AY: Pioneering Kosher Wines and New Traditions in Judea and Samaria

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. Ayi Katzoff, or as he is fondly known, Ayi, hand-planted with his family their vineyard in the tough rocky mountains of Samaria on the private 1.48-acre estate located in the settlement of Esh Kodesh in the Binyamin area overlooking the ancient city of Shiloh. Ayi is creating a wine destination focused on his winery Settler Cellars, with cottages looking down on the estate's terraced vineyards below. The following conversation with Aye touches on the winery's history, the close connection he feels with biblical prophecy, and his hopes and dreams for his family's future in Israel. If you are driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you are comfortably at home, Please select a delicious bottle of kosher wine, sit back, relax, and enjoy. Thank you for welcoming me to Settler Cellars.

Thank you for coming.

But also, welcome to the kosher terroir.

Thank you very much. All right, so I'll tell you how it started. Special, huh? Isn't that amazing?

So what are we drinking?

This is Cabernet Franc white.

This is a white Cabernet Franc. It looks like a very, very light rosé at the moment?

Yeah, it's even white, I would say. It's like very light rosé. Now, this Cabernet Franc, when it's harvested red, it gets gold medals. I can't tell you which bottles, what wine.

It gets what?

Gold medals.

Oh, wow.

In Europe, more than 95 points.

Wow.

Without going into details.

Okay.

And what happens is a lot of times Cabernet Franc, because of its nature, It takes a while to turn red. It has trouble turning red. So what we do is we take the early— we thin the Cabernet Franc to help them get red, and we take those early thin grapes and we turn it with a couple other tricks I can't talk about, and we turn into this magic.

It's amazing tasting.

We call it Queen Jane, on the Queen Jane in France, that she didn't like the red wine for the hot summer days. And they made this, and we call it, it's a PE style wine, which is pre-harvest.

Yeah.

And it's because early, early harvest. And Queen Jane. L'chaim to Queen Jane.

L'chaim tovim.

L'chaim tovim.

Really, really awesome.

It's the flavor, it's the aromas, it's that uplifting thing. And what I was telling you about, so we say this Queen Jane wine, somebody comes to a forest.

Yep.

Some people look for a path to get through. And some people, they make their own path and let other people follow. And that's what I'm trying to do here in wine country of Judea and Samaria. That's exactly my vision. And the vision is like this. You know, I was— I did a tour in Spain, Catalonia, and I was tasting wines there, and I said, you know, this wine, I feel like a pottery in it. And the girl's like, hey, that's— you're right. And she brings me down to the wine cellar and she shows me these pottery jars about 80 years old.

Euphoras.

And she says, "We age in pottery." And this is the Roman style. And I was like, "Excuse me, miss." Romans, you know, around about 2,000 years ago. In ancient Shiloh, right next to my winery, right near where I grow my grapes, they found potteries, wine pottery jars that look just like this from over 3,000 years ago, 1,000 years before Rome. Jews, or they weren't called Jews there, they were called Israelites, were aging wine in the capital of Israel, which was Shiloh at the time, before Jerusalem, before Jerusalem, in pottery. And then I understood, I was like, we don't have to follow other wine styles and other winemakers. Yes, we have to learn from them, but we have to come back to our land, come back to our roots, and recreate our style wine. Let winemakers in Europe And in United States, follow us. And that's when I came up with this wine. I was looking for something unique, special, something you could do in our area. And we were 830 meters above sea level, a lot, very tough bedrock, a lot of limestone, cold nights, very windy. And we get very little water, almost no water. And because of that, the trees are very thirsty. And it creates all these flavors. The roots go deep down in the bedrock looking for moisture, and with that it brings up the minerals from the stone, and you can almost taste these minerals in here. And my dream is, so you go to France, you drink champagne. You go to Spain, you drink cava. You come to Judea and Samaria, you drink bu'ot.

You drink what?

Bu'ot.

Bu'ot.

Bu'ot in Hebrew means bubbles. Bouot. And I want to make a champagne-style wine, light bubbles, fruity, like this powerful fruit, and call it Bouot. And one second, last thing, you know how I know I succeeded?

Go ahead.

When the non-kosher restaurant in wine country in France or Spain orders Bouot, it could be from my winery, it could be another winery in the area. Why? It's not kosher. They don't need it because it's kosher. They want it because they're looking for that unique, special flavor of bua. L'chaim.

L'chaim. This is sweet, though it's not sweet.

Off-dry.

It's, it's, yeah, it's off-dry, which normally means on a bottle that it's very sweet. Yeah, yeah, okay, so this is sweet, but it's incredibly pleasant. It is like I can think of the vast population of people would love this wine.

It is very special.

It is really special.

Very, very special, and it is very hard to make. And I would say it is a bracha. And talk about the bracha. So in 2011, I just moved here to Esh Kodesh.

2011?

I moved here in the end of 2010. 2011 Rosh Hashanah, we are reading the Haftorah of Yirmiyahu, Lamed Alef. And Yirmiyahu, most of Yirmiyahu talks about the Jewish people going into exile. Every once in a while he gives some nechamah, prophecies. And Jeremiah says, "But one day the Jewish people will come back to the Land of Israel." And he could have just left it like that, but no, he says, "And then they will come to the Shomron Mountains." And in the Shomron Mountains, exactly where we are, the Shomron region, they will plant vineyards and drink the wine. And I read that Haftorah, and I was looking across, and I see the bare mountains. And at the time, the Arab villages were attacking us all the time. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to plant a vineyard right on that mountain by the village." And after us, just because of Yirmiyahu, Yirmiyahu Lavan Ha'arif. We went there, we flattened the land, and the Arabs attacked us, and they stopped us. And I tried to plant, and they burnt our irrigation, and they broke the fences. They tried to uproot the trees, it was a long way, and only in 2016, 5 years later, usually it takes 3 years, I did my first harvest. It was about half the amount, and I sold my grapes to a certain winery, and we did hand-picked, each tree was like an only child. You have to understand, each tree, me and my children, we put it in, we took care of it, we pruned it to perfection, we took care of the grapes, we did a night harvest by hand, And we sold it to a certain winery and they promised they will give us 50 bottles. And when I came to get the 50 bottles, they said, "Listen, the importer came, the wine was so good, we sold everything at a high price." I said, "That is very nice, I am happy for you, but what about my 50 bottles?" "Listen, they paid top dollar for it." I was like, "Okay, but you know, this is not just about the money, you know, I put my heart, my soul, my sweat, would wake up in the middle of the night, fix the pipes, do everything." Take a fight the weed, the thorns. I still feel the thorns in my fingers. And I said, I'm never going to sell grapes again. 2017, we did our first batch, Cabernet Sauvignon, settler's cellar. And ever since then, we've been making wine.

A lot of people I know love those bottles.

Yeah. Now, how did we get to start making this stuff? Now, if you're a big winery, and you need to, at the end of the day, a goal of a winery is to survive and be financially successful. It's very hard to do experiments because if it goes bad, it's a lot of money down the drain. 222, Shmita. We do Shmita L'Chomer, we mafka our vineyard. I make no wine. But a lot of other vineyards around here did the same thing. So we went to a couple vineyards and we did very small batches, 50 liters, 100 liters. And it was really just test drives. And we did not really think anything would come out of it. And then all of a sudden, these amazing flavors came out. And the bracha of the Shemitah, that we were— otherwise, we would never be able to experiment like that. That experiment is what that flavor, that unique flavor you are tasting right now, is. Biskhus, the Shemitah, they were able to allow us to experiment and have these amazing flavors.

Awesome.

And then it is kosher Shabbos wine. People just came and drank it. Some people paid a little bit just to cover costs, which of course, it did not cover costs, because imagine the actual cost of the wine. And you feel the bracha. Wow.

How did you end up in Esh Kodesh?

That is a long story.

I mean, you were one of the first people here.

I was the first 10. Okay, so it's like the second, uh, wave we call it. We go through another rosé.

Yeah, let's try.

So this is a Cabernet Sauvignon rosé. Before is Cabernet Franc, this is a Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a little bit drier, it's more classic, it's, I would say, less fruity.

I was going to pour this out, but I'm not.

I can get a spitter.

This is fun.

Listen, if you can't drive back, we have the cabins right behind you, right? Don't worry. So, uh, Pretty good. You know, you'll just crash here. That's the real business plan, you know.

Have people come drink and crash.

Yeah, yeah. And they can't drive back. And you know, the whole idea of wine is tikkun ha'vadamarishan. So it's actually interesting. So this, the white that we're drinking—

Wait a minute, how? I never heard that before.

Oh really? That's the whole idea. Why do you do kiddush on wine? So some people say, I mean, Apikabalah, the Eitz Hadass was grapes. And that's why it keeps on happening. If it's Noach, if it's Lot, if it's throughout history. And our Tikkun is Friday night, that was exactly when the Chet of Adam HaRishon happened, Erev Shabbos. You do Kiddush on wine to fix the Chet of Adam HaRishon. You're "mamtik v'dinem." And that's why Apikabalah puts a little water in the wine. And so somebody was just here last week, And they said, I have a question. He says, it's like a makuba. And by the way, my vineyards here, I have 7 terraces, 7 sephiros, and each terrace a different variety. And he says, I have a question. So I like, I'm Machmir, but I, I'll pick Kabbalah, I do kiddush on red wine. Okay, could I— Cabernet Franc is a red wine, but this color is white. Could I do kiddush on it, or is it considered The hiddur of red wine. And I said, it's not just mahudar, it's mahadrin, minah mahadrin. Why? Because the whole Indian is hamtekata dinim, to take the dinim, the—

Klipot.

The klipot.

The klipot of the grapes.

The klipot of the grapes is what makes it red.

Right.

And you're mamtik the dinim, you're turning it to white. That's Yom Kippur, where it says, imiyuchata echayim kashani, kashela gyalbino. If your sins will be red like Shani, which is like the red color, it'll turn white like snow. So this is red wine and it's white. It's both. That's what's Mahatma Gnanapada.

Very cool idea.

L'chaim. L'chaim. Tovim shalom.

Baruch Hashem. So this is now what?

This is Carmen de Sauvignon, also rosé, a little bit drier.

Is this what I tasted along— No, I tasted a Merlot.

A Merlot. Then this one's a Merlot.

Okay.

We'll get there. Also, you taste the minerals of the ground. Yeah.

This is really—

that's a little drier. This is more complex, I think. You mamish taste the minerals, the rocks of the ground. It's going to be really hard. People are going to listen to this and they're just going to want to be thirsty and they want to drink.

That's okay.

It's all right.

We'll just get them.

They're going to have to come here.

I know.

Settlers Winery.

I love it. This is really crazy. This is drier. It's a little redder. Yeah, but it's, um, but it's fresh and crisp.

Um, it's fresh and crisp. That's the name of the game here.

I wish it would— I wish it was really hot outside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it is. It's really— it's for a hot day.

It is perfect.

Baruch Hashem. Wow.

So in Esh HaKodesh, how did you pick this place?

Sometimes you have to just let G-d run the world. We are actually on the way to somewhere else. We are on the way to Yitzhar, and a friend of mine told me, listen, just stop at Esh HaKodesh. I think it is for you. I was just there for Shabbat. We drove in here, and we kind of just fell in love, and we are like, this is our This is our spot. And in 2000, this was 2010, 2012, I sent an email to the Yeshuv. I think by then we're close to 30 families already.

Yeah.

And I found that email of my vision of building a winery under my house and planting vineyards around it and having it a place where people from the whole world could come and see what Judean Samaria wine is all about. And that vision probably, besides the one vineyard I planted and I started making wine, but it was a garage wine. It wasn't here for about 10 years. Shmita is what triggered me, that says, wow, we have something here. And then the year afterward, I already made— I jumped up from basically nothing to 12,000 bottles. Wow. Wow.

The question I have is, in your past, what got you to making wine? Was there some experience in the past that Nothing.

Never did it. Never knew how to do it.

Okay.

And I was never a good student. Never graduated high school, even though later on I caught up on university and did my master's degree in Tel Aviv University, but in Middle Eastern studies, in Arabic.

Okay.

So my study has nothing to do with wine. Now, winemaking is divided by two. There's the chemistry.

Yep.

And then there's the art. Right? There's the science. Chemistry is the science and the art. Science is exact. You take the grape, you saw what we just did at the beginning.

Yeah.

Put it in the mabada, in the tester. Mabada is more like the lab.

Yeah, the lab.

And it's numbers.

Yeah.

And you go by the numbers, and there's wineries that go only numbers, and it feels like a lab wine. It's like too perfect, you know. That's one side. Then there's the other side is the art. Art is nothing to do with numbers. It's your tongue. You taste it and you feel that it needs to be fruitier or drier. And then there's people that make only wine by their tongue, and people like that, they could get amazing wine, but the other three go bad.

It's not consistent.

Not consistent at all. And but every once in a while they get lucky. But when you take science and art and you put them together, that's when you get magic. And that's what we're trying to do. You have to know the rules to break them. So we're trying to take the science part, which I'm not so good at. That's why I pay wine advisors. The art is I gather friends and we just do flavors and tasting and try as much as we can to think out of the box, not follow existing rye, not— there's a rule, oh, Cab has to taste like this. Okay, it has to, but we want to do Cab that matches our land and our trees and our weather. And we use that and we match the science Right in the middle, we get the magic.

Very cool. How does the unique terroir of Esh Kodesh contribute to the character of your wines?

It is so unique. We talked about it before. It's so special. It's that hard bedrock I said.

Yep.

The very little water that we have here.

Mm-hmm.

The trees here, sometimes they have almost no dirt. It's mostly just bedrock with little pockets of dirt. And the trees have to work so hard.

You have to plant on top of that bedrock.

Yeah. So what we do, some, what I do is I go to the valley here.

Yeah.

Pick up dirt. I bring it up. I break the terraces. It's a similar way to the ancient terraces. Right. Just a little bit more machinery, modernized, but the same idea. We break the mountain, we build steps, and then you have big rocks, small crushed rocks that go into that. And on top of that, we pour about 10 to 15 centimeters of dirt we take from the valley.

Okay.

So the young trees, they start growing in the dirt and the roots go down into the little rocks, big rocks, and by that time they're strong enough and they break into the bedrock.

Very cool.

And you get the flavors, mamish, in the wine. The cold nights is what I would say gives the most— what we're going to get to soon is the strong cabs. The colder nights you have, the longer the grapes could sit on the trees without going bad. And because if you live in a hot place, the grapes, mamish, start growing funguses on them, and they grow up. The cold nights keeps them fresh. We have a port, maybe we'll be zoche to taste for dessert. I'm telling you, in mamish, I'm jumping the gun here, mamish tastes like chocolate. Chocolate. And this port is 100% grapes. We didn't add any sulfites, zero sulfites, no alcohol, no— 100% harvest of basically raisins at 34 brix. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. Can you walk me through the process of producing kosher wine at Settler Cellars?

I could walk through the whole process, but it's similar to most grapes. You plant the grapes, you take care of every tree, You fight off weather, you fight off not having water, you fight off Arabs coming and trying to destroy, you fight off left-wing extremist organizations coming and trying to destroy your trees. If you're lucky, you finally get to harvest, you hand harvest, you bring it into here. Sometimes we put it in the fridge right outside. I have the presser. The presser. It sits here in the vats, goes through malolactic. You see those two vats right there? They're the last ones that didn't go through malolactic yet. That's what I just checked now, malolactic. Then it goes into the barrel room that we'll walk in in a second, sits there. That's another thing we do different than other places. Our wines, they've been sitting in the barrels for 26 months. Now we just had wine for 30 months. Wow. And right now we're going to test a Petit Verdot. It's been in the barrels since 2021.

Wow.

Now what's special about this? This is 100% Petit Verdot. Not many people make it. It does exist. There are some wineries that do it. Do it.

Yep.

And I never planned on doing it. Somebody gave me a small batch, small little vineyard right here across the mountain.

Yeah.

Most of my grapes is I grow, so the estate winery. Every once in a while, because I don't have enough grapes yet, I take from my neighbors. I did one barrel, I tasted it, I couldn't drink it. It's way too powerful. I threw it in the barrel, I forgot about it, sat there for about 3 years. Besides every month and a half, you do a little topping.

Yeah.

And then I needed the barrels now to make room for my 2024 harvest. I pumped it into a vat, and I needed to think, what blend am I going to do with it? And I was even thinking, like, I had some wines here because of the war that went bad because I wasn't around. I said, you know what, I might even have to just make brandy out of it. What can I do? Brandy is also okay. And actually, powerful wines could make very good brandy. And I tasted it and I was like, wow, is this the same wine? Yeah. And that's what we call it, Hashovav.

Yeah, it's the Hashovav.

Hashovav is like, here we have these red cup wine cups. Hashovav is like the, yeah, how would you say that in English? The Hashovav child.

It's the squeaky wheel.

The wild kid.

The absolute wild. I know.

It has a lot, a lot of energy. I was that kid, I think. And the thing is, look at that color.

I know.

The thing is about the shovav, a lot of times people try to stop them and do things. All you need to do really is just let them be. And that, they take that powerful energy and they just need time to settle down. And that's why this wine we call it Hashovav, because with time it took all that super powerful energy and melted back down. Look, you can just, you can even smell the flavors just like this.

I know, you don't even have to taste it.

Yeah, yeah, you really, you really don't. You taste that Petit Verdot, it's like super fruity, almost like a prune flavor to it, figs.

I don't know that I would call it prune. I think it's much more appealing.

So you tell me, what would you call it?

The smell alone is so robust and so—

wow. Robust, fruity.

Yeah, it's fruity. The color is, the color is absolutely gorgeous.

You take the white and you can really see.

I know, I know. Look at that. I know, the garnet.

Garnet.

It's like beautiful, deep, deep garnet. There's no bricking at all. What year is this?

2021.

2021.

It's just been sitting and sitting and sitting. So we, I only, I mean, I bottled maybe 270 bottles of these. Somebody just came here and tasted it and he says, give me 50 bottles. You know what's interesting?

Wow, this—

wow. Now this is also very low sulfites. Like almost nothing. But that's a mistake because I forgot to sulfite it before I bottled. And then in the middle of the night, I had like a nightmare. I'm like, shoot, I forgot to sulfite it. I ran down in the morning and I tested the sulfites because— and there's about half of what it's supposed to be. So this is probably not going to last too long, but it's a lot healthier.

It's beautiful.

And it probably has to do with the flavor as well because sulfites sometimes touch the flavor.

What about sustainability? How much water do you use? Do you water the grapes at all?

The trees?

The trees.

It's interesting. One thing I learned in Spain, it's actually, it's basically illegal there to water the vineyards. Also because they have no water and also they have like, we have a Háckscher, they have like a quality control.

Yeah.

And if they catch you watering your vineyards, On most varieties, except for I think there's— I forgot which is like one white variety that you need to water it.

It doesn't meet the OC.

They take away your quality control.

Yeah.

So my— this— well, here, talk about this. Let's test the next one. The next wine we're going to taste right now. Now we're already jumping up the cab. Okay. This is 2020. Take your time. Open and let it breathe. This tree has almost no water. When I say almost no water, means it rains.

Yes, it rains. No, yeah, but you don't add.

I add after harvest.

Okay.

After I harvest.

Okay, then you—

I add. Why? Because the tree is so weak and feeling so bad, you don't want it to go— it goes to sleep in the winter, so you don't want it to go to sleep on an empty stomach. Because when it goes to sleep and you give it some water, so in its mind it's like, you know what, it's not that bad.

It's time to wake up.

Exactly right. So, but it gets zero irrigation. Now, getting zero irrigation, that's the question I had, this irrigation. The trees are miskin, they're very schwach, they don't grow so many leaves. And instead of, let's say, my neighbors that will be harvesting, they could get between 1,000, even up to 2,000 kilos Dunam.

Yeah.

I got this year 550 kilos of Dunam. So up to less than half, sometimes even a quarter in quantity, which comes to talk about the difference between an estate wine and a regular winery. An estate wine is where the winery also grows the grapes.

Right.

In Spain, most wineries, any winery that wants to make it itself, and in France they do that.

Grows it.

Here, most wineries do not grow the grapes. They'd have contracts with the grape growers. Because winemaking is two— there's two different businesses. One business is farmers. Growing grapes is a farm.

Yep.

You'd work in the gravel, you wake up in the middle of the night and fix the pipes. And then the second business is winemaking. We talk about that science. It's a factory. And to know how to do both, most people don't do. We're an estate. We do most of our wines, and eventually it'll be all of them. We also grow the grapes and also make the wine. And because of that, if we're not growing the grapes to sell them, I don't care about quantity. I'm not getting paid per kilo. I'm getting paid per liter of wine.

Right.

And I want it to be the highest quality. So that's at the end of the day what happens.

What you're looking for.

Yeah. And that's why if you're just selling grapes, it's not profitable to produce 500 kilos of dunam. It is not. You do not even cover costs. If you are making wine, that is a different story.

How did you handle the winemaking in the vineyards, Achshav, now, during the war and everything? Were there issues that you ran into?

It is actually very, very, very hard. Sukkot before the war was the most successful Sukkot. I just finished this building that we're sitting in. I didn't even finish the bar, the inside yet. And I had morning to evening groups nonstop. Everybody tasted it. And I'm actually looking for a partner, a partner in this winery. So instead of taking me 10 years to do the dreams I was telling you about, about Bu'ot and everything, I could be able to do it much faster and had a lot of people interested in it. People bought big amounts of wines and they didn't even pay me. I said, you know what, don't pay me after Sukkot. Sukkot is now. After Sukkot, we'll call and we'll figure out payments. Same chasara, 7 in the morning, I get a call. It's my commander. He says, no questions, to the base right now. I throw on my uniform, I get in my car, I drive very, very fast. It's the first time I will ride to the Kirya. Kirya is like the Israeli Pentagon. I serve minus 3 underground. Usually just getting into the Kirya is hard. Here I show up, the gates are open, and people are just like, come in, come in. I go right down. For about 7 months, I didn't have anything to do with the winery. Only in March, when I came back, I had a lot of wines that went bad, a lot of grapes from this harvest. I had friends that came and helped me harvest during the war. They came just for that, with bulletproof vests, harvesting. Now harvesting itself is hard. To wear a bulletproof vest is even harder. And wines went bad. We actually had a whole vat of Jandeli grapes. Jandeli is the Beit HaMikdash grapes, the ones that were found here in ancient Shiloh. 1,000 liters went bad. I took that 1,000 liters and I made the most amazing brandy out of it, fruity brandy. So we see from mari atsematok, I had 100 liters that was like the bottom, the bad stuff, like that I didn't want to make wine out of it. And I put it in that 100-liter plastic over there.

Yeah.

And I forgot about it. A week ago, I was like, wait, what's this? I opened it up. The most amazing wine vinegar. And if you want, we could taste it. Listen, this wine vinegar, I'm telling you.

A lot of people are looking for that.

You all going to taste it soon.

That's hot.

That's hot.

What you call it?

So amazing. And it's Jandeli, Beit Hamikdash wine vinegar.

Wow.

And you know what? I don't even know how it happened. I didn't do it on purpose. And I still don't know how to make vinegar, but it just happened. And so we see like from the bad things, the bracha, the blessing comes out. And just now we're just now getting back up on our feet. Look at that color. And even when I would come back home for breaks, mentally I couldn't deal with the winery because we all are friends.

You have all sorts of stuff that's on your head. I know.

I saw so much death. I spent the first couple weeks before we went into Gaza interrogating the terrorists. The terrorists would come into the room with blood on them still. and it was not always their blood. I had to sit in front of them and talk to them for hours. After that, you come home, you cannot start dealing with wine. Wine has to be done with love, with passion, with feeling.

How does cultivating a vineyard here, in the middle of the Shomron, connect to this historical significance of winemaking in this region?

You see what it says on the sign there?

Yeah.

Settlers, the taste of liquid prophecy. So you could read the Bible, you could read about prophecy. Here we live it and we taste it. It is mamashit. Valentine's Day, it came from the biblical Tu B'Av. Where did Tu B'Av start? Shabob not shilo yotzot vecholot bakramim. The daughters of Shiloh, which is right where we are, dance in the vineyards. My daughters dance in the vineyards, and that's why I have this.357 Magnum right here to make sure no guys come and grab them. Biblical times. How old are you? That's why she's still single.

19. Oh, oh, he's got to let go soon. Yeah, he's got to let go soon.

And then, um, Hannah comes to pray in Shiloh.

Yeah.

And Eli Hakohen, he thinks she's drunk. Now, if you go to Scotland and you're walking a little not straight, you probably think you're drunk. Yeah. You come to Shiloh, that's the default. You must have drank too much wine because it was wine country. Shaul needs to find a wife. They say go to Shiloh. There's a holiday in Shiloh. They're dancing in the vineyards. So to come back, Yirmiyahu's promise. I wrote in my war bottle, this is the verse that I wrote on the bottle. Every bottle I write a different verse and a different story. So the verse of my 2021 bottle, I'm taking out the label right now. And I will bring back the captives of my nation Israel, and shall build the deserted cities and inhabit them. Talking about bringing back the captives and come back to the deserted cities, inhabit them. And then what? They shall plant vineyards and drink its wine.

Wow.

Amos 9:14. And then I wrote at the end, despite the hardships and attacks against us in every generation, we will only get better, stronger, and more refined. As you drink this wine, please remember those who have fallen so that we may live peacefully and secure. Raise a toast to life and to a better, brighter, and stronger future.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

L'chaim. L'chaim. Besit verdok, Hashovav. Yep.

This is lovely, and it's so nicely balanced. It has got a finish on it. It has also got front, middle palate, everything.

I wish I could tell you that there is a secret behind it, but this one is actually just very lucky and blessed, bracha.

It is a Shofar. That is exactly what a Shofar is.

It really is. Exactly. I think, I do not know, I have a feeling you had a couple of those. Yes.

I even have Shofar grandchildren.

There you go. See?

I don't have any great-grandchildren yet, but grandchildren.

You will get them if you write a show. If these grandchildren are really Shovavs, you will have some great-grandchildren. That is lovely.

That is really great. How does Settler Cellars play a supporting role in the development of the local community of Esh Kodesh?

Okay, so I think any business in this area, you are supporting You know, it's all about building. Building and anything, as long as you're building and you're growing and you're developing, you're giving Parnassa to people around, you're helping people, giving other jobs out. We just started here in this Settler's Winery. We have now twice a week, Thursday nights and Saturday nights, and hopefully we'll have more. It's kind of like, it's like a wine bar, but it's open mic. So young people come here. And they pick up the guitar or the keyboard and the microphone, and they sing. And all of a sudden you discover all these hidden talents of people coming up and singing, like singing their soul out, singing their neshamah. And there was this boy here last Thursday night, and he was singing till 3:30 in the morning. And he was singing so beautiful. And I came over to him at 3:30, and I was like, you know, I've been drinking a lot, are you sure you can make it home? And he's like, actually, I think I'm just going to go to my car and I'll continue writing music there. And I was like, well, you're the last one here. I'm going home now. Just stay in here in the winery, sit on the couch. He's like, but I can stay here by myself? I was like, yeah, stay here. Why not? There's a light switch. Turn it off when you leave. And tears started coming down his eyes. And he's like, listen, Sunday I'm going back into Lebanon. And I don't know if I'm going to make it out. I lost already a lot of my friends. And I feel that I am singing to Hashem, singing tunes, songs to Hashem, and it might be my last songs. It is from Sayer Golan, and it was the week when we just lost, I think, 5 people from Golan. They are his friends.

So crazy. These are— Everybody says they are Kadoshin, but they are more than that. They are superstars. They are superstars.

And I feel, because I am able to give for somebody like that, to come up on stage and sing his music, people sitting around drinking wine and enjoying it and connecting to G-d. Song is a way we connect to G-d. In the Beit Hamikdash, Tefillah was through the Levim on the 15 steps playing music. Wow, wow. And with wine, wine and music is— it's— I feel like I'm just a little— taking a little part in helping people connect to God and connect to themselves.

Do you collaborate at all with the local wineries, with the other artisans around?

So without saying names, There are, I would divide it to two. There are some wineries that are very helpful and help you a lot in every type of way. If it's advice, if it's the lab, if it's infrastructure. And then there's the wineries that don't help and even accuse you of copying them or using their name or using their this. So I think it's the same thing, just like in anything in life. You have the The good ones and the bad ones, and the trick is to focus on the good. But there are definitely many very good wineries that really go out of their way. They understand it is not competition, they understand the opposite, it is helping each other, and the more, the merrier.

So the term that always happens with Syrah is it gets translated as boat. It always gets translated as boat.

Never seen that, but okay.

Right. But what's funny with that is that the tide, the higher tide lifts all the boats, lifts all the different wineries. So if you do something that's positive, everybody together, it makes a difference for everybody.

I think so too.

Yeah, I think it does.

I really think so.

Are there qualities or characteristics that you strive to achieve in the wines? And how do they reflect in your vision as a winemaker?

Wow, that's an intense question.

I know, I'm sorry.

Qualities and characteristics in the wines that you're making. Wow, let me think about that. Um, so I'll tell you a story. I was at a restaurant with— we're meeting a congressman from the United States who's here in Israel. And I wanted to show off the wine of the region. So the waiter gave us— it was a fancy restaurant— the waiter gave us a wine menu. And there was a wine, I think it was probably Shilo or something, I don't remember what it was. And I was like, oh yeah, here, can we order this wine? It was like maybe 200, 300 shekels. And it was something from our region. The wine waiter comes back and says, "Sorry, we are out of that wine." So I was in the middle of a conversation, I did not really have time, I just told the waiter, "Listen, bring your best wine." And that was it. The guy comes back, it was not an Israeli wine. Now it was very dry and very smooth, very soft, very silky, easy to drink. But what? No life. There's no life to it. The guy charged us 1,000 shekels for the bottle. And I would never pay 1,000 shekels for a bottle of wine. It was easy, it was smooth, but no life. There was no— And I looked to— I was with the head of Binyamin, Rosh Moratzah, and he looks at me, he's like, "There's no life to this wine." We're already so spoiled in our region, and I think that would give the answer. In our wines, I try for there to be character. I try for there to be life. And I think when you taste it, you feel like a story and you feel life, you feel like something going on. It is not just a taste, but it is an experience. It is a havaiah. And each wine we are going to see, as we are going to go now to the Cab soon, you are going to feel that flavor, the life, the characteristic to it.

This PV is blowing me away. I never, ever expected, never expected this.

Yeah, me neither.

Wow. Me neither. So what varietals do you make?

So we planted now a lot, but they're not all giving fruit yet, ripe fruit. So if we go to my 7 Spheras. So first I have the bottom, which is Malkus, or the 7 Spheras.

That's the cab.

No, my cab is my first vineyard I planted. That's a different— that's somewhere else. That's across the mountain, across the valley, right under my vineyard. In the malchus, I have a Merlot, a Barbara, Shiraz, Cabernet Franc, and then 2 whites, 3 whites, Chardonnay, Gewürz, and Chenin Blanc. Wow, that's just—

you are really pushing it. Yeah, everything.

Each one is about between a dunam to 3 dunam, about. Got it. That's just in the bottom. And then I have 7 sfiras, 7 terraces. The first one is is Sauvignon Blanc. After the Sauvignon Blanc, I have Rosanne, another white. Yeah. After the Rosanne, I have something very special. It's 3 varieties on one terrace: Pinotage, Mordova, and Cabernet Franc. And the idea is you harvest them together and you make one organic wine with 3 varieties. So Sauvignon Blanc, Rosanne, the 3, and Mordova. Barbara, Grenache, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Grigio.

Wow.

And the idea is each one to make a vat of 1,000 to 3,000 liters. Some are white, some are rosés, some are reds.

As you go up, the terraces get bigger?

No. Or about the same? The number 1 is actually the biggest. 2, 3, 4, and 5 are about the same. Number 6 again is very long, and the 7th is actually very small. Wow. So what's in the 7th? Pinot Grigio.

That's the Pinot Grigio?

Yeah.

Wow.

The 7th, Rakhia. And my dream is the Pinot Noir and the Pinot Grigio to make champagne-style wines.

Cool. Novillonier.

I don't know what that is.

Okay, it's another varietal. It's another variety.

Never heard of it. Okay, well, if I have next year, I have a spot to plant, I'm thinking of planting Carignan.

Okay.

Or more, um, Cabernet Franc to make Queen Jane.

Okay.

Or what would you suggest?

Um, there are two whites that are— that can be incredible. Um, one is Viognier that a lot of people, um, use. And another one is Sémillon.

It's fruity.

It's— yeah, Sémillon, you need to, um, you need to deal with it specially. And even Viognier— Viognier is, is, uh, really crisp and light and wonderful. But you're doing a great job so far. So I mean, I'm not—

no, no, I'm learning.

I've never tasted Cabernet Franc.

I'm always learning more. Yeah, you know, before this Cab, I want to— I'm trying to think what we should do first. I have a Cabernet Franc, 100%. It's in the vat.

That's right.

Not ready yet. Yeah, also '21, and I'm trying to figure out if I should do something to it or bottle it as is. We can take it out soon of the vat.

We can taste it.

Let's do it.

I'm happy.

I'll go get it.

Happy to taste it.

Yeah, let's go into the barrel room. But, uh, and I do want to do some Bituni.

That's also— but what are you building over here?

Ah, you want to know all the secrets? Yeah, that is going to be my barrel room. Wow. Broken into the bedrock. You see that?

Yes, I see.

200 square meters. You're going to come in from the side, you're going to walk down and like all in the— yep, narrow steps.

Yep.

And there is going to be where I'm going to make champagnes. Champagne room and barrel room.

You're crazy. You're crazy.

Only now you realize that?

Champagne? No, no. Champagne is really meshuggah.

I know, but it'll be buot.

What?

It won't be champagne, it'll be buot. Champagne style.

Okay.

Judea and Samaria, buot. This is my barrel room.

Beautiful.

So here I have all the wine that's aging. These are my new barrels. That my '21, my '24 harvest is about to go into it.

And these are all the '24 harvest stuff.

Um, these are the '24.

Yeah.

This one is actually '21. I don't know why it says '23. It's a mistake.

Okay.

And here.

Good.

I just took it out of the barrel right before bottling, but now I feel like it's not ready to be bottled. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

Go.

Got it.

Come on, I'm going to pour you some into your glass.

No, no, no, I— my head's already spinning too much. All right, you taste, you taste it. I actually just tasted it yesterday. So I'm trying to feel like it might be a little too tanniny, I think. 100% Cabernet Franc. It might be too tanniny to bottle. So another thing we built here, you'll see right across, we built 4 cabins. And their mom is here, will go in them soon, and they're overlooking the vineyards. So it's like you come here, you enjoy the winery, and then you stay in the vineyard. What do you think of the Cabernet Franc? I think it's not ready for bottling. I think the tannins are still too high. What do you think?

I think they're beautiful.

Really? Like that? As is?

I really think it's beautiful.

You don't think I should sell them with the tannins, maybe?

Um, wait. These have a certain audience.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

This has a certain audience, okay?

So it has to be the audience.

It's not the same audience as those by any means. This has got nothing. It's not lacking for anything.

You wouldn't leave it like that? Do a clean carbonara, Frank?

In a heartbeat.

All right, I'm gonna taste some of it. And as you said, it's not only unique, it's balanced, it's smooth. Yeah.

Um, the tannins are not The tannins are not a problem, at least for me.

I hear— no, you want a powerful wine, you want the tannins.

Yeah, but it's not overpoweringly tannin. So talk to me about all the wines you make, all the different— so the terraces that you made, you, you created the terraces?

They weren't here already? Yeah. Okay, we took existing ancient terraces and made them a lot bigger, wider, did a lot more work on them.

How deep are they?

Deep? Well, we'll go out and see them, but some of them could be like 2 meters high, some of them more even. You'll see the bedrock, the broken bedrock underneath.

Did you smash the bedrock underneath it?

Yeah, big time.

Huge excavators in order for the grapes to go through them.

Yeah, another thing we do is before we— while we're doing the terraces, we take the excavator the big hammer. You just put it in the ground and it vibrates and creates cracks. And those cracks, later on, the roots are able to go into them. There's these like professors in agriculture and they usually come once a year in this area.

Yep.

And when they hear about how much water we use or how much water we don't use, they're like, How does it grow?

Yeah.

And we're like, they're like, so why are you calling us here? Like, if you're not going to listen to our advice anyways. And then we're like, listen, they're like, you know, according to the books, maybe it won't grow, but if it does grow, you'll get the best, best, highest quality grapes, right? That's what they tell us. But they say, because they're coming, remember, as grape growers, not as winemakers, right? And they're saying this is not financially sustainable. Because you get such little amount of grapes, you're not going to cover the costs of, you know, it costs about, you know, at least $1,000 a year per dunam just to upkeep, right? You're talking about, you know, the tractors, the pruning, the work, and all that. And then we didn't get the harvest, plus it cost money to harvest. And if you can't make that back in selling the grapes, or you make exactly that in selling the grapes, yeah, if you're making a little amount, so here it's not financially sustainable.

So ideally what you want to do is you want to make the wine.

Exactly. Yeah, you're making the wine. It's a good story. But remember, in Israel, that's not the default.

In Israel, the default is you're growing grapes to sell grapes to sell to somebody else.

Yeah. If you are a farmer down south in the Jordan Valley, in the Golan, you just get water thrown at you and you pay like a shekel, 2 shekels per kub, 1,000 liters. Here, first of all, we do not have water. When we finally do have water, I could sometimes pay 15 shekels a kub instead of 1 shekel. Very hard.

So ideally, what you do not want is grape juice. What is wine? So one of the things that people have said this year is that with the war and everything else that's gone on, that the yields have been much lower.

Yeah, very low. The yields were different this year. I'm not sure why. I don't know if it has to do with the war, but the yield was definitely lower this year. But it's a wave, sometimes more, sometimes less.

I understand. So what some people have said to me is it is— there is a sadness because of the war.

Yeah, definitely.

Even in the land. And there is lesser yield.

Yeah.

But with a lesser yield, the quality of the grapes The concentration of the grapes has been much greater.

Yes, that is always how it is when there is lesser yield.

Right.

But it is so true what you are saying, because even here, this Thursday night we are having an event here. I feel like on my conscience, it is wrong that I am even advertising.

I do not think so.

Because we have my friends there in Lebanon or in Gaza. Yes. I have been there until recently. And it's like, we're just— I mean, I know that's victory that we're able to get.

No, that's not— it's, it's, it's okay.

It's definitely a tova hamitiv. Okay.

Birkat Adonai Eloheinu, melech haolam, a tova hamitiv.

I'm gonna wait. Give it like a nice swirl. This is my 2020 Cab. See how fruity that is?

It's delicious.

That is crazy wine.

Yeah, I know.

How unique is that? Now you understand what, when I was telling you about how there's life in the wine.

Yeah.

Your momma should feel like life. Right. There's fruit, there's so much going on. And this is just 100% Cab, single mountain vineyard, nothing to it. It's God's presence, God's prophecy. No tricks, no addition, no playing around with it.

No extra stuff. Yeah.

No, what they call it, smatzvim. Designers, no chemicals, nothing. And we do everything right here. Hand harvest these vats right here, hand bottled, pumped into the barrels, out of the barrels, all by me and my kids. And then we have volunteers that come. Yeah, and you know especially why? Because when we were talking about Jeremiah and he's talking about the Jews coming back to the mountains of the Shomron, planting vineyards— why did he say vineyards? He could have said plant wheat. I'll tell you the difference. You're planting wheat, that means you're surviving. If you're making wine, you're flourishing. And we have to flourish. We can't just survive.

100%.

That's why the wine is so important, because that means we're already—

We're beyond surviving.

Exactly. So this, you see, is 220, very full body.

This is delicious.

Baruch Hashem. And, um, life, it's vibrant, it's happening. I would let it sit for probably another couple hours to really let it open up, because, you know, 26 months in the barrel.

This is the 2020 Cab? Yeah.

Wow. Single vineyard. After this, we're going to do the About a year ago. Okay, so we'll do '21 brandy and then port. I think port's the dessert. This is a '21.

This is a 2020. 2020 was a great year.

Yeah, you're gonna taste the '21. It's pretty good. Now, '21 was supposed to barrel it after 2 years, and then the war hit, so it's had another 6 months in the barrels. Ended up barreling after 30 months.

And, uh, that's really good.

It's very similar to the 2020. I think it's a little bit less fruity, but still very powerful. Now, a little secret in this '21. I took this Cabernet Franc that you tasted before Yeah, and then you blend it a little in, 6%. Okay, so that's like not even considered. Yeah, it gives it like a tint. Now I have— there's some, we call them, uh, cab snobs. Yeah, Glenn's a cab snob. They like their cab 100%.

Don't tell him, don't tell him.

No, he says it, he tells me, he's like, I'm a cab snob, I love 100% cab, don't touch my cab.

You know what?

But I, I, I, you know, I was actually with—

you'll never know it.

I was, yeah, I was with Ari Tannenbaum. Yeah, really. But I was with Ari Tannenbaum and we sat here.

Yep.

We tasted with it and without it, with it and without it. We did 10%, 5%, and then we did 6%. And we just felt that what it did, you don't taste the Franc, but it takes the Cabernet Sauvignon and it brings it to perfection, gives it that extra balance. And that's why we did it. And this was just bottled a couple months ago.

This was just bottled.

Yeah, so it still needs time to, you know, go through the bottle shock and relax and all that. Baruch atah Adonai, hina ma'achalom tov atzilu. Wow.

It's delicious. It's crazy.

I have 4 Sauvignon Blancs.

Yeah.

But I also have Pinot Noir rosé that I'm going to turn into champagne, into Brouhaha. See this? Wow. This wine was 2018 wine, and I had a batch that I was not so proud of.

Yeah.

So I decided to turn into brandy. Been sitting here in this barrel for about 2 years. That's where it gets the color in the oak. And this is brandy.

Wow.

Smell that oak.

Oh yeah. You're gonna bottle it as brandy?

What?

You're gonna bottle it as brandy? Go, go, go.

Yeah, yeah, it'll be a bottle of brandy. Needs some time and energy and some money to buy bottles and everything is, you know.

Everything costs money. This is, this actually is really nice. Thank you very much.

It's not— It's very hot, it's powerful.

Well, yeah, but it's not— It's not bad. A lot of—

compliment, not bad.

No, no, no. Okay, I'll tell you what, my attitude about some of the sweet dessert wines and also things like brandy is that it's, it's okay, but there's like a bad edge to it.

Okay, okay.

This doesn't have a bad edge to it. There's nothing wrong with this. When I say there's nothing wrong, it means that's pretty good.

You know, like, it took 2018 wine and I distilled it 4 times. Wow. I did 1 time, 2 times, 3 times. Do it 1 more time. Look, you know what, do it 1 more time.

Awesome.

Every time you distill, you lose a lot.

How so? How so? You lose flavor?

No, you lose amount. Oh, you lose quantity.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's the big part. That's the big— you put on the fire and it evaporates, and the idea is you catch the steam and it drips back in, but in the process you lose a lot of it. I didn't know that. And which makes it a lot more expensive.

So that's why when people say that there's still something 4 times, even vodka, it's expensive.

Yeah, first of all, the process is time and money. Every— I have an 80-liter still. Every time that from the 80-liter, I'll take out maybe 20 liters, 25, and depending on which— the later on the still, the more you take out. But besides that, it takes 7-8 hours, sometimes more. So you need to sit here by the fire. Yeah. Besides that, you lose a lot. You lose a lot, but it gets softer and softer every time. The Jandeli brandy I made, I have over there. I distilled it twice, and I'm thinking if I should go for a third time or not. Because it gets softer, but you also lose fruitiness. So sometimes you don't want it.

So you don't really want to do that.

So I'm trying to figure out right now if I should do it or not. Now, my— this is the special stuff now I'm bringing.

That's a jandali?

What?

Which one is that?

This is the port.

Oh wow, it's poured from what?

This is 100% Cab.

Okay.

What I do in my vineyard is I leave like 2 rows, so I harvest everything at 27 bricks about, then I leave this for a couple more weeks till it gets to 34, 35 bricks, and then harvest it. It's raisins, and it's so thick you can't do it, you with any machines. The pumps, everything, they get clogged. So everything is by hand, buckets. It's a lot of work. Last year I tried it, didn't— it went bad. So I'm turning it into, uh, brandy. This year I have my, uh, in the vat. I think it went okay. And this is like chocolate. It— mamish tastes like chocolate.

This is lovely.

I don't know how it has a chocolate flavor. I was actually just reading about it now, how somehow—

it's actually not even chocolate. I'll tell you what it is. It's a thing that they serve, which is cherries with chocolate.

I say it's cherry-covered chocolate.

This is cherry-covered chocolate.

And the amazing thing is it's 100% grapes. Yeah, so the flavor is— God made the flavor. I didn't add— even though science tells you something, at the end of the day, trust your tongue and trust your flavor.

This is not—

and, and I, and I tasted it and I'm like, it doesn't need it.

It would have been— it would have—

and I said it would be moist and gory.

Yeah, it would have—

it would have, you know, screwed it up. There's— this would be moist.

Right.

And I listened to that inner voice. Also Pascal telling me, right? And I didn't add it, and it just kept on by itself getting better and better and better and better. It sat in the barrel.

If you added alcohol to that, it would have—

it would have—

it would have been— it would have been a very nice dessert aperitif, but it wouldn't have been like—

it wouldn't have been this chocolatey. Yeah. So this is 100% grapes, and when it sat in the barrel So the H2O evaporates, so it gets thicker and thicker and thicker. My soldiers. From South Africa. In South Africa they drink wine, yeah?

Shalom u'bracha. Baruch Hashem.

This is Shuli, my South African brother.

From South Africa?

We're just doing, finishing up an interview. So what's nice about it is I feel, I really feel, and it's nice that he came in now because I feel that the bracha, the blessing, is that the way we built this place, and we have guys like him and girls that are here in Israel, their parents are in the States or in South Africa or in Europe. And I try as much as I can to make it like home for them here. And they'll come here. I just had a guy last week, Tully, came here. Came right out of Lebanon, just like this guy here. This guy was serving here, but he was serving in Lebanon, and he was there for, I think, 6 weeks. He had a week off, and he decided for half of the week to come here and work in the winery. And he felt at home here. That's what's special. He felt at home, and he also invited his fiancée. He's from New York. His fiancée is actually Israeli, like parents are American but born here. And he came here, and this is where he wanted to be because this is where he felt at home. He doesn't have a home here, and he comes here and he feels at home, and he stays here and he works here. And that's the bracha. The bracha is huge. Like, we're not here for ourselves, we're here to give to other people. And you asked before, like, the sustainability of the area. Yeah. And to build a place where people are like him, are able to come work a little bit, take some wine, feel a part, feel like they're being part of something constructive. That's what it's all about.

It's awesome. Very, very special.

I feel that's the bracha. And when you taste the wine, you taste that. And you taste that.

So that was the question I was going to ask you. What's your wish for people to taste when they taste your wine?

Wow. I think the same way with how when you taste the wine and there's that complexity, there's so much, so many flavors. That's like a good wine. So there's so many things, but the end of the day, it's chesed. It's working hard. It's hazarim bidima berina yikzeru. You're planting in those thorns that you told me that you feel in your hands. And years later—

So good.

Years later, you feel the blessing and you feel the fruit. And it's emunah and bitachon and azar and bedima, berurah and ikzerah.

Amen. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for being on the Kosher Teruah.

Thank you. Amen. Amen.

This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of The Kosher Teruah. 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're new to the Kosher Terroir, please check out our many past episodes.