Daniel Rogov, Israel's leading food and wine critic and veteran writer for Haaretz, passed away on Wednesday.

Rogov, who wrote under a pseudonym, was born in the U.S.A with the name David Joroff. He finished his high school studies at the age of 15 and flew to Paris, where he began his journalistic career by writing articles about food and wine for American magazines and newspapers. He later widened his repertoire and wrote for publications in France and Switzerland, and appeared on television programs as an expert in the subject.

Open gallery view Daniel Rogov.

He moved to Israel in 1978 and began writing for the Jerusalem Post, quickly establishing himself as the leading wine expert in Israel. He started writing for Haaretz in 1984. Rogov was the author of "The Rogov Guide to Israeli Wine, an annual study of the year's best vintner selections.

Rogov announced he was leaving Haaretz on Sunday, just three days before his death, due to his deteriorating health. A month earlier, on August 29, top members of the wine industry organized an evening in his honor at the Dan Panorama hotel in Tel Aviv.

Rogov contributed to Johnson's Pocket Wine Book, and the Tom Stevenson wine report, and managed the Wine Lovers Page website. Rogov prepared a goodbye message for members of the websites forum.

When it comes to food and wine... I wrote about them throughout the years out of a sense of love and devotion, both emotional and intellectual," he wrote in the message. As I hope I showed, food and wine for me are not just things that go into our bodies. They are a reflection of our anthropology, our history, our psychology, out social needs, and of course, enjoyment.

Like all critics who take themselves seriously, I greatly enjoyed sharing my thoughts, and in a certain sense I consider myself as the Umberto Eco of wine and culinary criticism, my writing reflects both and accurate and post-modern, that leaves the intelligent reader to come to his own conclusions. At the end of the day, this was a good life.

