Ari Tannenbaum: Crafting Kosher Wines with Passion and Tradition at Tabernacle Winery

Welcome to The Kosher Teruah. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, I ask that wherever you are, please take a moment and pray for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all of our hostages. Tabernacle Winery, located in Moshev Tzuriel in Israel's Upper Galilee, is a boutique family-owned winery founded in 2017. The following is a conversation with Ari Tannenbaum, the head winemaker at the helm of Tabernacle's winemaking process. Ari grew up in New York and moved to Israel to pursue his passion for wine. Studying under renowned Israeli winemakers before returning to the US to complete his master's degree in enology and viticulture from Cornell University. His winemaking philosophy emphasizes minimal intervention, allowing the grapes to express their natural qualities, resulting in nuanced and refined wines. If you're in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you are sitting comfortably at home, please select a delicious bottle of kosher wine, sit back, relax, and enjoy this passionate conversation about winemaking and the process of making Aliyah. I would like to also wish each and every one of you around the globe a Shana Tova Umtuka, a very, very happy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year. Ari, pleasure. Thank you very much coming to the Kosher Terroir studio. It's a pleasure.

Thank you for having me, and I'm excited to talk about wine.

Me too.

And to be here. Thank you.

Me too. You brought a couple of bottles of wine, so we're going to get to those in a few minutes. So I'm looking forward to that as well. So thank you. Thank you. Toda. Toda. You're at Tabernacle Winery. So Tabernacle is located in Moshe Avitzorel, Correct. So do you live there? Do you live in Moshe Avsorel or do you live nearby?

I live in Safsoufa.

Oh, cool.

It's around a half hour drive.

It's a beautiful area. I was in Safsoufa the other day. So it's kind of cool.

Yeah, it's kind of the heart of the wine growing region in the Galil, that area. Kibbutz Sivon, Dalton, Safsoufa. And I have a lot of experience with this area and the wine growing region, and I've been there— this, this year is my 10th harvest.

Wow. Wow. So you're from the US originally?

Yes, from Five Towns, from Cedarhurst.

Okay, from Cedarhurst. So being a Jewish guy now living in Israel, working as a winemaker, it's kind of like the The Jewish Dream. Tell me a little bit about it. How did you get to this point? What got you to Israel and what got you into this?

Sure, yes. I will share my story. I came to Israel to learn in yeshiva, and one Shabbos, a winemaker came to the meal, and he invited me to come to his winery afterwards. He had a little cave an ir David, um, right in the Old City. And I helped him crush the grapes, and we went through the process, and I saw him make the yeast, and I just fell in love with this process. And at the time, connecting to my spirituality, and, you know, wine has such a big part and connection with our holidays and Shabbos and everything we do. So I just was so inspired and fell in love with the land at the time and wine. And that's where my passion, um, started when I said, hey, there's something here, I really love this, I would like to explore it a little bit further.

Who was the winemaker? Do you remember his name?

Yeah, Chaim Sakten.

Okay.

Yeah, he has a winery called Gilad Winery. And yeah, he— friends of friends, and he invited me And yeah, I always tell him that he's the reason why I got into the wine industry.

That was the beginnings? Then how did you develop from there?

So I went back to the States. I went back and forth from Israel to the States, and then I decided I wanted to be here. I wanted to devote my time here. So I looked for wineries to work in. Professionally. And I got to Luria Winery in 2014, and I did 4 harvests with them. And I really started from the ground up. I packaged wine, you know, built mish-tachem. I started from the bottom, and eventually I learned about vineyards. Uh, Luria has around 300 dunam that they manage, so I learned how to grow vines really from the ground up. And on a practical level, fix tractors. And eventually I was the manager of the winery, not the winemaker, but the right-hand man of Gidi Sayad, who is the winemaker. They make phenomenal wines.

Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, that's why also, um, at the same time, uh, Itay Lahat was— is also unbelievable. He's a really special person.

It's a good segue, actually. I met Itai during my time at Luria, and I asked him, what's the next step I can take to, you know, better my knowledge, expand my boundaries? So he said, you should go to school for wine. So I did.

So where did you go?

I went to Cornell University for winemaking. So I have a master's degree in food science specializing in wine yeast microbiology. Uh, basically the effects of flavor and aroma that yeast can impart on wine, amongst other things. All types of alcohol and food sanitation, chemistry. So it was an amazing experience for me. It really broadened my knowledge. You know, it's one thing to know how to make wine, it's another thing to understand what's happening. So it was an amazing experience for me.

Do you know Donnie?

I do, we're friends.

Wow.

Because Donnie has helped, helped me a lot throughout the years, right? Yeah, I think we're the two, right, in Israel.

How did you get connected to Avi Feldstein? Feldstein, or did you?

I did, yeah. Me and Avi, I could say, were friends, and I got connected to him because I was working in that region, in the Upper Galilee region, and I ended up making some of his wines when he was transitioning. We're talking, you know, in 2016, something like that. So I got to know him, you know, got to know him personally, professionally, made some of his wines, his rosés, his whites. So I'm learning from everybody.

Learning from great people.

Yes, really, they're great.

You know, I was going to ask you, how in the world did you end up Like, Moshev Tsuriel is just a little bit north of Carmiel, I think. Yeah. And like, so what's there? And then I started looking into it and it's like, Dalton, Luria, all of these incredible wineries are all surrounding you.

So Tsuriel is a little bit more western Galil. It's around a half hour drive, but yes, correct. That's the region where a lot of our amazing northern wineries are located in the Azor Tasiya of Dalton.

Azor Tasiya, cool. Where are the source vineyards for you?

For Tabernacle Winery?

Yeah.

We have planted around 150 dunam in the Golan Heights. So that's near Sommet Amir, S'kher, Sha'al, It's beautiful there. It really is. And it's an amazing wine-growing region, and the fruit that's coming from there is phenomenal.

So what have you learned up there? What have you, you know, what have you picked up as you've been going along?

You know, this year especially, you know, we're all wartime winemakers.

Yeah, you're right in the midst of everything, being smack dab in the middle of the north.

So yeah, to answer your question, I've learned tremendously. I always plan to learn from everybody around me. Like, we've been talking about these phenomenal winemakers of the north, and, you know, I don't take it for granted, and I try to learn from everybody. Winemaking is very versatile, and I think it's important to go with the character of the raw material, which is grapes, right? So if you have Thick-skinned Cabernet, then maybe you should do— maybe the winemaking process should be to extract a lot of flavor and tannin because you can, because that is the character of the grape, which can be translated to the character of the wine. And lighter grape varieties like Grenache or even Syrah— Syrah, you could go big with it, you can make it a bigger wine, or you could keep it, you know, a little bit more smooth and lighter and easier, an easier wine. So I think that this idea of really getting to know the vineyard and understanding what direction the grapes are going in and to coddle it to reach its potential.

So tell me a little bit about your wines. Which wines, you know, let's talk about Tabernacle first. Yeah, because I know you have your own brand as well. So tell me a little bit about Tabernacle.

So the winery was established in 2017.

Yep.

I got on as winemaker in 2020. Yeah, there we go.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, speaking about the north, wow, it's been getting hammered for the last couple of days.

Yeah, there's been some action.

Yep. Like, oh, it's just— okay, sorry.

No, I, I live that. Yeah, you know, they say when rockets fall on a Shatach Patuach, that's the vineyards. That's where we are, right, as wine growers, as winemakers. So yeah, it's tough. I don't know. I don't know what I can say about it that's positive.

Just trying to make it work. Just trying to make it work. You're single?

I am.

Okay, cool. I just, I almost, I don't know why I assumed you were married, but because it's pretty far up north. So that's dedication.

Definitely.

Okay.

Dedicated to the land.

That's dedication. All right. Um, talk to me a little bit about Tabernacle Wines.

Sure. So Tabernacle was established in 2017. We planted our first vineyards in 2019. That's when I got on, around 19, 20, 2020, I became the winemaker. And now we are producing wines from the vineyards we planted. Now it's important to mention also that the winery was created this idea of tabernacle, to honor and do the mitzvot taluy ba'aretz, which are begedol, shmitah, and meiser, sticking meiser. So, the owners, ownership has dedicated this winery to doing the mitzvot of the land, and that was the original passion, project, vision. And to make amazing wine also, to make premium Israeli wine. That's where I come in and the team comes in. So we have 150 dunam in the Golan Heights and we produce around 6 different reds and we have a rosé, we have a white, and, you know, just taking all the skills that I've learned along the way and trying to make an amazing product, make an amazing wine from amazing fruit from this land. And the fruit is spectacular, you know, granted you take care of the vine, but the region is really, I would say, up there and holds, holds a candle to other regions in the world. I mean, we have what to offer here.

Yeah.

So for me, it's special living up there and to make wine from this amazing fruit.

Talk to me a little bit about the harvest. You're right in the— we're We're actually in the midst of the harvest, or you might have actually brought in all of the fruit already. I don't know if you have or haven't.

So we're, we're a little colder in that region, so in about a week, a week or two, all the grapes should be in.

Okay.

And we're kind of like the last in the country because we're so high, micro cool climate, right? But because of that elevation, yeah.

So tell me a little bit about what's the process, what How do you harvest and how do you make wine?

Sure, yeah, definitely. I love to also go bring myself down to explain this in a practical way, because sometimes people get scared or worried that they don't know something, or they feel like they're not tasting it right, or many things, right? So I like to bring it down to earth. Grapes grow on a vineyard, on a vine. You— we do hand harvesting, so we'll have 80 workers, let's say, in a, you know, 10, 20 dunam lot, something like that. Hand harvested, go into bins, bins get put on a truck, gets trucked over to the winery, right? We receive the grapes, we weigh them, we find out our yields of which sections, um, then we Take the grapes, it goes through a destemming machine, then the grapes get crushed and a pump takes it to the tank. This is for red wine, we're talking red wine right now.

This is stainless steel tanks?

Right, a stainless steel tank with a cooling jacket, a glycol system which allows you to control the temperature of the tank.

Why would you need to do that?

So temperature is an important, tool in winemaking. Temperature can extract color and tannin, um, flavors.

Warm or cool?

Well, that's the question. Okay, right. Well, what type of wine do you want? Okay, do you want— we talked about different wine styles, right? So Cabernet, thick skins, big tannin. If I want to make a big, bigger wine I'll probably ferment it a little bit hotter. Typically, let's say, run of the, the scent, the average fermentation temperature I would say is 25.

Yep.

Right. And then you could go— once you get above 26, 27, you start to get a different wine. You start to get more black fruits, more weight, um, more a fuller flavor in your mouth and your palate. Um, yeah, it's important also not to go too hot, right? It's also important not to go too cold, right? So if you're going to ferment colder, let's say, then you'll get a more aromatic wine, I think, um, from my experience. Um, so the body will be less beefy, but you'll save a lot of the wonderful aromas that, depending on which grape variety you're working with, will stay in the bottle, will stay inside the wine. Right.

Very, very interesting. Very cool. So you, you take it through that process.

Yeah, the ferment— just to add also, a little, just some things I've learned to share. So when you're fermenting, really it's about tannin regulation. You're trying to regulate the tannins because when you're fermenting the must, the juice on the grapes and the peels, so you're also mixing it and it's getting hotter, right? So these two factors can be a way where you can extract more color, more flavor, more more tannin into the wine, right? So you have to be careful that you don't extract too much, that the wine doesn't get overly— that it doesn't have an overly mouth-drying sensation, right?

And it's a good description of it, tannin, right?

Yeah, because tannin could just wipe out all the saliva from your mouth and you're left with a dry, dry space. So I love wines that are juicy and enjoyable. And full and fun. And I think not everybody— 90% of the market is not an expert, and they just want to drink something that's nice.

It's delicious.

That's delicious. They don't have to explain it. It has this and that, you know. For the wine lovers, there's plenty there to dissect and to talk about and to have a fun time there through conversation. But 90% of the market just wants something that they are going to drink and say, hey, this is good. I don't know why, but it's great, great wine.

So when you— so let me ask you a question. So the goal is to make the wines approachable from the beginning?

Yes.

Okay. I mean, do they have an aging quality to them?

Sure, yes. Um, so for Tabernacle, we have the reserve line, which is a Syrah, a Cabernet, And then it's the Levite, which is a blend typically of Syrah, Merlot, maybe Cabernet, depending on what I choose.

Okay.

But, and then, so that's the Reserve. I skipped— do we have an entry-level bottle called the Pamón? Okay, which is a more lighter, easier wine, not as heavy. What varietal of the Pamón?

Yeah.

It also switches from year to year. Yeah, now that we have vineyards, so I'm working more to understand the vineyard and then to create consistency over time. But the truth is, right now I use the tools at hand to make the best wine possible, you know. And if Malbec was a big component of the Paimón, but this year I don't have that component, so I'll do whatever is best for the wine. That's kind of my vision. Maybe other people don't like that, but to me that makes the most sense. I just want to make the best wine with the tools that I have. So the percentages of varietal characteristic of the wine will change from year to year until I find something that's satisfying, and we'll stick with that.

In setting down the vineyard, because you've been there since the beginning, since they planted the vineyards and what have you, is it figuring out the lots as well? Figuring out what each of the parts of the vineyard produce and how to keep those elements separate to be able to blend them the way you want to blend them? Or—

Yeah, interesting question. You know, the vineyard, depending on the weather of the year, can also change the vineyard.

Totally.

Depending on how you're training your vineyard, is it open canopy? Is it VSP, the vertical shoot positioning of the leaves?

Right.

So it really depends on a lot of factors. I don't know if I can answer that. Question, but the idea is to learn the vineyard, to grow grapes on the vineyard. Basically, what— there's this old, uh, fight between, uh, yield, right? And look, high yield and low yield, right? If you have low yield, then you're going to get a better wine. That's what the common thought or knowledge in the industry, um, But really, it's not true. You can get, let's say, 1,200 kilo per dunam as opposed to 700 kilo, right? And those two yields could be the same quality.

Yep.

You know, yes, I think that lower yields create bigger wines just because The fact is, is there's more skin to liquid ratio.

Right.

Right? Just a lower yield, so the grape is more complex, more concentrated. But you can get the same concentration and complexity with 1,200 kilo.

Right.

On a dunam. That's what I've, I'm just sharing what I'm seeing.

No, that's really a great perception because, As an example, a lot of people are complaining this year that the yields are down.

Right.

Okay? So that the yields, at least in Israel, we are not talking about the world, we are talking about Israel.

Right. All over Israel.

Okay. All over Israel, the yields are down. But though the yields are down, people are saying, well, the yields are down, but the complexity, we are not sure yet, but the complexity might be up with the wines, so that the wines that we are producing might actually be really amazing this year. We'll see. We don't really know yet.

They probably will be amazing, actually, because of the lower yields, right? I mean, I've talked to grape wine grape farmers, and they're really excited about the, the product, right, the fruit. But on the other hand, you have half— 30% less fruit, right? You know, so You want to make wine, so that's— it's kind of— there's a balance here. Vineyard wine is all about balance. Balance in the— starts balance in the vineyard, balance in the winery and the fermentation, balance, uh, when you're looking for characteristics in the glass, you know, balance of tannin, balance of color, balance of aroma, of weight, of intensity, of length. We could, uh, we could go on and on.

I know one of the things you mentioned in the tasting notes for the wines is, um, a process of rack and return, daily rack and return. What does that mean? I've never heard of it before, that's why.

Interesting. Yeah, so we talked about mixing the wine during the fermentation. So a rack and return is to take all of the juice out of the tank, out of the stainless steel tank, to another tank. So that means you separated during fermentation. So you separate the juice from the peels, and then you return it. That's a rack. And then you return it, you return it on top of all the peels. So it basically, instead of just mixing it in a closed circuit, you take out all of the wine and then you reintroduce it to the top.

And you do that on a daily basis?

No, it's not a daily basis. I try to do it 2 or 3 times in the period of the fermentation lot.

Okay.

Um, it's all about tannin regulation. And if you feel like a wine is not getting enough color or getting— not getting enough tannin or structure So then you can do a rack and return, and it does it. It might improve it. I mean, it usually does, depending— granted that your grapes have great color, right? Right. You can't make amazing wine from mediocre, um, ingredients, right? You need good grapes, then you have a chance of making amazing wine.

The winery produces now Like between— around what? How many bottles?

120,000. 120,000? Yeah.

You've grown. It's great. Amazing.

I think when I got in, it was like 40,000.

And where— the wine is sold in America, in Israel? What's the—

Yeah, the wine is sold all over in the States, mainly in New York. East Coast.

Okay.

Um, there's a restaurant, Tabernacle Restaurant, right? We sell the wines there. That's nice. You know, it's a separate, um, entity. Yeah, but they have the name. We have the name. Um, they sell our wines there. Sell our wines in stores all over America. We sell here in Israel.

Let's talk about the wines. And let's— you brought, uh, you brought one of them to taste. What is this? I didn't even look at the label, so I'm sorry.

Should I tell you?

Yeah, yeah, tell me.

Okay, so this is what we're tasting here is the Tabernacle Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. It's a 2021 vintage and it's aged for 15 months in French oak. I don't go more than 30% new French oak. We have amazing barrels. We have the Marsannay, Rubis, uh We have amazing barrels. I mean, top of the line, what's on the market. 30% new oak, 70% neutral. Okay, and I'll give my, uh, I'll taste it and shoot, shoot some ideas out. So first I look at the color, right? I see it's, it's fresh, right? No browning.

Yeah, there's no browning. It's great.

2021 vintage, quite young, right? Nice color. It has depth. It's not super black, but it has ruby red, and it has depth to it, right? The nose is nice. It's not burny. It feels like there's cherries and maybe pomegranate. Maybe some tertiary. I feel some clove, some spice from the oak.

Amen.

All right, pretty full, not super heavy. But textured, it has some weight to it, you know. It would— it's not a super big wine, but it has depth to it. The acid is alive. This wine is young. It is juicy though on the finish. And actually, it's 14.9% alcohol. Strong. Right, we're hot. Yeah, right. So we're harvesting around 20, in around, at around 26 brix. 26. Um, this is a wine that you can drink, enjoy with food also, you know, with the steak, with some meat, with, um, I think it's a very nice, very nice wine for Israel. And I'm proud of it, and I would enjoy drinking a bottle of this. Yeah, I'm interested to hear what you say.

It's really nicely balanced. It's really, um, perfect across the palate. There's no holes. It's just— it's the— from the, uh, beginning, um, through the finish, it's just really, um, really nicely balanced. And it's got a a prolonged finish to it, which is also really special. I like it a lot.

A little sweet on the finish. Not like sweet sweet, but it's not—

I kind of like—

dry.

I kind of like wines that are a little sweet on the finish because it, it extends it, but it doesn't like, um, claw in the back of your palate, right?

You're not drinking a sweet—

yeah, no, this isn't sweet. It's— but it's got a sweetness to the finish, right, that, um, I kind of like in wines.

Yeah, I love that in wines, actually. That's what I try to do. It's got a juicy finish, and it could be because the grapes are a bit— were harvested a bit higher in sugar, so some of that sugar will stay over. Okay, it won't fully ferment out, so that's called residual sugar. So that can add a little bit of viscosity, right? Sugar is viscous, so it could add a little weight, add a little sweetness, and could make the wine that much more pleasant on the finish, as opposed to being like feeling the alcohol or it being burny. It's very surprised— surprisingly smooth for 14.9, for almost 15%.

Yeah, it's, it is, it's not as much as we said it's 14— you said it's 14.9%, you don't sense that, right?

Normally I aim for 14.5, 14, but here that's what it came out to. And for me, I think my vision is, is I'm trying to make great wine with the tools that I have, you know, not, not necessarily follow the rule book to the T.

Talk to me about the process after. So it's inside the— it's inside the vats. You— at the end of the fermentation, how do you know the fermentation's over? How do you know?

So I, I check it. So the grapes get crushed.

Yeah.

They get pumped into the tank. Then a day later, I check how much sugar is in the must. Yep. Right.

It's really nice.

It's nice. It's opening up a little bit. Feel the wood. I feel some green, some methoxypyrazine from the Cabernet. Feel, uh, flowery a little bit. Anyway, enjoy. So yes, the grapes go into the tank. And what's the question you asked me?

The question I asked is, what's the next step? Once they're in the tank, how do you know?

How do I know when it's dry?

When the fermentation's finished, right?

So I check it in the beginning. What I know, what sugar I start with, and then I get down to where you want it to be, where I want it to be on the mishkal schoolie, on the hydrometer. I follow it every day. I check it every day. I see that the yeasts are eating the sugar, the sugar is going down, and that's how you follow a fermentation to make sure that it's not becoming sluggish or it's not stopping, because you want a healthy fermentation. This is chemistry. Yeah, right. Yeast are a— they're a machine. They're, uh, uh, single-celled eukaryotes, uh, like us, right? And you sh— the fermentation should be strong and healthy, and I'm looking at around 3 weeks, about a month, to peel-skin contact on the liquid. So it could take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month that the skins are fermenting and being mixed back into their juice.

Okay.

Yeah, so basically I check it with the hydrometer until it's dry, and then when it's dry, I extract all of the wine that's wine already, and then the peels get extracted from the tank. We move it to the press and we press, we get an extra 10-15%. You know, press— pressing fractions are important for a winery because, you know, it's a business and you have— you spent all this time and energy everywhere making the grapes and making the wine. Now you want to extract some of that press fraction.

Does it impart more acid, the press fraction? Yeah.

The press fraction sometimes could be even more tasty, um, than a free-run fraction, in my opinion. Sometimes you could pick up more tannin, uh, you could oxidize the wine a little bit if you, you know, run the press— if you do too many sivuvaim, too many turns. So you got to kind of understand your equipment balance again. Yeah, your equip— yeah, and you gotta You know, I've been working with the same equipment for 5 years, 4 years at Tabernacle, so I really understand it. I'm also a mechanic by trade, so I love— I grew up fixing—

that was fixing tractors, that was the first, right?

Right. I grew up in a family that's a heating and air conditioning family.

Okay.

So I very, very much love machines, and to get to know the machine and what it's actually doing to the wine— every machine is different, so that's also something, uh, interesting there, you know, a wrench that you got to figure— wrench in the system that you got to look out for.

That's why some of the, some of the, um, some of the presses are oxygen-free when people are trying to control that so that they're not getting any oxygen through there. Like they, they press the grapes under nitrogen, under a nitrogen environment, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So a lot of the inert presses, I think, or it's, uh, I don't have that. I have a membrane press, but yeah, the Wilmes has an amazing press that will blanket, um, with nitrogen or argon, right, an inert gas, and it will protect against oxidation. For whites, that's extremely useful. For reds, because of the tannin, tannin's actually can prevent oxidation. You know, red wine in barrels, besides for putting sulfite in it, the tannin pickup will help a little bit against oxidation. Sometimes when tannins are too strong, if you aerate the wine, then it could become softer because the chemical reaction is happening with the tannin and oxygen.

That's you?

I guess so.

Okay, tell me.

Yep, more action. You know what, I'm going to be positive, right? Because we should be positive, right? It's a hard time. Everyone's going through a hard time in the South and the North, but I'm here to strengthen the people and to be positive instead of negative, because I think that will just do us all better. I think a cool thing about our industry is we don't put each other down. If Israeli wine goes up on the boat, then we're all on the boat, the boat goes up, right? So if we're making consistently good products from our wineries here, then we just go up in the rank of a wine country, you know, a place that produces premium wines.

So tell me the next step.

So we pressed the grapes. Now we have all the wine clean, of the peels, right? It's— now there's like pieces of peels, right?

So are there leaves left in the barrels or no?

Well, so the wine didn't go into barrels yet.

Okay.

It goes through a cleaning process and also through filter, uh, malolactic fermentation, right, where the malic acid is converted to lactic acid. And that's done, number one, for a sensory effect. It's done for a flavor. Um, a fact. And it's also done for a security purpose, that there shouldn't be a secondary fermentation in the bottle, right? Because red wine is not filtered, right? And if you're gonna filter bacteria, you need a 0.45 micron filter, right? Yeasts are about 1, or yeah, 1.0. That's their size, micron. And Bacteria are smaller. So you're not filtering red wines, right? Because you don't want to reduce color or flavor. So you need to go through the secondary fermentation called malolactic, which will protect the wine from fermenting in the bottle. And as well, it adds a sensory characteristic that can smooth, smooth the wine. Makes it— takes malic acid, just a tad though, um, you know, so it's reducing acidity a little bit, just a tad. It really makes the wine a little bit more full and creamy and velvety. Okay, so it goes through that process. I check it to make sure all the malic acid is gone. That's how I know it's dry from malic acid. It's another type of fermentation, right? And then from there, it'll get a racking. I'll start to clean the wine from the sediments. And then when it's done with malo, it could go into barrel and get sulfite. Sulfites protect against oxygenation and also against, it's an antimicrobial. So it prevents the wine from being oxidized and it also prevents weird bacterias from starting to grow or form, or floor sometimes can form on the top of the surface. So you want to keep your wine clean and topped up in the barrel. You do topping once every month and a half, every 2 months, month and a half. So over time, alcohol evaporates from the barrel and then you have headspace. So it's important every month and a half to come and top off the barrel to make sure that it's full. Because if it's full, there's no air. Wine can't oxidize, it can't react. With the sulfite in the wine. And that's what the sulfite is for, is during that time period when you have evaporation, alcoholic evaporation over a 2-month period, when you come back to top off the wine, you're missing around 500 liters, something like that, you hope. Well, so that sulfite addition is going to interact with the oxygen and mitigate— exactly. And If you close the cork, the bung, very well on the barrel when it's full, then it'll create a vacuum. As the wine level goes down, it'll create a strong vacuum around the bung. And most of the oxygen exposure is coming from around the bung area. So if you have that vacuum and you topped it off good and you closed it tightly, and you can protect the wine even more. When you, you know you did a good job when you come to open it after 2 months, you hear the air suck in. So that's a little trick.

Cool.

Yeah, that's it. We just made red wine.

Yeah.

And then it ages for 10 months, 15 months, 2 years, whatever type of wine you're trying to make, right? If you have a very powerful Cabernet Sauvignon and you want to age it for 2 years, you could probably age it because the wine is is in need of that time to soften and to develop and to mature. If you're making a Grenache, a light Grenache, then maybe you just want, uh, 7 months, 6 months, something like 10 months. So it's, it's all about the winemaker and his vision and where he wants to take the raw material. Where does he think this raw material is going? Where are the, the flavors of these grapes, these vineyards, where are they going?

It's interesting to see Syrah go either way. It's like, because I've seen people create these really heavy, rich Syrahs and some very light but incredibly delicious Syrahs as well. So it's— you can actually—

yeah, well said.

Yeah, both ways.

Grenache, right?

You can as well.

You can make a white, white Grenache out of the same grape. You can make a red wine, right? You can make a rosé from Grenache. So those are 3 totally different wines, you know, depending on when you harvest them, right? For a red Grenache, maybe you want 24 brix, right? For a white wine, you want maybe 19, 20, 21 brix, depending on—

So you harvest it earlier and then work it.

Yeah, you harvest it earlier and then you, for white wine, you would crush it and then instead of going right to the stainless steel tank, you'll go right to the press, right? You'll drain all the liquid, you'll get a nice clear juice. That liquid will go to the stainless steel tank and it'll ferment as a liquid without the skins, without seeds.

Yeah. Okay, do you make any whites?

For— yeah, Tabernacle has a Sauvignon Blanc. Okay, we came out last year with it. This year we're going to come out with it too, and we have a rosé.

I love the— I love the Sauvignon Blancs.

Yeah, um, it has such a cool character, the Sauvignon Blanc, that you could try it from different regions that have a similar character.

Yeah, there's some fragrance to it. Yeah.

Um, like a Riesling, gooseberry, right? You're right. It's, uh, it's one of the more interesting, um, aromatic wines that are produced. It's very aromatic. It can be, which it's just fun when you smell something in a cup like that.

Tell me, tell me a little bit about the, um, the, the wines that are available through Tabernacle.

Should I go from light?

Yeah, go from light to dark.

These are our wines. So we have a Sauvignon Blanc white wine, we have a Rosé.

The Sauvignon Blanc is fragrant and it's, it's, it's made to— for a nice light summer wine.

Exactly. It's hot outside, you're in the pool, you come out, you have a nice ice-cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Cool.

Very refreshing, lots of amazing aromas, and enjoy. Rosé also. Rosé, to me, there's so many rosés on the market. Just trying to make a rosé that people find enjoyable just to drink, you know, without complexity. Doesn't need a lot of complexity. It needs to be fruity, in my opinion, and really just enjoyable to drink, you know, not bitter. Lighter, not heavy acid, not, not super acidic, but you want acidity because you don't want it to be flat, right? You want— it's like a lemon you squeezed on a salad, it brings out all the flavor. So you need balance there of acidity. Okay, and then we'll move on to reds.

Yep.

So Tabernacle is mainly a red house. So we have our entry level, it's called the Pamón. It's that wine style, is lighter and more aromatic, right? Then we have the reserve line, 3 bottles in the reserve. We have a Cabernet Sauvignon, which is what we're drinking. We have a Syrah single vineyard from Kibbutz Tivon, which is a very special bottle in my opinion. And then we have— why? Because it's an organic vineyard and the vineyard is just producing phenomenal grapes. Um, the farmer there, Ido, um, he's amazing to work with. And it's in a very special microclimate. It's a cool microclimate within our hotter— Israel is a hot region, a hot macroclimate. So in Sivon, where the vineyard is located, it's in kind of like a wadi. And it's another— it's cold. It's cold there. It gets cold at night, colder than other places in the region.

It's interesting, we were talking, I've been talking on the last podcast about how people focus high on mountaintops in order to get the cold. But they're finding that a lot of these vineyards that are down in Wadis are getting these flows down from the mountains that chill them and really impart also humidity and end up creating great wonderful wine grapes.

Yeah, I find that temperature moves, right? So if it's cold on the top of the hill, yeah, later on in the day or in the night, it's cold on the bottom, right?

Right.

So it's all relative. Um, yeah, it's like growing grapes is like schnitzel. It's like cooking schnitzel on a— in a pan. If you cook it on a flame, a high flame, so it'll be crispy on the outside right, and raw on the inside, you know, lots of acid, green. But if you cook it cool, steady, right, on a medium flame, then you'll get a more homogenized, developed grape, right? Well, schnitzel, right? You'll get a— you'll get a cooked, uh, perfectly cooked piece of schnitzel.

Cool.

Yeah, so it's like that with grapes. You You don't want super high heat and then hot in the evening, right? You want it cool in the evening, right? You want to be able to simmer, simmer down that flame and to keep the grapes on the, on the vine for a long time, right? Not too long that it shrivels and falls apart, but enough that it's not being overly cooked on the vine. So after the reserve line, then there's the Bezalel line. Okay, 2 bottles, a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Yeah.

And a, uh, a bottle called Katoret, which is a blend. It's like the artistry of the winery, of the winemaker, of what it's— of you. Uh, yeah, yeah, of our team, you know.

Okay.

Yeah, yes, I make the decisions in the end, but really I I appreciate being open-minded, and I sit with Itay. Itay Lahan helps us on the blendings. I mean, he's my mentor, you know. I met him at Luria, and I've been in touch with him throughout all these years. He sent me to school, so I have a connection with him, uh, years already. We know each other, um, and I enjoy his company sitting there. And, you know, I might have an idea, but I could come up with an even better idea if I talk and converse with someone, you know, bounce my ideas off of someone, a mirror, a board. And Itai is great for that. Sit with him, we discuss, and he'll give his opinion, I'll say my opinion. In the end, yeah, I'll make the decision, but that whole process, I cherish that process, you know, to give it space. And when you're blending the wines, it's the culmination of your work, of all the grape growing and the fermentation and the barrel aging. And now you're doing the last piece of the puzzle, kind of. Blend it and you filter it, and then you bottle it, and then it goes out to the world.

Do you wait? Do you have them bottle age for a while before you release it, or is it—

yeah, we try to do a 3 to 6 months.

Okay.

Yeah, we try to do that.

Itai is an incredible person. I interviewed him a few, a few months ago.

Itay is like the secret weapon of the, of the wine industry here, right? I mean, so many boutique wineries use his talents to do what I just said, to help with blending. Even more than that, just logistics. And his knowledge is tremendous, and, uh, we're lucky we have him here in Israel. And amongst others, there are others like him, you know, that are the We have amazing people in this country, and we have knowledgeable, educated winemakers, both coming from education and both coming from practical winemaking, which is honestly— they're both important because I really appreciated school and learning and about chemistry and why, the whys to winemaking. But in the end of the day, you need to make the wine, and it comes with hands-on experience, I think, with anything in life.

Okay, so tell me a little bit about your own wine.

Sure.

You have a line of your own wines that you make. Where do you actually manufacture them?

So actually, I've started this project in 2018.

Okay.

I went to Corn— I graduated Cornell in 2019, so I started this project then, and then I came back to Israel and I took a job with Tabernacle Winery. So I had this project that I called Kuzari, right? The inspiration comes from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, from the Sefer Kuzari. It says that a Jew is domele geffen, yudi domele geffen, right? A Jew is similar to a vine. Why? Just like a vine can produce its ultimate potential and fruit when it's found in its perfect environment, right? Perfect sun, perfect slope, perfect nutrients, perfect wind, right? So to a Jew, when they are found in their perfect environment, then they can reach— he or she can reach their ultimate potential. And where is that place? That's Eretz Yisrael. That's Israel. So that's my, um, vision. That, that's the passion behind this project. You know, I come from the States and devoted my life to be here, to the land, and to making amazing Israeli wine. And I believe in this country. And people that are listening to this know that, uh, there's a place called Eretz Yisroel that's their home. They can come whenever they would like. And I'm here and many of us are here and, you know, I'm not preaching to anyone. Everyone could live their life the way you want to live it. But for me, I made a choice to move from New York. There were sacrifices and now I'm here and I strengthen this land through this project and I wanted a pure story If I was sending this wine all over the world, right, my brand, or it's going to people's tables for Shabbos, so there should be a meaningful story that comes along with it. I think I'm passionate about that, about this land and about being here, and I'm passionate about loving Jews. You know, we should all love each other, and as hard as that can be sometimes, But it's really the key to our success is V'haftalarecha kamocha, you know.

And, uh, I don't know, I got far off there, but no, I totally agree with you. It's, it's refreshing to see somebody, uh, not only comfortable here, but like, this is the place, this is the place for you. So tell me a little bit, try a little bit of this. I definitely do. Can we?

Yeah, absolutely.

So how many wines do you make under Kusari?

I make 4 wines. Okay, I make a Syrah, a Cabernet, and 2 blends, which I'm not sure I will— I'm gonna continue. But the idea is— and I make around 5,000 bottles, um, maybe this year a little bit more— but the idea is to do something a little bit different. And if I see something special along my travels, um, in vineyards and in the wine industry. So I'll try to isolate something special, uh, great, a section of a vineyard, and I'll make wine out of it, right? So this Syrah, uh, the grapes are from Safsoufa and also from Sivon. Okay, I only made 3 barrels of this wine. It's, uh, the Syrah 2020 Vintage, and I really love this wine. It's a nice balance of what we were talking about, an aromatic Syrah and a full body heavy.

Wow, it's so aromatic, it's beautiful, right?

It's got a lot of earthy notes, right? Syrah has clove as spice, it has blackberry, it has plum. That good, Link?

Really lovely.

Thank you.

Really lovely.

Thank you.

Wow.

20 months in French oak.

So do you sell this in America too?

No, just here.

Just in Israel?

Yeah.

Not just in Israel. I'm glad.

In Israel, yeah. I don't have that much to sell to the States, but in the future Who do you sell it through?

Is there any—

me, I do everything myself.

Oh, okay.

It's on my one-man show.

Okay.

I have customers, some stores working, uh, you know, I have a full-time job and Tabernacle is really my pri— it's my priority. And does that be—

it's hard here.

It's a full operation, Tabernacle. It's 150 dunam. Right? It's 120,000 bottles. It's full operation. This is my baby, you know. This is my special, uh, wines, my reserve wines. And yeah, I hope to grow also one day, but for right now, you know, the focus is Tabernacle. Yeah, yeah, for right now. And but this is lovely, and I'm really happy working with the vineyards we planted with Tabernacle. It's a dream for a winemaker to plant the vines, then to make wine from those vines, and to follow it through the aging process. I'm very grateful to have this experience. And it's kind of— it's amazing to me because I started at Luria, and they also had a estate vineyard winery. So really, to control your wines means to grow your own grapes. So I think that's huge to be able to have that, to that ability. So it's all about the grape, it's all about the vineyard. Starts in the vineyard. Quality in the vineyard, quality in the wine.

Thank you, thank you for the information about making wine.

Sure, absolutely. I'd love to share.

I love it.

If you share, then, uh, you get places. Yeah, that's what I believe.

Yeah. 100%. I look forward to visiting you at the, at the winery one of these days soon.

You are always welcome at the winery, and thank you so much for having me. This was fun. I hope something interesting comes out of it.

Yeah, we'll see.

Please come.

This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terroir. I have a personal request. No matter where you are or where you live, please take a moment to pray for our soldiers' safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you are new to the Kosher Teruah, please check out our many past episodes.