Part II La Forêt Blanche's Quest for Authentic Israeli Expression

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. Welcome back to The Kosher Terroir, the podcast where we uncork the stories behind the world's finest kosher wines, one bottle at a time. Today, we're taking you back into the heart of Israel's historic wine country, where ancient tradition meets modern craftsmanship. Nestled in the breathtaking landscapes of the Yatir Forest and the Hebron Heights, We continue with part 2 of our visit to La Forêt Blanche winery, which has been making waves in the Israeli wine scene with its bold vision, meticulous winemaking, and deep-rooted connection to the land. Yakov Briss, CEO of La Forêt Blanche, is joining me again for this continued special conversation. With a background in e-commerce and a passion for wine that runs deep, Yakov has played a pivotal role in rebranding and expanding the winery, turning it into a rising star in the world of fine kosher wines. In Part 2, we'll continue our discussions while tasting through La Forêt Blanche's different levels of wine offerings and Yakov's expectations of each of their wines. We'll also dive into the significance of each terroir. And what makes their wines stand out in an increasingly competitive market. If you're driving, focus on the road ahead. If you're home, pour yourself a glass of wonderful kosher wine, sit back, and get ready to discover the essence of La Forêt Blanche—where history, passion, and innovation converge in every bottle. Yakov, welcome to the kosher terroir. Let's taste some.

You got me thirsty. Yeah, you want to drink?

You want to drink? You want cheese? You want—

Yeah, I'd love, you know, a little bit of something. So everything is here. Awesome, thank you.

So then we're going to see the winery, we're going to talk about the barrels, we're going to talk about the different production aspects. Good. This whole visitor center here is temporary. I mean, since 2020, you know, COVID and everything. So we said we're gonna, we gotta have like a some sort of a VIP tasting room next to the barrels. And actually the municipality was supposed to build us like this visitor center at the end, but they had like bureaucracy issues, whatever. So we haven't moved there. So this thing became temporary, but it's already 5 years temporary. But our project is to move the whole visitor center to the new building.

It looked like it was the visitor center. So that's why I was wondering.

But yeah, so it's, uh, so this is the Talpiot White. Okay, now that we're drinking wines, um, I must tell you about, uh, the story of the wines. Okay, so when I built the ranges Obviously, we had to have an accessible range price-wise, and we had to have like a mid-high range and then higher, higher-end wines. But my intention was that when the visitor or the taster goes through a tasting, he would actually go into an adventure that would take him from south of Hebron or even like the northern Negev Bev, up the hill, through Chevron, back to Jerusalem. That's the idea. Now, entry level for me as a consumer and, you know, commercially has to be accessible, not to the wine connoisseur, you know, obviously to him, but it's— Yeah, but no, but it needs to be —It needs to be accessible to the new consumer, to that lady in the States that only drinks like sweet Moscato, and I want to get her to drink dry wine, and I want her to enjoy with her husband that drinks heavy wines. I want them to enjoy the bottle together and not have like— I just took that example, but it's an actual example. But it's— I think it's a good example. That woman that would drink her own bottle and the husband would take, like, would drink his heavy red wine. I need to have a bottle that would be not sweet but not too dry, just with the right balance of acidity and what I would call accessible, accessible to the palate. Okay, now to give it a name that's related to the Beit HaMikdash, what better name to describe it as Talpiyot? Talpiyot is the name of the Beit HaMikdash. It's Tel, the mount. Shekol piyot ponimbo, that all the mouths are turning towards. Wherever you are in the world, you're praying towards the Beit HaMikdash. Towards Jerusalem, not even the Beit HaMikdash. When you're in the States, you can't even imagine what the Beit HaMikdash looks like. You just pray like you look at your watch, like whatever. Oh, this is Jerusalem compass or whatever. Oh, east. Okay, I'm praying east. And you have in mind Jerusalem and that's it. You're good to go. And the same thing when you're in China. Okay, pray west. So here was south of Hebron. I'm starting to south of Hebron, northern Negev. Okay, and I'm talking to you about Beit HaMikdash, but you have no idea what Beit HaMikdash is. The same way you have no idea what wine is, you're discovering. Okay, so I'm just raising that idea with a wine called Talpiyot, accessible to all, piyot, to all the mouth, and it's about the Beit Hamikdash that's accessible to all the mouths, and all the mouthers are praying towards which. So, this is the entry level, a white, a rosé, and a red. Now, the biggest challenge is the red. In that range. It's actually the first wine we make at the end of the harvest because we harvest specifically for the red. We— the fermentation process is specifically for that Talpiot, so it's made into a Talpiot by definition. It's not that we take the leftovers of the tank, okay, we make the high-end blend like they do in Bordeaux, for example, or maybe some other Israeli wineries that they make their high-end wine and all the leftovers are made into a yain chavalim, chaval to chaval. Okay, let's make into a wine and we're going to sell it for cheap, you know.

So yeah, so instead you're saying you're making it purposefully. This was designed purposefully. Great, got it.

It's on purpose. The vineyards are selected for that wine. Yeah, now it's coming out.

Yeah, it's—

so here you have the Roussanne and Sauvignon. But the Chenin Blanc in the middle, you have a little bit of, you have 30% Chenin Blanc, you know, it actually links the Sauvignon and the Roussanne to give it like an extra body, you know. Roussanne is more like apricot, honey, I would even say like minerality. Sauvignon is all about citrus, you know, acidity. Citrus, yeah. Citrus, yeah. Acidity and the Chenin Blanc gives like width. It's like very low alcohol on purpose. We harvest it very early, like we're trying not to go above 20 brix. 20 brix, it gives like 11.5 alcohol. OK. An entry-level idea. It's not very high-end, but it's very, very pleasant. Very, very pleasant. It really is. Easy drinking. Now we can taste the rosé. It's exactly the same idea with the red varietals. 50% Merlot, 50% Grenache in that case.

So the topiote is the lowest level. Yeah. This is the most approachable level that you have.

79, uh, 79 shekels, uh, shelf price. The rosé we sell like, uh, a little higher, uh, 89. That was, uh, an idea of the distributor. Also because the rosé is limited in quantity, um, and because it's, uh, it's a little, uh, out of the ordinary, I would say. Not the go-to bottle, like, you know, the first choice. So, you make it a little expensive also, so for the people that would pick it, it's like they feel that they get extra. I mean, financially-wise, it has to fit into a whole— Yeah. Right, so, like, to say that I'm just charging another 10 shekels for it and I'm putting it in my pocket, it's completely wrong because it fits a whole formula. From the bottle that starts at 79 through the bottle that sells at 249. I have to have like a whole financial evaluation based on quantities and demand and markets, and then to calculate my profit and my revenue. But this is a whole different discussion. But it's often discussed when a consumer comes to the winery and says, oh, whatever, how come you sell your bottle at 79 shekels? 'Or 130 shekels? What a bottle cost you, like 25 shekels? Come on, like, no, it doesn't work that way.' It doesn't work that way because they don't know, maybe the cost of raw material is 25 shekels, but I have like, I have a lot of charges above, and when I sell my bottle to export, I'm giving up all my profits, you know. When I'm selling it to distribution, I'm giving up all my profits, you know. So I have to have like a whole balance of different margins and different calculations that go into pricing of a bottle of wine.

So where is the wine available in Israel?

Today you can pretty much find it in every city. Every city has a store for sure. And then some cities like have 2, 3, 5 stores. Like, you know, Tel Aviv has unlimited amount of stores. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you can find it in the shuk by, you know, by, by, uh, uh, uh, uh, Hamei Sameach. Yeah. You have, uh, in Jerusalem you have, um, uh, liquor store in Romeima.

Does it sell through Kosher Baruch Ha?

Kosher Baruch Ha is one of our, uh, biggest, uh, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, if you're tired, it's really, uh, doing a great job. Actually, I met Evyatar when I made Aliyah. I lived in Gilo in Jerusalem, so I used to pray on Friday mornings. I used to pray at the Stiblach in Katamon, and he just opened up his— it was the time when he just took over the old store. He just took it, it was brand new into the business. And he had this concept on Friday to have blind tastings. Like, he used to cover the bottles, 3 bottles every Friday, and you taste one of them and you buy what you like, but you don't know what it is. And this way, every Friday I discovered new bottles. He actually taught me a lot, a lot about— he's a really special person because of that place. And I tasted wines by him and I bought bottles that I told him, like, even I would never pick that bottle if it wouldn't be on blind tasting, right? And I wouldn't have tasted it by you. Even if you would have it, like, unblinded and offer me a tasting, I wouldn't taste it. I'm not gonna say names of wines that I tasted and experienced by him, but this is how I got to know Éviatar. And since then, we stayed friends. It was way before I went into that industry. And you know, so—

He's a very special person.

So you see, even in the nose, you have this balance between the fruit and what would you call the acidity. You can't smell acidity, but you can imagine, like, you know, if we would put a smell on acidity, this is what it would smell like. You have this little bit of strawberry on one side, but not too much. It doesn't go into the jammy strawberry that would give you a headache in the summer. And on that other end, you have like this red grapefruit, like, you know, Californian grapefruit. Yes, right? Yes, pink grapefruit. Pink grapefruit. Yeah, so it's like sweet and acidic. That's like— I love that balance. I love that balance. You know, I could drink it in the summer. You drink it cold, and it's like also low alcohol, 12 12% alcohol. You just pop up a bottle on your porch like in the summer. You could actually eat with it also. Yeah. Like a barbecue or, you know. I'm gonna make—

It's got enough acid. Yeah. What I found is as long as it has enough acid, you can eat some interesting things that you normally not eat like Asian foods that are spicy. and this will, this will work together with that really well.

My favorite food with that wine is pizza. Pizza with that rosé. Yeah, kick-ass combination, completely. In— this is how— this is in Provence when you sit down in a pizza, you know, like not a pizza American style pizza, like I'm talking about French pizza. You sit down and you eat with a knife and a fork, right? Yeah. Um, they pour you a glass of rosé with an ice cube.

Unbelievable. In Jerusalem, have you ever gone to Mojo?

Mojo? It's a restaurant. Um, I've heard of it. I was supposed to do a tasting there. You should. They have, they have a, uh, they have a dairy and a meat?

Like, no, no, no, it's meat, but they have meat pizzas, but they're, but they're like dairy. They have cheese. Um, it's all kosher, right? But it's, um, But it's amazing, absolutely amazing. Everything has got so much flavor, very flavorful restaurant. It's great. The, the owner, um, Svi Maller, is also a wine enthusiast, so he's a person that you should, uh, you should sit down. We should arrange to get together and do a tasting there.

It would be great.

Wow, absolutely, you'd love it.

Uh, the pizza that I'm talking about is like Anthony's Pizza.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Anthony's as well. Anthony's is David Gez. This is the pizza that I'm talking about. Do you know the— do you know David Gez? Okay, this is the pizza. Yeah, well, the difference is that Anthony's is all halavi. Yeah, this place is basari, and it's amazing.

It's all about his, uh, it's all about his dough.

Uh, right, right, right, right.

We're, we're making, uh, we're making a jump into a high-end white.

This is a Viognier. This is a Viognier called Ariel.

Ariel is the name of the Beit HaMikdash. I have a whole story about it, but it's here at the bottom. You can read, "Amei hakim le'binyan Ariel." It's a song that we sing on Friday nights. "O avei Hashem, amei hakim le'binyan Ariel." The whole story behind it is like the dream of the rebuilding of the third Beit HaMikdash. That at one point, the Gemara in Baba Batra that says that after Churban Beit Hamikdash, they stopped drinking wine, they stopped eating bread and meat, and let's stop drinking water. Everything reminded them of the— I'm just making it like a little— But this is what it really is. Everything reminded them of the Beit Hamikdash. And then on Shabbat, you have a mitzvah, like you have to, you have, You have to eat, right? And so we're going to eat meat, we're going to have wine on Shabbat, okay? Because we have a mitzvah of oneg. And then when you drink meat, drink wine and eat meat on Shabbat, obviously it reminds you of the Beit Hamikdash, you know, the korbanot and the parn purim. And this is when you remember. So you sing about what you had, but you dream about what's going to be. On Shabbat when you drink the wine. But this range, Ariel, is the dream winemaker's blend, you know, a white and a red that are all about the winemaker. Now, if I'm taking you through the ranges, Talpiot is all about the fruit. You have the next range, it's called Dvier, which we're going to taste 4 reds that are all about the terroir, okay? The expression of the terroir, even though the winemaker maybe would do things different or the consumer would drink different, but we all— it's all about the terroir. This is what the terroir has to offer, is what you drink. You like it, you don't like it, this is what it is. Ariel is all about the winemaker. Now, when you start the fruit Talpiyot, you go through the terroir of Hevron, you continue through Tekoa, which is the Syrah of the red Ariel, comes from Tekoa. Then you reach Jerusalem, you've reached Yar Levanon, which is the Beit HaMikdash, and you're in. You basically took that adventure.

Path. Yeah, this— the grapes are sourced from where? Soucia. Soucia.

This is Soucia, Viognier and Chenin Blanc. Now this is a crazy winemaking, uh, I mean, I would say crazy, but it's, it's a lot of efforts, you know, like making 30% Viognier, uh, one way, 30% Surlie, uh, 30% with, uh, um, 30% that goes into malolactic, you know, and then one part of the wine is the Chenin Blanc is grown into, into clay jars with the skins, part of it to like half with the skins and half naturally. So it makes like a very, very complex blend that it's all about the winemaker's dream, like the expression of the winemaker. So you have here a little bit of orange wine. You don't see it in the color because it's very, very small. It's a small percentage.

That's what I was wondering.

But since you're a big fan of the orange wine, so you know all the orange wine. So you can smell it. You could smell that it has something a little bit mature.

No, it's definitely not overpowering at all. It's nice. It's a nice blend to it. But I'm tasting like just a hint of the desert.

That's the wine that's on the skins for 6 months, but it's late harvest. Late harvest. That year, the Chenin Blanc didn't yield at all. So we took Sauvignon Blanc. We let it on the vines to grow old, you know, and we harvested it almost when it was like dry.

So even though you put Viognier here, it's not really just pure Viognier, it's a blend?

Yeah, it's like it has, that year it has like 7%, 7% Sauvignon Blanc. Okay. On the skins.

Okay. Right, that year. That's what— okay.

I'm going to give you a taste right now before we go into the rizz. I'm going to give you a taste of the 2024, which is Viognier Chenin Blanc. It's in the vat.

It's already blended. I would love to taste it.

It's already blended. Let's go into the production. I would love to. And then you're going to see exactly what he meant, because it's going to be the 2024. So that desert— I'm not going to say botrytis because it's way more—

It's not botrytis, yeah.

It has nothing to do with it, but it's mature grapes that sat for 6 months on the skin. You don't have the color, but you have a little taste in it. Taste and nose. You have that nose, right? The Viognier is like buttery, wide.

Yeah, no, it's not a regular Viognier. It's Viognier. That's one of the reasons I asked. Wait a minute, because I was expecting this really acidic, lively Viognier, and this isn't that. And that's the reason I was asking you the questions. It's not bad, it's very nice, but it's not— it didn't hit the profile of what I was thinking I'd taste with it.

But it doesn't go— the Viognier didn't grow in barrels. Normally you would put the Viognier in barrels and then they would give you that— the oaky, yeah, the oaky and then the acidic. And so it would be like another version of a Chardonnay, you know, right? That is, he wants to keep all about the fruit, Bruno, when he makes the wine. He wants to take out the fruit out of the Viognier.

So you don't barrel, you don't really barrel whites? No. Okay.

No, no, no. He's considering it. No, no, someone just came this week from France and they had a very long conversation, like a barrel maker from France, like was here 3 days ago, what was it? Thursday. Yeah, Wednesday, sorry, the day before Tanit Esther. So they were here, like, and we discussed barrels, whatever, and they had a whole conversation about making white into a barrel without killing the fruit profile of the grape, you know, like just adding a little raise to the fruit.

So that's the reason he uses also, um, uh, clay amphora. Amphoras. In order to not influence it with the wood, but to get the micro oxidation.

So you would have the micro oxidation without impacting the fruit profile. Very cool. Let's take the glass and go into— I asked permission. So this is the production floor. This is the area of white. Give me your glass. It's not unfiltered. No, I love it.

This is my favorite wine. Straight out of the vats.

Yeah. Mm, wow. It went partially sur-lie, partial like malolactic, partial— this is the whole thing.

And so you do sur-lie inside the vat?

Part was done inside the vat and part was done inside the clay jar. Oh, inside the clay jar. But the clay is only for the Chenin Blanc. Okay. The Vionnier is, uh, the Vionnier had 3 vats. Yeah. Uh, one sur-lie, uh, one sur-lie, like maybe, uh, the, the more fine sur-lie, so it's different lies. Yeah. You know, and the third one was left like to do, uh, malolactic. So you actually raise a little temperature and boom, it goes into malolactic. So it gives like a little more, it adds like complexity.

This is really lovely. Yeah, it's fuller-bodied. It wraps around your mouth. It totally wraps around your palate. Right.

If we're already here. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if we start— we should start reds or it's going to mess your— whatever.

What else do you have that's white?

White is the only— That's it.

So, Okay.

So white is the only one that's not bottled from 2024. Okay. We like to stay because like, you know—

I can see, I can see why. This has got, it's got body. It's still processing. It's a richness that it has to it. It's really good.

It's still processing. Baruch Hashem. And you may, we may need to clean it and, you know, maybe at that point we might even need to maybe some make acidic corrections.

You know, we have to make a lot of— this is nice, this is nice. And it's got, it's got the acid that you want and everything. It's really good.

You want to go into the barrel room or you want— wherever you want. Yeah, we'll go. Just be careful.

Yeah, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay.

Yeah, they're doing toppings.

So you got some new ones, you got some big ones, right?

So this, okay, this is a Garbelotto from Italy. Yeah, we're the first winery to bring this. I think Ramot Naftali has like one old one, smaller ones from Garbelotto, very old ones. And this year, Eyal Drori and Bruno like brought this, brought them in. Bruno is dreaming about this for years.

I know Eyal Drori, I saw a picture of him unwrapping it and it looked like a kid unwrapping it.

Yeah, but Bruno was on the floor, he was smelling it, it was like all the accessories, just like when I was a kid and I was getting a Lego gift for Hanukkah, like I was on the floor, your legs spread open and then this is exactly how Bruno sat down on the floor. You know, these are the clay jars. So we have two types of clay. This is Italian clay and this is Chinese kaolin clay.

Wow. It has more oxygen, more micro-oxygenation?

Different levels and also like different minerality, different minerality in the clay. So it gives like— this is where we put it like for 6 months with the skins. It's a very small volume. Yeah. And this is Surly. Cool. These are the barrels. You want to taste this? I mean, it's a high-end red. So we're jumping to the Ariel red, like we tasted the Ariel white. Yes, yeah, it's above, it's above the Dvir. Okay, so this is all about the winemaker's blend. It's a Petit Verdot and Syrah. Okay, blended together in a new, uh, foudre. Okay, yeah, this is like a 25, uh, almost like, uh, 3 hectoliters. Yeah, give me your glass. Let's have a rinse. This is crazy. It was filled in December 31st, okay? So it's like just, just about 3 months. You're gonna see the— you're gonna smell the wood profile. Now, even the wood profile, we had very long meetings with the producer. They developed like a laser reader to read the aroma profile of each—

each piece, each state. Of wood.

So they have a laser, they have a way to read the aromas. It's like crazy. So they selected each of the staves based on the profile that we want, that we want into the wine. They built a whole profile for Bruno.

Wow, crazy. So tannic, it's—

but it's not aggressive.

No, it's not aggressive. It's nice, but it's developing, it's developing.

It needs to stay another, you know, It's the beginning of his life, but you see where this is going.

Yeah. Well, you should be careful.

No, no. Okay. Sorry. So now we're going to discuss maybe a little the barrels. Bruno uses mostly French barrels, but he hates wood. Like, I mean, hates. I know.

I know what you mean. Oakey wine.

He doesn't want the oakey. What he calls like, mitz nagarya, like in Hebrew, you have It's like a— Meats from a carpenter.

Yeah, it's like a carpenter's juice. Yes, that's it.

That basically you would put any wine in any barrel and the barrel is just gonna give you the price and the amount of time you put it in any barrel is gonna be good. Doesn't work this way. Each profile of each barrel Bruno has studied it for years before he decides into which wine the barrel is going. It's a blend of different barrel makers. Like you can see, you have here Radoux, you have Sagan-Moreau, you have World Cooperage. Right. Different toasting of the wine, of the wood.

But I'm also impressed, to be honest, I'm impressed because most of the smaller wineries, even the boutique wineries, use metal racks. And whoever is managing this cellar, is managing it very well. Everything is pegged in with wood, and it's done just exactly the way it should be so that you can get to everything. It's just amazing. It's a lot of work. It's me.

Oh, it's you? I'm crazy about this. All right. I don't want to use metal. It looks too industrial. I know. And when I built this, they'd leave the winery and they let me because if you look at it, each barrel is exactly like laser aligned.

I know, I noticed you could run strings and do it.

No, so I used to do it with a string, now I have a laser. So I take hours to spend until this is completely right, straight, like I put it with a level each to an extent that I had them empty out, almost empty out a barrel because it wasn't straight, you know. But it's me, I'm crazy about it. Okay. I want the visitor—

I was gonna say, whoever is running the barrel room, whoever is managing this barrel room is—

Even the painting.

Yeah, I know, is meshuga like me. Yeah, it's with the lease. Yeah, it's not with the lease.

It's, uh, we used to do it with the lease, but when you do it with the lease, it grows mushrooms because it's, uh, with the humidity that we have. We have to keep here like, uh, something like 70% humidity here. And when you put, it can create like dirt and mushrooms. I contacted someone in France that told me, oh yeah, we use beetroot powder mixed up with wine and a certain amount of water. So I asked him for the formula, and this is how we painted this year. Like, I had a guy painting barrels for weeks, like, and it's just for It's for the look.

For the look, because look— Because when they empty the barrels, otherwise it drips out and it all looks dirty. Look here, you can see.

You can see here, like the guy that did like— Yeah. It's okay, whatever.

You know who, in Israel, the person who started it was Ben Zakim. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was Ben Zakim.

Yeah. Yeah, something like that. But in Bordeaux, a lot of wineries do that in Bordeaux to differentiate the barrels of reds from the barrels of whites, right? So whites, they live alone, right? Yeah, yeah. When you have it in the same barrel room. Now Bruno uses like 500-liter barrels for the Yara Le Vanon. Yara Le Vanon is the flagship wine that's done free-run juice. —on free-run, single vineyard, single varietal Cabernet, 40-year-old vine from Zdekalov. Okay, cool. Even these vines have like a very interesting story, the way it was planted in 1985, they were planted. Now he uses, since it's free-run juice, you may lack of tannins. You know, when— because you don't press, some tannins, like, lies in the skins, right? So the way to overcome this is to have a very long maceration before fermentation, then a long, slow fermentation. Not too low in temperature because then it doesn't ferment all the way, but not too hot so it goes too fast. And not too many remontages, you know, like aggressive remontages that would actually rush the fruit or anything. And then use of exclusively new barrels, only new barrels for 24 months. Now, new barrels might sound like very heavy oak. When you do 12 months in new barrel, you have very aggressive oak, but when you do 24 months in new oak, it basically goes up and down.

Yeah, it's amazing, you know. It's like strange that if you leave something for a longer period of time, it actually pulls it back out of the wine. It settles. It settles, right? It settles.

100%. And the mix of using a 500-liter barrel reduces that even more without touching the micro-oxidation process, right? And you have different profiles of 225. Like, I mean, this whole row here is like Jarl Van Hoon. You have different profiles. For example, you could see a lot of, you could see Séguin-Moreau. Séguin-Moreau, you have Crianza, which is like American oak in a French barrel maker. So, it's a French barrel from American oak. Very, very interesting barrel. Bruno loves it. You have the Séguin-Moreau Classique.

So, what do you do with the barrels after the first year?

So, after 2 years, they're reduced into the Dvier range. Right? And then for another 2 fills. So it's like we do 4 fills, and the 5th fill, it's done for Talpiot, for example, 6 months, or part of certain wines that we feel that we need old wood, like, to be just— because it's too tannic already, so we don't want to overkill the wine. And for example, Pinot Noir, like, only only fifth fill because the oak kills it. Right. So we do fifth fill barrels, and in certain barrels, like in two barrels of the Pinot, he used like a burgundy stick. Interesting. Yeah, so that gives like an interesting— So that's about the barrel.

So all the barrels are reds? Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the barrels are red.

This side is like second year. Now one thing that Bruno does, he doesn't rack the barrels. Like some wineries do every 6-month racking, like you empty out, you clean, and you put it back. When Bruno fills it, he fills the barrel all the way through. Now, 24-month fill doesn't touch. If you do top— like we do topping, right? But it doesn't touch the barrel. Like, so when we— this year, I mean, last year was— we didn't have Schmidter wine that would stay 24 months. So last year was like we had to redo the whole barrel room. Okay. I mean, last year, 2023. Yes. Now, 2023, Year 11 on, is going to be bottled in the end of December 2025. I mean, January 2026, probably, right? So, we had to stay here and we had to figure out a whole way to rebuild a whole barrel room. I mean, I had to figure out because it's my craziness. So, I said to him, "Ma Piton," like, "We're constructing a wall of 500s and all the 225s are going to be in the middle and we have the Garbellotto here." 'And there's no way we're not emptying them out?' 'No, no, you don't touch my barrels. You don't empty out my 500-liter, my jar of vinon. I don't empty out.' Because what happens is that when you rack the barrels, you lose the sediments at the bottom, you touch the tartaric acid, you basically, you could impact the wine. You do impact the wine. And so his motto is not to touch the wine once you put it in a barrel until you bottle it. Cool. So I had to redo this thing. So I did like, okay, so we're going to do 500 here, 500 there, and the 225 is behind.

Yeah. Now I understand. Now I understand. Now I see how much sugar you are. Yeah, that's cool. That's great.

So we have these vats here, right? We have more vats coming in. But we're managing. Like, we do also open fermentation in Shiraz. I'm going to show you a video. It's so— it's like they do this in Australia. You see these vats here? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it's so practical because, like, you see the height, so you can actually, like, do the pigeage, like, very easily, very gently. And you could actually pile them up and you just take them down every day to do the pigeage. When you empty out, you just like bend it over and you empty it out. And the process of fermentation in the open fermentation is like crazy. So it gives so much fruit and so much flavor because you have like a lot of oxygen, so you oxidate everything else but the fruit, you know. So this is to give what I would call, if you would have to profile the identity of the winery, I would say it's something in between New World wine and Old World wine, you know, because Bruno is still like quite Old World wine, free-run, slow processes, barrels, aging, etc., before releasing the wines. But all these things are quite from the New World, like to give fruit and accessible wine immediately. You don't want to wait 15 years to drink your wine anymore, like nobody does that anymore. I mean, it's not the mainstream. No, no, no. Actually, when he worked in Yatir, Bruno was one of the founders of Yatir in 1999, and he worked there until 2007. They called him the— I mean, he had once one of the Rothschilds visiting the winery, and they wanted to do something together. And at the end they didn't do it, and he took Bruno on the side and he said, as French, from Frenchman to Frenchman, like, said, don't become a kangaroo. Like, don't become a kangaroo. That's— yeah, this is how much French hate the new world. Like, you know, when you touch processes and you change change stuff, they hate it. So the Dvir, you have like this, you have the Pinot Noir. Yeah. Which is 2023. Okay. I have nothing, yeah, I have nothing older than that, older than that, because we didn't do schmita. Yeah. But it's actually ready to drink. I would love to taste that. We have the Petit Verdot. Yeah. Which is quite unique. It's not the Petit Verdot you would expect. Okay. We have the blend. And we have the Cab, which is 2023 also. Okay. The story about the Pinot is, um, they have this, uh, Menachem planted this vineyard, like, about 3 dunam to experience Pinot Noir because someone told him that it would be— it would do great at that altitude here. They actually won medals in 2011 But they had no idea what they had on hand back then. I mean, Bruno did, because Bruno started his way in Burgundy and he was a big, big Pinot Noir guy. But here he didn't have the audience to sell it to and people, how people would react, you know. And back then, bringing special barrel profiles for this and growing it, it wasn't what he did back then. When I came here, I started like to taste Israeli Pinot Noir. The impression that I had is like everyone else, you know, this a priori. A priori is like you have this like pre— previous experience and just like there's no Israeli Pinot. Like we've heard that many, many times and And to me, it tastes like a bad version of Cabernet, right? You know, this is pretty much a diluted version of Cabernet. Yeah, because they treat it like Cabernet, and it's Israeli, so it's like it's got a lot of sun, and they treat it like in the barrel, like aggressive, and it loses everything that Pinot has to offer. And I said to Bruno, okay, listen, we have 3 Dunham Pinot. We have two possibilities: either we take it out and we plant Cabernet, or we make the best possible version of Pinot Noir ever. Let's try. So every year we learned and learned and tasted and fine-tuned it and see how we could harvest it and grow and make everything possible to have like the best Pinot Noir the best version of an Israeli Pinot Noir, you know. What, you know, and I think we're just about to get there. I don't know if it's, if, you know, it's great. Look at the color. I mean, it's an Israeli Pinot Noir color, okay, but we're lighter. So to me, Pinot should taste like a walk into a wet forest after the rain. You know, this is what Pinot Noir should really taste like, with the mushroom and the, and the, and the mousse. You say the mousse, like the green, the moss, moss, the moss. In French, it's mousse. And I think we're getting there. I think we're getting there. It's, it has some fruit profile that's undeniably Israeli, okay? But it has a Pinot Noir profile. It definitely is. You have the mushroom, the truffles, the wet dirt, wet pine trees. This is lovely. The barrel is not— you don't feel the barrel, you don't smell the wood because it's old oak, but it's gonna be there just how it should be to raise all these profiles that I just mentioned before. We just popped it open, right?

Yeah, this is amazing.

It's ready to drink. It's 2023. It could age. It's going to age beautifully. It's not too tannic. It's not too watery. It's not too fruity, not too sweet. It's— wow, I'm discovering it. Yeah, that's my goal with Pinot Noir, to make a Pinot Noir that could actually represent what an Israeli Pinot Noir is. We sent it to French competitions, Gilbert Gaillard. Gilbert Gaillard is like a known— it's a very known guide. It's like a— right. But they're all over the world, like they're very popular in Asia, and in the States it's becoming very popular. Gilbert Gaillard is like— so we sent them a Pinot and they wrote about it. It's a Pinot Noir with a warm profile. That's how they described it, you know. Warm profile means like warm as the sun. Yeah, yeah. Not like warm as warm spices. No, no, no. It's what they wrote about it.

From a warm environment. Yeah. That's awesome.

So you have like Pinot Noir from Oregon that it's like from a very, very cold environment, or Pinot Noir from Moselle, You know, it's always humid, and I'm very excited about this bottle.

It's like, uh, this tastes amazing. Tastes amazing. There's nothing— you don't need to apologize for this bottle. It's great. It is exactly— it's amazing that you just opened it. Yeah. And this is a 2023, 2023, bottled in December.

Wow. 3 months ago. I mean, it's painful to me to have to say, but I had nothing else to sell. So, you know, like, uh, we— Schmita we didn't make. So that's amazing. Let's go with Petit Verdot. Petit Verdot. Okay, so the Pinot Noir grows on the hill, and at the bottom of it you have the Petit Verdot, but it's already deep, uh, deeper. Actually, you know what, this bottle, I would cold it— I would cool it a little maybe 2-3 degrees lower. I, when I drink Pinot Noir like on Shabbat, I put it in the fridge for like 20-25 minutes. It changes completely. This is a 2021 Petit Verdot from the Dvier. Now you see what I mean, that Dvier is a representation of the terroir. Make a Pinot, it needs to represent where it's growing. And this is the Pinot Noir that can get to that level just because where it's growing. And the same goes for the Petit Verdot. Petit Verdot, Verdo in Latin, yeah, is green. Verde. Yeah, verde. It's all about green spices. This is green. It's like Bruno used to say, it's It's like walking into a spice shop in Mahanyuda. You have these spices, you have thyme, rosemary, you have ale da fada, and then you go into a little bit more warm, warmer spices like cumin maybe.

Do you know Gabriel? Gabriel Bieler? Yeah, yeah, sure.

Okay, because I know he's royal and what have you, but I met him last year. We had an event Passaic, New Jersey, from the Jewish Link with Elizabeth Kratz. She lost her husband. Yeah, yeah, I heard. Yeah, I was supposed to meet her when I was in New York, and she was in the summer.

She came here.

Wow, such a pity. Unbelievable. She actually came in the summer and she planted a vineyard right next door here. Like, she came with her kids. Like, she— they came with 6 6:30 in the morning, and they planted a Petit Verdot vineyard right across from the winery. I mean, the other side. Yeah, outside the Yeshuv, you see, like on the hill across, you see there's a new vineyard. She planted there, Elizabeth. And, um, so I met with Gabriel. Actually, everybody was crazy about the Pinot Noir last year.

Like, I was going to ask, I was going to ask him, he should really taste this. That's, that's what I was going to tell you to do.

So I try to go to the people that shout out loud that there's no Israeli Pinot. I tried, I tried to have them taste the Pinot and convince them that there is an Israeli Pinot, but it's very hard for them to change their mind. So I stopped. You don't use— you don't—

because it's Red Garden, they don't go through kosherwine.com? Yeah, sure, they do.

Sure, sure, we do, we do, we do. So now kosherwine.com often have like older vintages. Okay. But he has stores in Westchester, like the store in Westchester, Skyview. So you just— I think he took in like all the new vintages now. Okay. So kosherwine.com usually have all the vintages. Yeah. But then you could go through every store pretty much on the East Coast, like, you know, like New Jersey, 3 states, like, you know, New Jersey, New York, Philly. There's a lot of non-kosher stores now that have like, you know, like if you go to shop— What about in California? California, we have it like, you know, you can find it at The Cask on Pico Street. How about San Diego? San Diego, I don't think we have it right there. No, San Diego, I don't think so. Just curious. Okay. We have it in Chicago, Illinois by Sarah's Ted. We have in Florida. We're doing well. Great. Baruch Hashem. This is the most, the nicest time of the year to come here. Everything is green, everything is growing, coming back to life, and you feel like you're in Gan Eden.

And the yar is unbelievable, that forest.

So this is the first trees of Yar Yatir. Right. First trees. You go behind that hill, you have the Yatir Vineyard. No, the desert is there on the east.

Right.

Yeah, you see like the whole Judean Desert.

The reservoir is where? Which side?

Straight across. Okay. It's like 5 minutes from here.

Yeah. No, I saw it. Etti took me around.

Oh, right, right, right, right. You told me. And this is the new visitor center. Yeah, I saw. And they're planning like a whole development here, like with places to see flowers and trees and vines and this visitor center like overlooking the whole south of Chevron towards Be'er Sheva. This is Be'er Sheva straight out. Straight out. Yeah. Wow. This is the Ariel Red. You live where? I live in Carmel.

Okay. Carmel is right here as well?

Or how? 10 minutes from here. You have Carmel, Maon, and Yatir are like a— Got it. Aguda Shetofit. So they formed Yatir Winery. Okay. So it's like 3 Shuvim that are— Yeah, they're all together. Yeah, all together.

Managed by the same. Yeah, Susya is by who? Susya is different.

Susya is apart. Susya, it's their own thing.

Okay.

They have their own thing. All the other is Chauvin. And Bruno is in Mahon, right next to me. Okay, so this is the Ariel Red we tasted from the vat, from the barrel, from the foudre. We tasted the 2024 version of it.

This is 2024.

And this is 2019. 2019. We have a few bottles left of 2019. I don't even know how. Don't ask me how this bottle got here, but it's open. So let's taste it. Sometimes, like, they find bottles and they open it. And I'm in charge of the maltif. You know, it's like I lock up my bottles and I keep a very tight inventory and nobody touches the bottle without asking me. Like, you know, I'm very, very careful about these bottles. I age, like, every year I age a certain amount of bottles. So people that don't have patience and they drink their wine when they buy it, and all of a sudden, oh, you have, like, I really like the 2018, and all of a sudden, like, wine is completely different. Or I have, like, I do, like, long horizontal whole tastings. Yeah, it's amazing to see the development of the wine and to see what the winemaker had in mind when he made the wine. And it's like developing.

And on these blends, do you change them each year or you really keep— try to keep them the same?

We try to keep the same. Same. Yeah, yeah. It's— there is a—

there's a message behind, uh, behind it, you know.

Like, you just tasted the Dvier Petit Verdot. It's the same Petit Verdot. Okay, 2019, but it's the same Petit Verdot. Now, Petit Verdot is aged 12 months. Bruno picks the best barrels of the Petit Verdot. I mean, the barrel profile is picked according to that wine, obviously, but he tasted the barrels and then he assembles the Petit Verdot that's gonna be for the Ariel, and then he adds Syrah that aged 12 months also separately, and then blends it and goes back to the barrel for 6 months. This year, 2024, is the first year that he blended it straight after the harvest and put it together in the foudre. It's the first year. Okay. But it was his dream because this is the profiling of the foudre and it's specific to the profile of the wine that he wants to reach. I want Bruno to tell you about his wine in Hebrew. Okay. Ariel is also his grandson. Okay. I mean, he hasn't tasted it, the 2019, so I told him that he must taste it since we have it open. You see how this wine is different from the previous ones, okay? From the Petit Verdot, from the Pinot, from the whites. It has already a different message. Oh shit.

Eucalyptus, menta. Eucalyptus, menta.

Chocolate after night. Yeah, after 8.

After 8. After 8. After 8.

Wow. I had some Irish cream, uh, like, uh, not Irish cream, uh, the liquor that you put in the chocolate. It's called, uh, yeah, you have this, this chocolate, uh, ball. Bailey's Irish Cream, something like that. Yeah, in, in the chocolate.

Yes.

It's the 2019 Petit Verdot, which was very spicy if you remember. Wow, the spices that you have here from the Petit Verdot are—

wow, it's integrated really nicely though. It's like, it's—

although the blend of varietals are like Two complete opposites. Bruno, tell Simon about the Ariel Red. What's your message in the Ariel Red? What are you looking when you're making Ariel Red wine? What's your message?

They're having a conversation with you. Yes.

Instead of it something that you go into knowing what it is from the beginning, and at the end, you much prefer to have a wine that has a conversation with you, that surprises you, that takes you through— takes you out of your lead, like, yes, that takes you up and down through, through the enjoyment. Okay, so it comes from two varietals, and each varietal takes you in a different direction, but together they Le Haberotan, aval she'afekhad, ivater ala ichodiu tselo. Okay, so he blends the two varietals together and so that you get them both, but neither of them overpowers the other one, so that each one has a part of what's going on. It doesn't, it doesn't outshine the other one. In this blend specifically with Ariel. Okay. So in some of the other blends, and that's what he's trying to get out of Ariel, but in some of the other blends, he'll blend them together not to get a balance, but to get something that's different altogether by putting them together.

Yes.

Just before, we tasted the 2024 from the Foudre, and I explained to him that this was your ideal.

Yeah, it's a conversation because we tasted the 24 that's still in a very large wooden, uh, I don't know what they're called. Fudl. So because of that, um, we tasted it and you, you can actually taste the two varietals discussing what they want to do together.

Precisely.

You're in the middle of— Precisely. You're in the middle of the discussion and it's balancing itself back and forth. It's very cool. I do have one more question. Is there any wine Is there any wine in particular that doesn't get enough attention from you? Not from you, from your customers. Is there a wine that you would like them to get to pay more attention to?

Ariel. Ariel. Ariel is all about the winemaker's profile, and actually the person that doesn't get enough attention at the winery is Bruno. He, not because he's my winemaker, I mean, I consider myself his son. When people ask me, what's your relationship? Are you father and son? We say yes, like we're spiritual father and son. He taught me so much, so much, so much knowledge. And he knows so much more and he's learning every day, you know, trying to experience different things. And he's so humble about what he knows that he doesn't even believe himself to be a winemaker, but he's really a genius. I can see that. A genius person. I can see that. And Bruno needs to get a lot more attention. Now, if I want Bruno to get a lot more attention, this is why we went on to develop a range or a series called Ariel, which wasn't at the beginning of the winery. It's something that came later into the winery stage, and actually, when we made the Dvir range, for example, we had to make the Dvir blend, for example, the estate blend. It was in pain, in terrible pain, because I actually had to tear him apart from his dream wine, which is the Syrah, you know, in the estate blend, and make it into a blend that's so actually commercial. So in Hebrew we say mitkhanef, it's like so— it was very painful to him because it's the opposite of what he believes, you know.

Instead of making it distinctive, you made it smoother and accessible.

We made what people want and not what we want. And then we created the Ariel to get that attention. Now people don't get enough of this understanding of what Bruno is, what he's trying to achieve, and what this wine is all about.

Cool. So I'm glad I asked you.

Now we've gone through Talpiot, the fruit, the terroir, we've met the winemaker, and now you want to know what's La Forêt Blanche.

Yeah, flagship wine. And again, this is the same thought process behind it, Yara Lev Anan, is what gave the name, because this is the White Forest. Yeah. In Hebrew. Yeah.

White Forest in Hebrew, which is the symbol of the Beit HaMikdash.

Yeah. It's really lovely. Wow. This has been open since yesterday. Yeah. So that's great.

Yesterday afternoon.

Afternoon. Good.

So now it's accessible to drink. You see what I like? And in Israel, I find it very hard to find this aroma, the green bell pepper.

Yeah, it's very—

usually you find this in Médoc Cabernet, and in Israel they tried to convince me that it's Cabernet Franc flavor. and it's not typical to Cabernet Sauvignon, but I know Cabernet Sauvignon from the DOC, and the balance between the red and the green aromas, like the red being the fruit, forest fruit or plums, and the green being like pepper, bell pepper, or— and it's not a lack of ripeness, of ripeness, it's, it's the exact balance of between harvesting at the right time and let it run into a jammy, jammy red, then you would lose all these aromas, you know. And it's so refreshing when you drink it, you want it, you want to get more because it balances like the green and the red. It's like the red being fresh, not herbal. Herbal would be like a lack of ripeness, but the green bell pepper at the right amount, of course, because if it takes over the red, then it's wrong, you know, but just a little bit. This is lovely. Now what's really challenging about this wine, that he doesn't add anything but Cabernet and free-run. There's no press. He doesn't have the Petit Verdot and the Merlot to play around and make it into a better wine. Just Cab. The way it is, that's what's so, so, so, so special about it. Like, it's an expression of the fruit, the terroir, the winemaker.

It's free run. What do you do with the rest of it? It goes into the—

part of it goes into the Dvier Cabernet, and part of it goes into the estate blend. Okay, right.

Wow, that's macho, macho, macho, macho, macho.

A free run. Yeah.

We had a whole argument if we had to empty out the barrel. I was telling you earlier, We had an old argument. I wanted the barrel room to look like, like, you know, balanced, and like to have the 500 barrels like on one end and the 200, 225 on the other end, like the garbellotto in the middle. And Bruno said, no, you don't touch my barrels, you don't empty out my 500 liters, they are livano, it stays there until next year, so you figure out your way. So I had to find out a whole way of building the 500 on one side, then the new 500 on the on the other side and the 225 is behind. And it actually looks quite good. It looks beautiful.

It looks beautiful. So one of the things what Bruno was saying, he was saying in Hebrew, but what he was saying, I'm going to translate a little bit of it, was that the whole process with the yar lev hanan is that it's special. It's special from the time it's picked, it's special It's special when it's actually, um, brought in and, uh, and it's just purely free run coming off of it for this, for these bottles. And, and then it's put into, it's put into, um, first-year barrels, specifically French barrels, that goes on for 24 months. It's not racked, it's not disturbed, it's allowed to just develop properly, and at the end of that process, then it's— it ends up getting bottled. So it's like the absolute best handling that you could ever do.

Actually, one more thing that you get is that you keep each profile of the barrel for the wine, because if you rack, you empty out all the barrels, you put into a vat, then you lose the profile of the barrel. Yes. And when you keep it for 24 months, so you keep the profile of the barrel for 24 months, and you get the full extent of that specific wine in a barrel. And that's what makes Yar Lebanan so special also.

So when you do that though, do you blend barrels that way to know what you want to get the consistency of the flavor?

Yeah, he tastes every barrel. Yeah. Sheesh. Okay.

So his desire is that the Yar Levanon wine is really, really special. So, all of the barrels that come out of it, though they've been sitting for 24 months, because he doesn't rack, each barrel has its own specific profile. And because of that, then when he makes the Arlevanon, he blends them, he blends the barrels per what he's trying to accomplish, and sometimes there'll be a barrel that he won't even include because it just takes it out of the profile that he's trying to get out of it. So, and that makes a lot of sense.

It's beautiful.

Awesome. Very nice. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all the time and what have you.

It's amazing. My passion.

No, mine too. It's, it's great. It's great to talk to another passionate person. These These are amazing wines. I can see, can see why they've taken off. At the beginning, I didn't understand, um, but I, I very much have a much better picture of what you're trying to do here. Awesome. It's really awesome. Beautiful. Very good. Thank you. Thank you for being on the Kosher Terroir. Sure. Finally. No, it's a pleasure. Great, great, great.

It's good to meet like, uh, people like you, uh, that do extensive work at actually showing each winery, because each winery has its own special specialty and its own mindset and what they're trying to achieve and the message they're trying to— and this is what you're trying— this is what you're doing, is you're taking the time because it's trying to— you don't have the time. Like normally when you visit a winery, you visit like on the spot, you're with children, or you have to run somewhere else and don't take the time to understand.

You don't remember I also want people to be attracted by something that they— I purposefully don't, just as an addition for me, I don't include video. Oh, and we didn't do any video, it's all audio. And there's a reason for that, because people can listen to audio whenever— driving, the driving, walking their dog, doing whatever they want. And they can focus on this rather than having to focus at a video to see two heads talking to each other, right? Which is like crazy. Um, so I found for me it helped, and a lot of people comment on it and tell me, wow, I love that it's just audio. I love to just listen, listen in, and, um, and it's, you know, a little bit more personal.

So very good. I really enjoyed it. I hope I've answered all your questions.

Yeah, you've answered a lot, and I I have more for next time.

Okay, very good.

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 are new to The Kosher Teruah, please check out our many past episodes.