Einat Klein. The best guide to Ethiopia and beyond!

Einat Klein is a historian, a tour guide in African and Middle Eastern countries and a photographer. She is also the Vino&Co project manager and a winemaker. Einat is a deep and versatile personality, a great professional in her field. She says that she fancies herself as a kind of puzzle where all the pieces are put together in a single harmonious picture.

“Some of them are added, some of them are replaced with the new ones. However all my professional skills, facets – are different parts of a whole. Of course travelling and wine take the biggest part of this picture”.

Einat Klein was born in Kyiv and having finished secondary school she went to study at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, majoring in journalism. When she graduated from university she moved to Israel. Having returned to the ancestral land Einat (her name means “a water spring in a desert”) got a degree in history at Bar-Ilan University of Israel.

Then there was a lot of travelling, roads and experience. Einat has been to almost every part of the world and as a result she is the best guide to Ethiopia as of now. Einat herself says that Ethiopia appeared in her life in an absolutely natural way. “Nobody, you know, sits with a world map looking for some exotic route to take his tourist to”.

It was by chance that Einat went to Ethiopia for the first time. However, as it was mentioned earlier, that event had been preceded by years of travelling. She is now the only (!) Russian speaking guide to Ethiopia and along with beautiful scenery tours she can organize various extreme travels, such as trekking and rock climbing, and give lectures on the history of this most mountainous country of the African continent. As we can see, there are formats to suit every taste.

Einat Klein is professionally engaged in photography. She works with such well-known magazines as “My planet”, “National Geographic” and some others.

For years Einat Klein has worked with Israeli wineries and arranged wine tastings. She is a creator and a committed mastermind of the Vino&Co project and arranges tastings right at her home, in Israel. These tastings gather a lot of people. Einat delivers lectures and her guests are acquainted with the best Israeli wines. She has become, as it were, a kind of popular promoter of Israeli wines right among Israeli people. For that, of course, she has received a professional education: she has passed several levels of WSET, taken up sommelier as well as taster courses and picked up appropriate skills and knowledge from winemakers directly at their production sites. “I believe I am now right at the beginning of this long road which is as long as my life itself”, – says Einat Klein.

The pandemic hasn’t put out the fire of inspiration in Einat, it just changed the format of the “club of the single-minded”, which went from offline to online. At present, however, Einat Klein is returning back to offline, but this time it will be on a higher quality level. She is still going to carry out tastings of Israeli wines at her home and also in the field, at Israeli wineries, and to cover Israeli wine events: she is convinced that Israel is highly competitive on the world market. At the nearest future Einat is planning to go international and come to Europe – in the same way as that small water spring that can develop into a big river and take with it all other streams.

In the midsummer of 2021, at the building of the Museum of the Jewish People (ANU), which is located on the Tel Aviv University campus, a tasting presentation took place: “3 CATS” – Einat Klein wines. That was an exclusive event as there had been only 1000 bottles produced. Each bottle has its number and is collectible. Einat Klein was responsible for the content while the label was made by Andrei Makarevitch, a famous rock musician, who is also known to be an artist.

“3 CATS” wine is a blend of three grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. It was harvested in 2018 and aged in French oak barrels. The name was born thanks to Einat`s three pets and Andrei Makarevitch increased its brand awareness with his signature cats.

The vineyard, where the grapes were picked, belongs to the Beit El winery. Vines are located at 850 – 910 metres above the sea level, in Samaria, and it is one of the best vineyards in the country due to its geography and terroir. For many years Einat have absorbed theoretical knowledge from Beit El winemakers and learned in the field how to put all the subtleties of wine making into practice.

Last summer Einat worked on her next brand, so the year 2022 will see a new wine from Einat Klein. “I want to tell the Israeli people and the whole world that Israel is not just archeology and religion, it is also very decent wines, – she says. – And in this regard we can`t help but agree with Robert Parker saying that Israeli wines are getting better and better and some of them are just excellent”.