project.
“Her father had said he would save it until she came home, and there she was on Shavuot, drinking it with her friends before my eyes,” said Adam Bellos, CEO of Israel Innovation Fund, which created Wine on the Vine, and launched its Wines of Hope project back in March. “It was surreal to see it.”
Argamani was rescued on June 8 along with three other hostages, several weeks before the death of her terminally ill mother, Liora Argamani. In that time, she has had several moments of celebration surrounding her rescue, said Bellos.
Argamani asked to dedicate a wine for her boyfriend, hostage Avinatan Or, still held captive in Gaza, added Bellos.
“Families use it to spread awareness of their plight,” he said. “I tell families that we don’t understand what they’re going through, we can empathize but can’t understand. But if one new person learns the story of any hostage, then we did our job.”
Bello’s Wine on the Vine organization has created 22 bottles of wine available for purchase labeled and named for particular hostages, but only two have made it home so far — Argamani and Almog Meir Jan, both as a result of the same rescue mission on June 8.
Bellos immediately updated both wines with a “Rescued” stamp, At the same time, other bottles named for hostages who have since been found to have died have had to be relabeled as memorial bottles.
“The families don’t object to that either,” said Bellos, “because it’s a way to keep their memories alive.”
Wine on the Vine is the headline project of The Israel Innovation Fund, a nonprofit foundation that aims to bring the best of contemporary Israeli culture to the rest of the globe.
Bellos started the project in March, as negotiations for a new hostage release deal — still not reached even now — dragged on, and hostages’ families needed some sliver of hope, he said.
The plan was to first work with two wineries, Jezreel Valley in the north and Ramat Hanegev in the south, focusing on the two areas that have been hardest hit in the ongoing war.
The families who were interested in participating offered a photo of their loved ones and a brief description of them, including what happened to them on October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel’s south, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 251 to Gaza.
“More families keep joining,” said Bellos.
When Wine on the Vine’s Samantha Sharon first suggested the project, after seeing another wine project that named bottles for soldiers who’d fallen in battle, Bellos said he had to think about it, given how little he’d dealt in promoting Israeli wines since the start of the war.
But they went forward with the initiative, calling it Wines of Hope to honor families’ abiding devotion to seeing their loved ones return after long months of captivity.
The wines are sold online, with one-third of all proceeds from sales of going to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to help in efforts to bring the hostages home.
“Families have allowed us to adapt and we’ve involved them every step of the process,” said Bellos. “It’s as much their project as it is ours; I wouldn’t do it if we didn’t have them involved.”
Bellos has plans to plant an entirely new vineyard in the south in honor of the hostages and produce wines in their names when the grapes are finally ready, with all proceeds going to the hostage families.
“That will take some time,” said Bellos, who is also thinking of new, additional bottles for Argamani and Meir Jan that would cost NIS 250, for the number of days they spent in captivity in Gaza.
“I find it really rewarding that we’re building something that will help these people,” he said.
