Journey Through the Sands of Time - The Unique Winemaking at Yatir Winery with Eti Edri and Ya'ak...

Welcome to The Kosher Terroir.

I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. A small group of us arranged a visit to the Atir Winery located in Tell Arad in the Negev desert wine region of Israel. Yatir was founded in 2000 and established its vineyards at the historically original location of vineyards from some 2,500 years ago. This is going to be a bit different from my regular podcasts, as this was recorded live as we explored the very special terroir that Yatir Winery and its vineyards are located within. Come along as Etty Edry drives us from the winery down in the desert up to the Atir Forest, the location of their famed vineyards. All along the way, she describes the interaction of the two dramatically different terroirs of the desert and largest manually planted mountain forest in the world. After returning to the winery, Yaakov Ben-Dor takes us through the winery, pointing out their special innovations and interesting issues that they have encountered since their founding in 2000. Both Etty and Yaakov are passionate about the winery, its location, and the historical relevance and implications of rebuilding a Jewish wine industry where it existed 2,500 years ago. Our group's exuberance was in great part attributable to its extraordinarily inquisitive members, who were Paul Denby from London, England; Adam Miller from New York City; Yakov Shakotovitz from Los Angeles, California; my son and daughter-in-law Ovadia and Leila Jacob from Birkenfield, New Jersey; and my wife, Barry, and myself from Jerusalem. Because of its length, I am publishing our actually crazy, truly crazy wine tasting as a separate part 2 podcast. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a wonderful glass of kosher wine.

Hello!

I'm on air.

Oh my goodness! I know everybody— Everybody hears us now? Are you comfortable?

Now, the first thing you have to learn about having a microphone on you: do not swear. Never.

Me, I never swear.

Homie, do not swear.

Unless you—

Okay, are we good?

One second, one second.

Are you guys comfortable in the back? It's tight.

Yes.

Take a look over here, it's a huge solar farm. Yes, that actually, you know, when you need to reinforce your agriculture, you got to bring some more financial, you know, strength. So you do it through renewable energy. So that's what we are doing. And all these storks on the way to Africa, by the way. Even though they told me Africa, but I think it was supposed to be the other way. They should be migrating up north, I think, no? So anyway, there's a lot of them, so I guess we're gonna have lots of babies. Baby Darom on the left, as you can see. We came to the market, Yatir came to the market with a new brand called Darom. It's made by Yatir, but it's not from the forest. It comes from the south. So we're kind of taking ownership on the south too. Not just Yatir, Judan Hills area.

Bottle of wine in our hotel room was Darom.

I know, yes, it's a easy to drink wine, it's light, you know. So if you might as well drink light and accessible wine, watching the sunset, sipping on the Darom. I'll wait for them cuz there's two cars in the back. So this is Arad Valley. Wow, there's a lot of them, look on the front over there. Yeah, so this is Arad Valley, it's 500m above sea level. It's arid soil, as you can see, yellow. Wow. It's incredible. And it is— it doesn't get much water. Of course, we are in the desert climate, so you get maximum— wow, on good years, woo! 100mm rain a year. And all of it comes in one day. So you get 1 or 2 days of, like, heavy, heavy rain, maybe 3 days, and it's gone. It's being flooded all the way down to the Dead Sea. So the soil is actually not receiving much because of the strength of the water touching the soil. It doesn't open it up, yeah. So there's no activity underneath. So you have to really rely on what you can assist the vines with your own abilities, like pesticides, eh, how you may— me dashnim, dishoon.

Fertilizer.

Fertilizing, yeah. You gotta do everything on your own. You can't rely too much on the soil, plus the sun is very, very strong. So you get a lot from the sun. On the right side you see— on the left side you see Tel Arad Citadel. I will talk about it in a minute. On the right side you see the Gadash, the, the 3 villages: Carmel, Maon, Bet Yatir, who live in the mountain. They came here in the '80s, and the first thing they've done is planted a vineyard, a Cabernet vineyard, Sauvignon Blanc vineyard, and a Shiraz vineyard.

They also isn't it?

Or is that a vineyard? Um, no, no, you saw, you saw what you saw. There's also an additional, which is the olives that they planted, a mishmish, one of the yummy mishmishes in the world that grow here. Also, uh, no, is the mishmish is apricot. Yeah, no, no, it's okay. And, um, What else they grow there? Of course, there's like a falha, which is a— it could be from— it depends on what you want to grow and what brings more money. It's the garlic, it's the onions that they grow, potatoes if needed, wheat. That is changeable, but the permanent ones are almonds, apricots, And vines, of course, and olives.

Apricots require so much water.

Yes, but, well, we have a lot of recyclable water, so they use that if they can. If not, regular tap water. And it's a very quick growth, you know, it grows grows from, I would say, within 2 weeks you have. That's my son. Okay, okay. So we are climbing up. If we were 500m above sea level, we met also the Citadel of Tel Arad. The Citadel of Tel Arad is mentioned also during Joshua's era when the Israelites wanted to enter Israel. They were not ready yet to conquer the country, and the first encounter was with the, with the King of Arad. So King of Arad pushes them back and they go down to the Jordan Valley again and come back from Jericho the next time they conquer, and they conquer, you know, the whole country through there. So it's a crucial historical site, but not— it doesn't get the attention it should from the country because it used to be— they found in Tel Arad also an altar. We know that on top of Tel Arad being a home, like a, a center, a trade center of all kinds of merchandise, wine, and all sorts of other merchants. Um, the place was also, um, a sacred place. It was, I guess, I believe that it was for people who could not travel all the way up to Beit HaMikdash in Yerushalayim. They could put their mincha over here. This is why I'm so happy.

I don't understand how anything grows here.

See, with a lot of chutzpah, everything grows here. All you have to have is Jewish people living here.

Point the bottom of it towards her.

The bottom of it.

This is, this is a Nachal Krayot. It's a training base for Nachlawim, for people who go for Nachal. And like, there is one Machaneh Shmonim up north. This is the southern one. So they train here. All the rookies train here. This is Amasa. When we talk about Amasa, people ask me, "Why are you calling your name of wines difficult names like Amasa?" And I'm like, it's— that's our ancestry. This is where our ancestors used to live and produce wine. And of course, Amasa used to be one of King David's one of the heroes, Giborah, Ministry of Armory. That was his name. And this is Mount Amasa. That's a mountain after his name. It was called Amasa Ben Yeter. Ben Yeter. What does that mean? It came from Yeter. Exactly. So just calling our names, you know, our red blend is not enough. I think there's so much story to tell behind the wines. That you must convey it through the label. And that's what we have done in 2011. We stopped calling it just a Yatir red blend. We start naming it with the local areas like we have done with the first wine, which is the flagship of the winery called Yatir Forest. So this is a Masaa Natural Reserve. It's for animals, mainly nocturnal, you say? For night? And nocturnal animals that come like coyotes, foxes, Sometimes even wolves that come. There used to be a sign back there saying beware of camels. Absolutely, camels are there. Yeah, it's very dangerous when you drive to hit a camel. This is like— and this is Nachal Kriot, and Kriot, the city, the city of Kriot, Judaish Kriot, if you know Judea, men of Kriot. He lived here. So it's all around biblical stories. It is what it is. But we are very happy to be there to revive that story back to life because wine was not being produced here, as you probably know, for more than 1,200 years after the Muslim conquer. There was a lot of wine before that, up all the way up to the 7th century. There was major wine production here. And we know that because there's like excavations of wine presses areas. Nearly 200 of them were found at the forest. So I'm very happy, by the way. I feel like I'm a part of a Nifal Chaim, of something that you are a part of reviving back to life, which is an extraordinary thing. It doesn't happen to everyone to You know? Huh? And when it comes down to Yatir, I mean, you combine the quality alongside the quality of the terroir of the area where the grapes grow, which is a very unique one, and I'll show you in a minute. The winery is amazing. I was lucky enough to fall into the wine world directly to Yatir. I remember I was selling their first Cabernet, which was Yatir Forest, and I had that back then. People would tell me, "Huh, why are you selling it so expensive, the forest?" And I say, "I don't think it's expensive. I think you should actually—" That was in 2003, 2004. I said to them, "Buy 2, age 1, and make sure you keep 1 aside." That was the 2003 that I was selling back then. It was 140 shekels. That was like— if I would have known, I'd probably buy a bit more and stash it.

Back in 2003, there were 8 shekels to the pound. So it's quite cheap.

Right, yeah, right? Back in the good old days. Exactly. So if we're talking about a terroir, you see, it all of a sudden changed from being arid to something livelier because there is much more minerality, there is clay, there is chalk in the soil. It is much, much better than what we saw down there, which is just yellow. And in yellow surrounding, you have to work much harder. Here, at least the vines work hard, which is looking deeper for the water. So take a look on the left. Welcome to Yatir Forest. This is the largest hand-planted forest in the world. 4.5 million trees planted by hand. It's scattered all around the 30,000, 35,000 dunams, 40,000 dunams. Already, which is 10,000 acres. I'm going to try and take you to a point where we can see the differences between, um, the landscape, uh, from the forest, the, the mountain, to the, to the, uh, desert, as we call the mountain-desert view. So we don't see very clear picture, but Yatir is Basically, where you see the greenery there, there is the Judaean Desert on the left side. There's the Negev, and then there's the Judaean Hills. So you get a breeze at night. You get very cold winter. Here we can get snow if it snows in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. We also get very hot summers. When it's really, really hot and you stand in the sun, it's almost unbearable. But it's better than Tel Aviv because you never sweat. Right. Okay, even in Yerushalayim today I think you sweat, right? Yeah. The humidity is quite high. And when you move to the shade from the sun, there's the difference. I mean, even in such small particles, you feel the differences of the microclimate. So that eventually has a major effect, I think, not just only on us, but for the people people who used to live here in the past understanding that this is a place where you should be actually growing grapes and producing wine because back then, definitely in the desert area, you would not find water as easily as you would find probably wine. So you might as well drink more wine and water only on special occasions. Okay?

So— And today is one of those occasions.

Exactly. We are now at it. Okay? I don't know if you heard me, but Yatir Forest is the largest hand-plant forest in Israel and in the world, we assume, because it's 4.5 million trees planted by hand. So if you ever donated anything to JNF, you know that's where it's going. And it's a wonderful organization because it keeps on doing that over and over again. Every Tu B'Shvat or throughout the year, people keep on coming and planting trees, and something amazing happened by planting those trees. It's simply doing one major thing that assists us, the agriculturists, is to stop the desert from expanding. So when you stop the desert from expanding, there's much more livelihood going on because desert has ability to sometimes not kill, but I think they make it difficult on you. Yeah, because desert has its own, its own Achomim, positive advantages, identity. Yes. Still thinking of changing the tree? I know this forest fire because of the pine trees, right? Nachon, yes. You can just— Are they switching out other varieties? They're adding, not switching. It's very hard to switch. But the most important thing is when it's a hand-planted forest, you can plant it separate from one another so there'll be a space that's protecting you. One of the first vineyards we planted at Yatir Forest, and I'll explain why we started planting here. Is that vineyard. It's a Cabernet Sauvignon. Because it's a narrow road, I can't stop here, but it's a Cabernet Sauvignon. It's from 1996. Of course, it's one of the best-producing vines, vineyard. And not every year, it could change. It depends on the climate. See these little trees, by the way? They are self-induced. They grow by themselves, by the sun. Seeds that fly around. So, JNF, whenever it plans a forest, it plans it first and makes sure it leaves empty plots in the middle of the forest so people can come and live and, you know, create agriculture basically, because they want to revive the history back to life. And we know for sure that, as I said before, wine was being produced here in massive quantities. And also being traded at the Tel Arad. So we realized that for us having vineyards at Tel Arad, which is one of the best Cab, the first Cab Arad Valley, I don't know, Jacob, if you are familiar with it? Arad Valley Cabernet 2000 from Carmel. That was the first wine that they've tried. And it was amazing. One of the best Israeli wines as well. But it's still, you know, in order for us to become something unique and more versatile with the varieties, additional varieties, we needed a bigger space. So we realized that there is a potential here at the Atir Forest. There's much more and many more areas to plant. That's the You have Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Tempranillo, and Carignan we just planted recently. Sanson, which we harvested. This is the second time we harvest it. It's funny, yesterday we sat together and they are talking, "You know, we tasted the Sanson, it tastes amazing. What kind of a wine grape?" I said, "It's not just a wine grape, it's also a..." You know, table grape. You can actually go to the tree and pick it up and eat it. But I was with the Iran TV yesterday, and we tasted the— even the cab. I mean, everything you taste has, like, the right ripeness. And it's now during the harvest time, you know, that definitely something great is gonna come out of it. So, we also have nectarines. We also have cherries. That grow here. People don't believe that in the mountain desert you grow cherries. And— Yeah, that's crazy. I know. The— Smangeola. Because it gets cold. Right, exactly. So when the leaves shed, that's when they get the massive cold hours. And you need to have certain cold hours. Like in the vine, a minimum of 150, 150, 20 hours of really, really cold, between 0 to 5 degrees Celsius. This is where I live, and lucky me, my surrounding in this is this. And even in August when it's hot, you still get that breeze that kind of chills it down. So the same thing happens to the vines. Eventually by 3 o'clock, even though it was such a hot day, you get that breeze that comes in and cools everything down. And by 6, 7, it's already nice and easy to sit down outside. But also, I would say 8, 9, you need to cover your shoulders with something because it's cold. It becomes chilly. So we are doing the harvest time today, and it's also a great pleasure for me to host you here. It's a special event for me as well. I am usually like, yes, send wine. I need to send a container here, container there. I do the export for all of Carmel. But when these days come, come, I put everything aside just to make sure I won't forget where I'm originated from.

Grapes you have like right there, you know what the—

which one you have?

Right over the side, right over on the side with the rows.

Um, I, I— you show me, would you, what you mean exactly? Yeah, yeah, 'cause they're like— it could be 10 rows of Carignan and it could be 10 rows of Shiraz. Oh wow. It really depends on which one you are actually pinpointing. Oh, okay. So I'm—

I was just— the ones, the ones on the side, it's Yeah, mix is probably the right answer.

Yeah, it's mix. Okay. But we grow, like, for here it's only Cab. Okay, the Cab was, you know, we try to give it more because there's a demand. But then we know that we want to start producing wines that are more suitable for this climate. So we want to use the lighter, okay, you know, thin skin, the Grenache, the Carignan. Yeah, exactly. So everybody else grows growing suzal other than you? I have no idea.

I think maybe Judean Hills, probably together.

You know what you get? What do you get? That's true.

I didn't know anybody was growing suzal. And you're gonna make it as just as a blending, or you're gonna make a suzal by itself? I don't know yet.

It's the second year of harvest. I think— I don't think it's going— he's going to make— he's going to use it for his blend. He's mainly doing blends. Yeah, I think, I think this one— you see, it's a mix, but there is a valley in between them. I think, I think this one is also a Cab or a Cab Shiraz. I have to ask. This is a wine press area. It used to be, of course, deeper, covered. It's not as big as you would think. I mean, I mean, there's a massive industry, but there are 200 of them. In every corner you would walk, like hike, you would find some sort of an ancient wine press. So they would bring the baskets, they would sing Eid Adha, Eid Adha. It's also a time of Tu B'Av. You would find your shiduch, and they would press, of course, wash their feet very well, and then stand. Imagine 4 or 5 women, Rav Akot, looking for shiduch, stepping on the— this is a very nice This is in a white dress. And no, white, it was white, really? It had to be white. I didn't know that. Wow. Yeah, before they did it, it was white. After they did it, it was like probably like colored. But you know, I will pause for a second and say, Birkat Yaakov LeYehuda is right here in this area, all the way up to Usha'layim. But it says, osri la'gefeni ro, means, you know, it would tight your your animal, to your donkey, to the vine, it doesn't matter what it would do, it would not push itself out. But it says, at the end of the blessing, it says, "Hachliye naim eayin, lavenshi naim echalah." But it also says, "Kabes beyayil avusho." It's talking about wash your clothes with the wine. So you say, okay, probably we will talk about no maceration out, just, you know, being in touch only with the juice itself. That answers probably your question if it was white and what happened to the drizz. So, of course, crushing it with feet, making sure, like the press does today, is pressing it gently, making sure you extract everything you need, but move aside everything that you do not, that is unnecessary. And there is also a well down there. Again, you want to work, but you need water. So every place you would see humans, there's also a well in order to preserve the water so you can drink them. And they were so smart at that time. They didn't barely had any, any— tools to work with, right? So they had to think about everything that even the water that comes from the sky, you know, from rain. They would excavate like little channels, yeah, in order for getting the max— to maximize the activity of the water into the well.

Just amazing difference in temperature from where we just were to here with the trees. That's true.

See, that's what I'm talking about, that terroir. It's just so microclimatic. Yeah, oh, for sure. 15. How much is 15? Shalosh. Kamesh, Malo. It's usually 2 to 3 degrees. Yeah, somewhere in there. Yeah, you can see from the right how enormous that forest is, and we are just at the, the northern eastern tip of it.

We're still planting more trees.

Yes, all the time. You see, because it's not a natural growth, it's hand planted, so the trees you plant are far from one another. Now you would think those 3 villages, they come here as a chutzpah, yalla, and they open the Bible. They say, let's do what our ancestors did. What did they do? Birkat Yaakov leYehuda. Okay, let's plant a vineyard. First thing, they plant a vineyard.

We then stopped briefly to taste some of Yatir's new Darom brand wine. And we sat under some trees. And we talked a little bit and enjoyed.

Shalom, tovim, shalom. Amen, amen.

Thank you, Simon, for organizing today.

I didn't do anything.

You organized it. So Darom, it's just a way of expressing to the younger people, younger crowd, there's hope. Not every bottle of wine is going to cost you over 150 shekels. You're going to enjoy a light, easy, accessible wine for 80 shekels. On the shelf, and we want to bring you into that world. So join us.

That's poetic because the same thing is happening in the country from a demographic standpoint, right? People looking for housing. Moshkim darom, limtso batim, limtso, you know.

Yes. I hope that, you know, I— at least for me, I feel we, my family and Yatir Winery, is— we have done something that's giving some hope to this area because it's almost virgin. It was virgin when we started the winery. Now you have Dreamia, you have La Forêt Blanche, you have Nana. You have— there's also other wineries down south that now they're growing. Mirage Foundation is taking all of the southern wineries and putting them together as a terroir, as an appellation. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The game is Mangeoula.

All of your grapes are from here? Yeah.

Whatever grows Foyatir wines will come from here. Only from here. What comes from the home, we kind of, you know, laid back. We say, okay, until we take out the cherries, the nectarines, all that, and replant with vines, we might use some of our friends' help, which is nanam, it's peramon. Zinfandel is here, yeah. Yeah, Zinfandel, Carignan. I said, "It's recent year." Tempranillo, by the way, was planted in 2008. We thought we're gonna make our rosé from it, a Grenache as well. We didn't think yet about Carignan or Cinsault. And it just didn't give us the, it didn't give Erhan the quality he was seeking for his rosés. And, you know, now we have the Rhône, which you can, you know, play with it more. He said, "It's like my new playground. I can play with that as," With Yatir, I have to be very specific and, you know, no— Maintain the— Exactly. The high, yeah. Also, I think that what he has done with the Rhône is that taking difficult grapes and making something good with it. Difficult to grow, I mean. I think with the Rahn, I can say that I keep on telling him, "Are you crazy to stop Cab? My American fellows, they love your Cab. Don't— It's like the Cab Yarden, you don't stop that." And he says, "Yes, I do, and I have to." because I'm going to be using it for Yatir Forest. I'm going to be using it for more amassá. And I want to focus on the terroir, on the place where the grapes grow. And they're, you know, they're— I think I should be accommodating ourselves to the area and not the opposite, not accommodating the area to others or to us. This is the winery team planted that one. We planted the Carignan. First Karenian, yeah, straight ahead. The new one, the new rose. Yes, that's Shiraz and Cabernet. It sounds like I'm saying only Cabernet and Shiraz, but no, there are many more. No, no, no, no. Yeah, this is, uh, pistachio trees. We call it botna, this one. See the pink one? So yes, that's Pistachio. Yeah. Do they have us on the phone? No. Okay. No, it's, it's okay. It's the, it's the end of the tour anyway at the forest. Now we're going to pass through small plots. There's also in the northern part of the forest, in the southern part of it, we just recently planted more Grenache, Carignan. And just to have more of these, um, Mediterranean climate, I guess, varieties. Again, when we planted the first ones, all we knew was Cab, Merlot, Shiraz, you know, Vionnier, Petit Verdot that we planted. And you extended that. There's an electric fence. It's not for human, it's for animals. Because animals tend to chew on the water. They seek for water and they go for, you know, they can— pipes. Oh dear. And it's just changing the whole water system. There's Carignan. I love Carignan. I think we will have eventually a blend of Carignan. We have a blend Syrah, we have a blend Cab. Drying out all the area. We're gonna make it ready soon for vines. We're gonna have more vines here. What's the grape? Probably around— probably Cabernet, I think, is gonna be planted because there's a request for that. But we try to, you know, Chanel Blanc is right here. Yeah, the white sprays. They're still quite young. So Tel Arad, when they excavated it, they— it was all covered in sand, and they did it just to make sure that it's going to be preserved and no Arab, Muslim, whatever it is, Christian would come and, you know, this— it was a sacred place. It was a mikdash. So when they excavated it, they excavated it, they found also a fortress. I mean, you see that people live there, they could live there for decades or years without needing to go out. Like wells, huge water wells, and, uh, mahsanim— how do you say— warehouses, storage rooms. Yeah. And, um, why am I telling you this? Because when we build Yatir, we had to connect the story of Yatir to the label, to the Bible, to the story, to everything that had to do with what you saw. Yeah. So they found broken clay written in ancient Hebrew. That ancient clay, the handwriting. The calligraphy is what we copied to Yatir look alike, you know, the graphics. Plus we added the Lion of Judea, which represents the Jewish tribe. It's a really—

it's actually a really lovely logo. It's very distinctive.

Yes. I think when you make wine, you've got to have first the great place to grow the grapes, then to have the wine. But you also need a good, you know, emphasis on the label. You have to make the label readable, understandable.

A wine store and you see hundreds of bottles of wines, right?

The label does stand out.

Yes. So now we are planting our own Darom vine so we can control the growth and the grapes and all that. So it's gonna get— even though it's 80 shekels, it's still going to be elevated and quality, to make sure we are, you know, I think as a winemaker you probably know, you have to control everything, the whole stages from the vine all the way through the bottling. So this was just, you know, to understand where the vines are coming from, the uniqueness of the terroir, the microclimate the history. And now we're gonna head down to see the winery, a glimpse through the barrel room because we are at harvest time. I'm not sure we can even go there, but definitely sit down to do some Yatir tastings. Okay, so 2 seconds, Yakov is going to join us. Ine, Jaco! This is Jaco, general manager of Yatir and founder. He's the founder of Yatir.

So for me, it's really— I'm happy that people came from all over the world because when we came here 42 years ago, it was nothing. And you see here? The brown hill? It's almond. Yeah. Yeah. When we pick it, we not need to roast it because it's so— But as you see, the dust is the thing. We suffer from a storm of dust also in the winter. So, but yeah, okay, you see with Etty, I think the area in the mountain especially. And now in this area, we are now 500 meters above the sea level. So 500 meters above the sea level. Is like a little bit like Tavor Mountain. So it's like the middle of Golan Heights. But up is— this is Ariel, our agronomist. Ariel, pleasure to meet you. One of the most important people. You know. Agronomist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Because— I'm in the shadow.

Oh no, I think that's a good place to be.

Yeah, or in the cellar, in the barrel room is the— You're in the Tabba Emsa harvest? What? You're a Tabba Emsa harvest? Yeah, we are, yeah, and we now have delay because it was too hot and the— Why? Go down slow, very too slowly. Okay. Because it's the— sometimes it's the opposite when it's hot. No, no, sometimes it stops the— for the vine, so suffer, so she stopped, shocked, and stopped to make sugar. Okay, wow. Yeah, and if it's— it's sometimes opposite. If the year is too hot, the— it's sometimes could be very strange. We have for Darom, Darom, our new brand, we have the Zinfandel that came from here. Yeah, we tasted that. And for me, yeah. And it's, for me, it's amazing because we have here Zinfandel. And 20 years we not succeed with this variety. Only very, very cheap, very cheap wine. Okay? And we try and try again. Sometimes, you know, the Zinfandel finish to be teenager. So then you can begin to speak with him. Be careful, okay? It's usual in the harvest. We are not— You can smell that you are in the harvest. You can't— And the birds can as well. What? Birds. Ah, you see the stork? You know the joke? Why in the Mediterranean we have a lot of baby and Europe have a problem? Because the stork stop here in the Mediterranean and put here all the babies. We try to walk very professional and keep the little details in the winery. For us, the cleaning, how you walk about the small things is very, very, very important. We make more than 80 single vineyard. In the end of the process, we have no single vineyard. It's not something to say I don't want single the vineyard, it's meaning that first I want to say that all the decision is Eran, the winemaker. For me, it's very important to say, okay, I know what I know, and more important, I know what I don't know. And I'm not the winemaker. And he lead the way the wine making going. And we all the time in movement. We not feel that Yatir succeed, so we are okay. No, we now planting more varieties and planting more small blocks of wine to work in a small quantity. And each vineyard have a unique, uh, personality. Yeah, and we want to keep going with this way. And you stop single vineyard? No, we never— no, we plant more and more. No, no, there are 80 different vineyards.

No, I'm saying that But you're only selling blend? You don't do Picap anymore? The Shiraz?

We have Petit Verdot, but the Petit Verdot will never be— I'm not saying never, never say never, but I mean it's not a target to do 100% Petit Verdot from one vineyard. The Petit Verdot could be from 3 different— okay. So the meaning, the target is the best wine that the winemaker, Eran, think this is the best wine. This is the state of mind. Not single variety, not single vineyard, the best wine. And for us, all the branding of the method is the best wine from this area. We not try to be like other variety or North Israel. It's not the same. Don't try to be the same. I think it's very nice that we have totally different wine. If you taste Syrah from Yatir and Syrah from Golan Heights, wow, totally different. I'm not saying it's better, it doesn't matter. If you are in the— you enjoy that it's different and that's it. Different style. Not only style. You can feel, and in the way you walk in, we have the oldest Cabernet Sauvignon from 2000 that plant in the forest. We harvest this block 3 or 4 nights. We have sometimes a week between the upper part and the lower part, the north part and the south part. Southern part. So 3 or 4 times we have it, and it's only 22 dunams there. You keep those separate as you're— Yeah, all the process, all the process we continue with them separately. Separately. And then they blend in the end. And then, yeah. So Iran decided to work hard. I mean, yeah, no, it cost money, but we not try to save money in the process. It's not the target, okay? And all that, we try to speak the language of the Hebrew man. We have a song of Eud Banai. I mean, Yatir, it's a name from the Bible, the lion symbol of Judea. We try to keep the name from the area, not to be intercontinental. This is the story. You like it, okay? No. Okay, so we also— this is— we was the first commercial winery in Israel that bring the basket press for in 2004. For me, it's very nice because we go back to the Mishnah time, to the old times, and when they use what called korat betabed in the Mishnah, that you take a big wood and put on it stones and press. It's— in the past, it was not standstill. It was a rope that you make a basket. But how you can clean rope? Okay, you see in the Galilee, you can see when they make oil in the old way, they use— put the olives in, but you can't clean it. So if the smell important for you, don't— you can't, uh, deal with that. Okay. And all those tanks is combi, the meaning the upper side is for fermentation and the lower is for staying. For me, it's very interesting because the fermentation show us that the vitality of the wine is in the clippings. Yep, yep. The meaning of, you know, as you say in the Kabbalah, that the life— you need the vitality, the things that look like not so good, but sometimes you need that And for us, it's important for us that we will not be in a hurry to make all the circle of very slowly and just. So these are full now? The tops? Part of them, yeah. Not all of them. And yeah, it's work like that. The fermentation in the upper part. After the fermentation, the free-run go to the lower part. You can see that the upper one is 7,500 liters and the lower is 4,200 because the ratio between— when it's bubbles— oh, not bubbles, like balls of grapes, it takes you more place. And then after that, you can see that we take We forklift the basket, put it here, and then we fill it. Okay? TPN, Temperanillo. We plant it in 2002. Not all the years we succeed with this variety. Sometimes we be careful, we remember we'll not touch the— Anything in the winery? No, no, everybody know that in wineries nobody touch. And okay, be careful. Come with me. Wait a minute, so they ferment it? Yeah, the ferment is here and then they crush it. Yeah, okay. Just if it's It's white or rosé, then you first crush it first. Yeah, but Tehran like a lot of time also the rosé. People speak about fast contact. Yeah, slow. Yeah, especially in the rosé of Yatir that could mature some years and have more— we're not dry. It's not— Darôme is one way of rosé, very nice, fruity, sharp. The Athier is totally different guys.

Interesting, because often you hear about rosé wine lasting for a season.

Most of the place, people think like that. In the past, I also were When I go to the market and I see our white wine, if it was 2 years on the shelves, I say, "Okay, replace it." Now, if you give us Viognier 2008 or Sauvignon 2009 to drink it now, wow. Wow. For me, it's surprise. But not if it was sitting on the shelf for 2 years. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with you, I agree with you. Because I want to show you something about the rosette that you asked me. Yes. I want to show you. No question. Okay. I want to go to the white wine, okay? In the past we have only one variety, in the First, we have one Sauvignon from the Arad Valley. After that, we have the Viognier in the mountain. And then we plant more, more variety. And now you can see that we run still in the beginning, part of the wine in used barrel and part in standstill. To combine them. And the third part was to you to bring more concrete tanks and to use and to make Soleil on the east, that the wine will stay on the east. It's give you that the wine will be wider, longer, but not more heavy. It's not like, you know, they use too much oak in the white, then it's too heavy. But I'm not saying nothing about the Napa style. Napa is Napa. They know. We have a joke. Ettie told me about the visitor center that we built just now in the Napa Valley. When I was there, I understand one thing. They first, they build visit Visitor Center. If it succeed, they will build winery. This is the way. We are in the old world. We are from the desert. We first make wine and then we think about— okay. But here we have two Viognier and one Viognier for my own. Vineyard. This is Carmel Vineyard. Here we have two Sauvignon Blanc. Eran have— why do like that? I don't know. This is also concrete? Yeah, yeah. Only the shape. Because sometimes people say that here you can see that the air is smaller and the sediment is wider. Okay, all the shape we, we try, we try, we try and try all the time. And until now we have all the reason to continue with the run, to move with the, you know, if the horse ride good, don't stop him. Are those countries as well? Yes, those are countries as well. North Italy, both of them. Yeah.

Why are the designations written in, uh, English letters?

Because the variety is more difficult to, uh, to— this is the sign that is— yeah, okay. That's, uh, we call this This street, we call it the Austrian Straße because all the barn is from Austria.

How many liters in one of these big barrels? Uh, 2,000.

2,000, I think. This is new. This is— you can see that it's just from the We never use it. Okay, it's— okay, the process, the process for us, the process in the winery that we begin with more regular barrels, that I mean regular barrels, 225 liters. And then when we want to reduce the amount of oak Then we use it not for 3 years, for 5 years. And then we begin to move to fooders. The first fooders we bring in 2006. And we step by step, we saw that it's give us something more and we buy more fooders. And then to try the shape, to try the kind of the oak, and it's so a lot, a lot of details. And for especially, it's amazing because for Iran, the barrel is the less important part in the time, in the process. First is the vineyard, then all the other, but also when you buy he invests a lot of every liter. Yeah. What he wants to get from there. And then to fit the wine in this season to which particular— yeah. All the time is— artist. He works very hard. Today we use up to 25 30% new oak in some variety like Petit Verdot, Cabernet. All the other get less and— or fooders. And because the wine is bigger, the ratio between the liquid and the surface is less. So you will get less oxygen and less flavor of oak. So especially if you use barrel after 15 years, you can't say that it affects the flavor of the oak, affect the wine.

What is fuder? Hmm?

What is fuder? Fuder is big vats or big cask, you can call it. You can see here that we more for 500 liters. And we have a lot of kind of barrel. Schneckenleitner of Hungary, wood, Taransault from France, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and like that.

It's all— it's purposeful, deliberate. It's deliberate which one you use for which?

Eran decided. Which one, which? And also in some batch, it is important for him to blend the bars. Ah, okay, interesting. You can't say in Yatir, okay, it's a Seguim Oro bar. I taste the Seguim Oro bar. It's very different. Difficult to find. Interesting.

So at what point do you decide on the blend for a particular wine? Not me. So you're going to release, I don't know, Yasi Forest 2023. So you have all these barrels, you just select barrels and just— and proportions, all that kind of stuff?

He does it all? It depends on the harvest. It's a great skill.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Because wine that young, you can't imagine what it's going to be like when it's ready to drink 5 or 6 years later.

But for us, it's, you know, that Iran is, as we say, Iran is like Banka Poalim, what we say in Israel, come to grow with us. Iran is the winemaker from the beginning. So, you know, the process better than any other. And it's interesting that these barrels are on wheels. Yeah, because it's difficult to walk, it's too heavy to the walker. And if I want to wash them, when you want to clean it, like every some months, you want to take the sediment out Then you can take the wine and then rotate them to there and then to wash them. And you not need to— the regular barrel is easy to, you know, no, it's the sediment. This is the filtering is by— as we say in the Gemara, you can say that We call yafel ha-b'samim. When you make b'samim, you can see Bedouins that take coffee and just— it's sound, okay? And when— but wine need the quiet. Give the sediment. And we don't know why that we understand that if after the barrel, if you want to keep the red wine, concrete is better than stainless steel. Maybe the polarity of the metal, the thickness of the wall. I don't know really why, but we know for the long term concrete is better. After some wineries in Israel destroy all the old concrete tanks, They now, they try to find the people that know to— What? Clay. Clay. Ah, we have some. Yeah, we have some also. Okay. Here we have more, you know, This is— this part is for new things that we try to work on it. This is a small tank, open roof for the fermentation and to use it for whole bunch clusters. Yeah. And here all those tanks is for fermentation in wood. They have cooling system inside. This is rosé. This is rosé? Yeah. Wow. Now it's— can come, can come to see the fermentation. It's the end of the fermentation because 2 days ago it was— but you can see the bubbles go. This is Zinfandel for the rum. You see here? Yeah, you see those bubbles all coming up? Yeah. This goes into the rosé? Yes, this is for the rosé, okay? And as you say, after that, you can see that the wine is like with a milky cream, okay? After that, we have question of the Tsemach Tzedek in Moravia, 400 years ago what to do with white wine that was look too creamy. Ah, and the Tzemach Tzedek is not the Chabad Tzemach Tzedek, okay? And he asked a question, the, the community asked him if you can add milk to the wine to clarify the wine. So what the question? Okay, you can use gelatin, you can use blood, you can use anything, a lot of— eggs. Yeah, a lot of things. But they have knowledge to do it with milk. But the question was if we can eat it with the meat because the milk go down. Do you not drink the milk? The question— the answer was no. But I mean, it's the question keep us and use method that I never hear in the other, the usual, the regular book of making wine. You can see the difference of the color between those and those. This is a cut Cassia. Cassia. And this is oak. Oak, yeah. Why is it colder in here than it was in the other? Because this is— here is the, the last year, is not a new harvest. In the new harvest, you want that the second fermentation, malolactic, you need, you need, it will be warmer. But after that 15, 15, like that. And here you can see that the cap, I don't know how to say that. Stopper. Stopper is ready to fermentation, all that. That it's not those, this is, this is for to release the— also if you have gas into, so it's It will not— you see, it's like a whale. Yeah, so the gas can get out but doesn't get back in. It seals back down. But if it's covered too much, we in the past, we have sometimes that valve— wow, it's the power of the gas is So we really invest, invest all the time to buy equipment, the best equipment that we can buy from to make wine. Not— I will not try to save in the process.

And the equipment, the, the purchasing and the selection, is it a different process for from Carmel? Sure. Or do you use their team to depend on?

Iran first, first Iran say what they want. Then use for the bureaucracy of in Carmel. But I think the most thing that Carmel never, just never involved in the process of making wine in Yatim. They understand the meaning of independent. I not mean about the shipment, ship, all the bureaucracy behind. Okay, doesn't matter. We have our vineyard, our method. Eran work totally different from Carmel and the winemaker of Carmel. You have the— Interesting. In the birds. Yeah. Is the harvesting by hand or is there a machine? Part. Part by hand and part machine. It depends which wine. And for us, the most important that the wine will come just in time. You know, we have solar on the roof. What for me the most important part, that we use less energy because the shade.

The shade of the panels.

That's quality. What?

Big solar farm.

Yeah, we just built it. I was involved and now in the mountain we hope to build this year a farm of turbine, wind turbine. Ah, wind turbine. Really? Yeah, in the mountain, not here. So for me, I want to tell you one thing. You see the Citadel here? Yeah. Etti told you about the Citadel? So this is the way, tell her, tell her, this, in this way the meraglim went to Hebron. Okay, so I say every time that you say something good about something that produce in his good, that produce in his hand, the meaning that you fix something from chet ha'meraglim. And the commander of this citadel, Eliashiv son of Hoshea, before 2,800 years ago, sent wine to the soldiers in the desert, and we find it on clay. Wow. So Israel is new land of new world of wine or old wine? Exactly. Huh? For us, it was— you know, this is a story of the beginning of the winery. I was a grower. Is that you? No, this is Eran. I mean this bottle. You can see that it's not yet here. In 1994, we have problem in table grapes. It was organic. You know, when you have an organic grape You need two growers. One that speak with the inspector and the second that spray at night. You know? But I was alone. So— and always we use bags, enemy, natural enemies. From Sde Eliyahu, Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu. In this year, they didn't work good. I bring sometimes, it doesn't work. And it look very bad, but it was table grape. And then I decided what to do with all the yield. After you lose the yield, you can't sell it. I decided to make organic grape juice. Like Sde Eliyahu, they, in the past, they make a lot of organic grape juice. Grape juice. And when I came back to my friend in the moshav, it's moshav Shittufit, semi-kibbutz, I don't know why I said we will build a winery. They laugh at me.

And then you had a winery. Wow. No, it's a great history.

Your grape juice has definitely improved. Yeah.

Please tune in again for part 2 of our incredible, truly crazy wine tasting that took place at Yatir Winery.