Tavlin Distillery - The Taste of Israeli Gin Terroir

Welcome to the Kosher Teruah. I'm Solomon Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, no matter where you are, please take a moment to pray for the safe return home of all our soldiers, If you're driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you're home relaxing, please sit back and enjoy this special episode during the 3 weeks. Every bottle of craft spirits has a story to tell. I'm Solomon Simon Jacob, and today on The Kosher Terroir, we are taking a journey into the Judean Hills to explore a partnership built entirely on a beautiful, head-scratching contrast. On one side, we have Eli. He is a relatively new immigrant to Israel, having arrived from Los Angeles about 8 years ago. Before his Aliyah, Eli spent his life navigating the high-stakes boardrooms of corporate America. He climbed the executive ladder as a CPA and managed operations in media giants. Eli is the business strategist, the analytical mind who looks at hand-painted Hebron pottery and sees world-class gin bottles waiting to happen. And on the other side of the still, we have Amir. Amir is a Jerusalem native through and through, born in the holy city 66 years ago. And he is an old-time Israeli educator, a former school headmaster and a supervisor for the Ministry of Education who has spent his life writing books. But Amir is also a poet of aromas. He is a certified sommelier who famously passed his intensive exams purely by smell, navigating complex profiles without tasting a single drop of non-kosher wines on the test. So what happens when a fast-paced American corporate CPA and a poetic veteran Jerusalem educator become neighbors in the Judean hills? Well, you get a wild, painful, and hilarious adventure that begins with two of them getting terribly allergic reactions. While trying to yank a wild agave plant out of the backyard using a fireman's hose tied to a car. And it ends with the creation of Tavlin Distillery. Today, we sit down with Eli and Amir to talk about their journey, the local Judean botanicals that they use to map the Israeli kitchen, and how they took their backyard dream the way to a bronze medal at the World Gin Awards in London. Pour yourself a glass, settle in, and welcome Eli and Amir of Tavlin Distilleries to the Kosher Terroir. Welcome to the Kosher Terroir. The website says it in 6 words: 2 friends, 1 goal, exceptional gin. So let's start there. Who are the two friends and how does the friendship turn into a distillery in the Judean Hills?

So my name is Eli Kamiansky.

Yes.

And I'm originally from Los Angeles. I made Aliyah about 8 years ago with my family. I have 4 kids. And we originally started in Jerusalem, not too far from this studio. And then we ended up pretty quickly soon after in Sur Hadassah, which is a neighborhood that's about 25 minutes away from Jerusalem. And we chose that neighborhood because the location, the land, the weather, the forests, the trees, the plants, everything about it was just beautiful. And we also really appreciated the community. And that's kind of, that's a high level of me. And I'll go back to community and I'll let, I guess, Amir introduce himself as well.

To be authentic, I will speak Hebrew.

No, no, please.

I was born in Jerusalem, not far from here.

Okay.

66 years ago. Most of the time I was growing here in Jerusalem. And we decided to leave Jerusalem because we have a quite big family. And it was better to try to do it not in Jerusalem, in, let's say, in green place, in a nice community. Because Jerusalem is a city and we try to find a community that we can raise our children the best conditions that we can find here in Israel. So we moved to Hadassah, and we moved to a little community. Those days, I mean, something like 30 years ago, there were only 200 families, but a few religious families. We didn't have a minyan. And it was quite a challenge. And by chance, I met Rabbi Levi Cooper. And together we built a nice community that was a magnet to bring more religious families to Hadassah. And for many years, I was in education. I start as a teacher, but very— after few years, I was already headmaster, and after that, I was a supervisor in the Ministry of Education. And it was wonderful, but one day I decided that I want to try something new, something that is totally different than I did before. So I opened the cellar in Etzur Hadassah, and after a few years, it was— I will not say the most important, but a very interesting cellar that you can find wine from the Judenwinerie. And I think that in this moment, Eli will take the guidance. I will continue to tell our story because I think that this was the right moment for me, and I think it was also for Eli.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, so I too, also my background is not— I didn't start off actually in the alcohol world. So before I made Alia, I actually kind of rised up in the ranks in corporate America. I worked at first PricewaterhouseCoopers. I actually became a CPA. And if you ask me today if I enjoyed that, I really— I think I didn't really enjoy accounting, but it taught me a lot on the finance side. And then I worked at a bunch of other media companies like Warner Brothers and then another company called Astraea Media. And then once I decided to make the switch to move to Israel, it's when kind of like this creative boost sort of hit me. And I said, you know, there's no time like the present to kind of change what I'm doing and try something different. So I took a 6-month sabbatical and that really kind of opened my eyes when I moved here. It allowed me the opportunity to explore and think about what I enjoy and what I love. And what I discovered is I've always had this affinity towards alcohol. You can— the reason that Amir and I got together was because every time I would travel to Israel, I kept seeing these agave plants all over Israel. You see them everywhere.

Yep.

And they grow wild. And, and coming from Los Angeles where tequila is popular and thriving and boosting, like it's just growing tremendously. I was like, we gotta make this in Israel. It's just, it makes sense. And so that was kind of sticking in my head a lot. And what Amir mentioned with the community and with Rabbi Cooper was fortunate for me. I have the flexibility that I don't have to wake up at 6:00 AM to take care of going to minyan. I can go a little bit later. And I joined this other later minyan at 8 o'clock. Where Amir is also one of the patrons of that, of that. And we ended up, we end up living pretty close to each other. I start building this relationship with him. We walk back and forth to the synagogue. I'm loving wine. I'm learning about wine. I'm coming to the cellar a lot. And then one day I start introducing this idea to Amir that I really want to make alcohol in Israel. Unbeknownst to me, it was also an interest of Amir's and, you know, he's welcome to talk about it, but I just kept pressuring on this notion of like, hey, we gotta do something here. It'd be amazing. I, I have a big passion for it. You're in the wine industry. Let's, let's go and make something together. And after a lot of convincing on my part, Amir originally didn't want to, you know, you know, it's hard to work with somebody who you live near and do something with, you know, you never know the situation. And we decided, okay, we're going to do it. We're going to make a batch of something. And we decided that we got to make tequila. Like we got to, we got to try this. So we ended up, we ended up looking around and Amir's like, listen, Amir has a beautiful garden in his house. And he happens to have two agave plants that were hit right in his garden. So he's like, let's start with one of these. I'm happy to get rid of it. And unbeknownst to us, to cut agave is the worst experience you could ever have in your entire life. Like, it is terrible. First of all, the roots are so deep and so strong. And secondly, the plant, unbeknownst to us, is it's an, it's an allergen plant. And so if you even touch it, you get a rash on your skin. So what ended up happening is we wrapped— we, we first tried to cut the thing out of the ground. We weren't successful. The second thing we did is we wrapped a fireman's hose around it, the plant, and attached it to, I think, my car. I don't remember.

Yeah, one of the cars.

One of the cars. And I think the rope broke even and almost broke the car. Eventually we were successful. We were able to rip it out of the ground, which was, you know, great. We cut the plant up. And then we didn't really know what to do with it at that point. And from our research is you have to put it in a pressure cooker. And so we had this like little pressure cooker and we cut up some pieces, we put it inside and we hoped for the best. The next day, well, not even the next day, a few hours later, I'm like covered in a rash. I'm just like, my whole body's red. And I didn't tell Amir, I didn't know what was going on. And then I see him the next day, 8:00 AM, and he's also covered in this rash. And we're looking at each other and we're like, oh God, like, what did we sign up to? So that was the first terrible thing that happened from it. The second thing is the pressure cooker didn't work. We weren't able to extract the sugar from the starch. We, we didn't do it right. And, and we were just like, kind of, it was depressing. We're like, oh man, we could have, we don't even have anything to even ferment here. And so we took a pause and I was like, no, we'll find more plants. We'll, we'll, we got to do this. We got to figure it out. And then what ended up happening is Amir's like, listen, Ellie, I have been studying distilling and I have actually mastered certain techniques in distilling. I've flown to a few countries. I've learned the process. And I actually didn't know all of that. And He's like, what I mastered and what I was learning was to learn how to make schnapps and clear liquid alcohols and like eau de vie and different things like that. And so he's like, listen, there's something out there in the market that everyone knows about, but it's really popular today. And I think let's start with that and then make it as good as we can and make it the best that we can. And it's an easy spirit to work with. It's a hard one to master. Like everyone can make it, but nobody can make it amazing. And I can make it amazing. And that was his confidence. And that, that was gin and gin. It's, it's an interesting spirit. First of all, there's so many regulations in the world of alcohol that you have to call it this if it comes from Champagne and in Scotch is, has to be made in Scotland and gin doesn't have any of that. So right away the market knows the that gin is what it is. So we can make gin anywhere we want. And then the second thing is it's an easy spirit to make. It's sugar, yeast, and water. It's not agave, it's not rye, it's none of that, you know. So, so for us, we're like, okay, I was disappointed, to be honest with you, but I was like, you know what, let's do it. Let's— we're here to make spirit. That was our goal.

It's not only easy, it's very fast. You can do it in 3 weeks.

Yeah.

And for someone that is upset, I think it's the best remedy. In 3 weeks, we have our own breuvage.

Yeah.

And it was good proposition because in 3 weeks we have 3 different kind of gin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really impressive actually. And, and what's cool about gin is You're able to make any flavor concept you have. It's like cooking in the kitchen. Like you can come up with any flavor, see how it, and see what it, and test it and taste it. And with a lot of other spirits, and this is something where my finance brain, and also Amir, he's very like analytical like this. And, and is that every other spirit that exists out there has aging. They have to sit in a barrel and you have to hope for the best. And that means a ton of upfront capital, a ton of time. And you're just waiting.

How people make Scotch, I can't tell you. I don't understand it at all. And the other one is even wine. Wine is so time-consuming for good wine. You know, and then you have people make beer. Beer is like a breeze. You know, like you just have to make sure it's refrigerated. Now they're making it fancy and they're aging it and they're doing all sorts of stuff. Yeah, yeah. But you can make beer in a bathtub and have something that's drinkable that the people go, oh, this is good, you know? So yes, you're 100% right. It's a lot easier. I was going to say, there are a lot easier things than agave.

Yeah, we didn't know that at the time.

No, but it's okay.

And there's still like that goal in our head to get back there.

There's some amazing agave being made in Israel now.

Yeah.

Negave is a company and I happen to know one of the guys who's very involved, Yechiel.

So yeah, we're, we're also very close with Yechiel.

So he's a really good guy.

If he is listening to this, we say hi.

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's fun.

Yeah. So, so the next thing regarding that was like the artistry of the alcohol.

Okay.

But equally as important. Being somebody like— I as a kid was, was an artist, and it was one of these areas that instead of continuing in that path, I went into finance and, and really focused in those areas where it actually was hard for me to not do, to do, to be part of the arts. And then when I moved to Israel and I was starting to kind of flourish in that mindset, and especially when we were making this alcohol and my influences coming from California, I said, to Amir and said, great, the alcohol is awesome. You're gonna— that is you, like, you are distilling, you're focused on it, you're the master distiller, you know what you're doing, you're trained. I want to take it upon myself that equally as important to me as the alcohol being good is the appearance and the branding of this has to be amazing because I don't want it just to be like a side hustle project or, you know, something where people are like, oh, that's cute, like This is a brand that we want it to be there as a legacy brand and a strong presence. And so for me, one of the things that I loved so much about the tequilas was the unique proposition they offered with the bottling. And tequilas, a lot of them come in these beautiful ceramic bottles.

Crazy bottles.

Made in Mexico and they're handcrafted and they're gorgeous. And everyone talks about it. It's the first thing you see before you even taste it, right? That's, that is branding. Right.

And the prices that they charge for those things are astronomical.

Correct.

I just, I can't, I'm not a tequila drinker. Sorry, Yigiel, but I'm not a tequila drinker. But the prices on those bottles are, you know, people, you'd have a, what you call it, you have a liter or even 750. Of wine. And then, and, you know, if you mentioned something like $200 or $300, people would look at you like, are you out of your mind? These bottles of tequila go for like $4,200.

Yeah.

You know, like they're astronomical. I mean, they also make cheaper ones. At the beginning, when I first saw these bottles of tequila, I said, is that the case price? You know, like, what are we, what are you asking?

Yeah.

And it's not. So it's, yeah.

Yeah. We were just in Yekev, like Shilo Winery.

Yeah.

And we were taking a tour of the place. And one thing that they were mentioning to us and we noticed was they have these Magnum, Super Magnum bottles that they sell. And the winemaker was joking with us. He's like, this is a 12-liter bottle that we sell. It's a massive bottle. I know. And you could barely pick it up.

You could barely pick it up.

He said, we sell this for 4,500 shekels.

Yeah.

He said the same 12 liters of the same wine, if you were buying the bottles of that, would cost you 2,000. It's like, so that means these people are paying 2,500 just for a bottle.

Just because of the bottle.

Because of this big bottle. Yeah. So, you know, there is definitely that element to it. So to circle back on the bottle, another thing that I was also doing here and Again, this is, I would say there's pre-October 7th, post-October 7th mindsets a little bit. So we started before October 7th, about 6 months before. And one of the things that was that I'm, I'm a finance person. I believe in business. Like that is how it works. No matter who you're working with, I've worked with a lot of countries and everyone speaks money and everyone speaks profits and. So for me, one thing that really fascinated me and something that I loved was the— when I would go right across the street from where we are right now into the Old City, and you would see these beautiful, like, ceramics that were made by, like, Arabic art style. And I was like, we have to have that. That is the look that I want for our gin. And so I started trying to source bottles. And mind you, Amir is like, you are out of your mind. You're absolutely out of your mind. And then it got even worse when I eventually found a supplier in the city of Hebron. And it eventually, and then it got worse because I would start to drive there a lot and became like pretty frequently a customer there and became and built this relationship. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And it, again, this is like, you know, today it's even, even they personally tell me, Ellie, like, we got to meet somewhere else. We, you know, it's kind of that situation, but there was something beautiful about it. There was like this just business cohesiveness. It was like no politics. Even when we talk, it's like, there's none of that. We are on the ground. Everything you read in the news, everything you see, it was like none of that. It was just clean. Unadulterated, pure joy. Like, we were making this product, we were designing it together. We continue— and actually, mind you, we still continue to do that. And again, Amir and a lot of other people are like, you're crazy.

Obviously my life was very difficult. We have to say that this bottle is handmade, and if it's handmade, it means that we have a little difference between all the bottles. Yeah. So we have 3 different corks because not all the time is the same fit. Yes. And so it's quite a difficult life for someone that has to work with this kind of handmade bottle. But I think that we can say that Elie works very strictly. To make the best bottle for our gin. And they change as our bottle today are much better than the bottle we start.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, we actually got to the point where we almost, we were still in talks with it because we were almost going to open a separate factory in Chevron just for our bottle with them as a way to just focus on developing this. And, but yeah, that was kind of the, that was the big picture for, for me at least was we have a beautiful product on the outside. We have an amazing product on the inside. Now let's go sell it. And we did that. And within a matter of, I think it was a month, we did our first batch was this test batch that we did where we worked with a, a lot of the wineries and breweries and distilleries in the, in our regions, they all have, you know, some extra time to lend hours to go and distill your own product or give you some storage space. So we connected with somebody that Amir had a relationship with, and we did our first batch with him. And within a month we sold, I think it was 150 bottles of gin, and it went just like instantly. And we were like, oh wow, this is actually, this is actually good.

It's actually a business.

It's actually a business. Yeah. And right when we had that kind of epiphany about that, we then went into October 7th. And I actually will say that as hard of it is, after seeing the industry that's evolved and like we, we're on the ground here, it was a blessing and a curse because what ended up happening to a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of breweries and distilleries and, and, and such. And wineries, they got hit very heavily because no one was buying their product. No one was coming for tourism. The industry was shot. And when you're running a business and you have debt and you have rent and you have salaries and you have deliverables and you have no product to sell, your business is shot. And so we actually, you know, unfortunately, like in a weird way, benefited in the, in this kind of freeze.

To be able to hold.

It was like a hold and it was a long hold. And, and then, and then after a while after that hold, actually Amir actually wasn't even in the country for a part of it. Everyone was doing, there was so much going on. And then we got to a point where, when we were like, okay, things feel a little bit more calm. We're, we're inching to get back into this. But now we had a test, let's do it. Let's do it bigger and better. And so that's kind of where we are today. And, and, and yeah, that's kind of, kind of how things are at the moment.

Okay.

So I don't know if Amir wants to add more to it, but—

Yes, it was not only question of how we do it, but what we do it. Because we decided that we have time to try different things. And it pushed us to do experiment works, to have new product, and it's a big pleasure.

So I want to talk to you about that a little bit because tavlin means spice in Hebrew, and every gin maker on earth leads with juniper. You named the whole house after spice.

Are you—

What are you making? Are you making— Is this a spice house that happens to distill, or a distillery that happens to focus on spicy? So, that's the question.

I think we can start that tavlin is a nice word in Hebrew, a nice, pronunciation in different language. Yeah, this is the beginning. And for someone that is work with plants, there's a wonderful reason to be happy, the— of the joy of the different aroma, of different smells. Yes, it's, it's wonderful. So I love the name and the name suit our product. Most of them related to those essences, some of them not, because we decided that we want— we belong to Mateiuda, to Judean region, and we want to be a part of the wine revolution that happened in Mateiuda. So we said, maybe we will start to distill wine. So we made our wine brandy.

Okay.

And that was something new for most of this winery that heard, "What does it mean, a brandy?" We said, "You have the possibility to offer a new product. You have your wine, but you can offer something new." And we start with the brandy, and we think all the time how to do the right grappa. The marre in French, that present the quality of our region.

Okay.

We definitely think that flavor plays a massive role in the alcohol that we drink. I think gins have historically always been, oh, it's a gin and tonic. Oh, it's a London Dry. It's, it's a Gordon's. It's a Beefeater. It's, it's basic. I, but it's also classic and it's something that I have to mix into a cocktail. And there's this revolution that has been taking place now for quite some time in Europe and around the world that no gin can be drank. It's a sipping drink also because you can make it sippable if you actually know what you're doing and you're making good flavored alcohol. Amir and I have. Honestly, just a great relationship. Not only just a working relationship, but just a really good bond. And I'm always so grateful, and I thank him all the time that he kind of took me under his wing because listen, somebody whose Hebrew is terrible and new and learning all the ropes and somebody who's an educator and eloquent and has such a high vocabulary and as somebody who's spent their whole life, you know, in the arts of Hebrew, he's written books, he's, and then he is with me. And it was, it's humbling, you know, and he took me under his wing to do that. And, but at the same time—

It's a little bit dramatic.

I don't know, I think it's—

I think that for someone that is trying to find adventure, it was the right adventure for me. Cool. And I think that for me it's also very important to hear what happened and what is to live here in Israel for someone that is moved from the States. And easy things for me can be so complicated and so far of understanding. And I think that is part of me to be maybe better Israeli citizens.

I want to ask you a question. You used to be, or are you in Hartuf?

Yeah.

Okay. So you're in Hartuf, which is the mouth of the Sorek Valley, Shimshon country. It's where Samson was.

Yep. We can see his kever from our building.

Okay. Wow. And you're minutes from the Judean hills, the vineyards that our listeners know so much about because I'm a big fan of the Judean Hills wineries, especially the smaller ones. I mean, I like them all, but the smaller ones are amazing. Like, Agour is off the charts. There's some amazing stuff that goes on.

You said the right name for Amir. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, he's— they're the best. I love them.

The story of Agour is very interesting, and I think we have to mention it because for me, something like 12 years ago to know Shuki Yeshuv. And he told me, you know, when I made my first wine, it was not kosher. And I, as poor Israeli, I decided to make a kosher wine for all the component of the Israeli society can drink and can enjoy of this wine. It was— his story is very interesting because we have a lot of post-trauma soldiers that decided that they found their future life in the— between the wines and the vineyard. And this is one of the examples. I present his wine in my cellar, and a few times I receive a phone call I mean, maybe you have a few bottles of this year's you kept in your cellar. We need that because it's finished in our—

If you have any of the EOP left, I want it. So just a few, you know. Yes, I'm in the same boat. My podcast is called The Kosher Terroir. Is there a gin terroir that you're trying to accomplish? Does the land actually give you something special?

Yes.

Okay.

I want to start that our terroir is not only the land, it's also the kitchen.

Yeah.

And in our spicy gin, we try to find what makes the Israeli cuisine, and we took a few ingredients from the Israeli cuisine. Israeli cuisine, it's mean paper, it's mean cinnamon and things like that. And we make our gin based on this product. And one, in one festival, someone drink our gin, said, you make me remember my mother.

Wow.

And it was very— it made hot in our— it was a pleasure to hear something like that. And this is a part of our product. We try to bring also plants that we can find in our region, like the za'atar, like the marwa, like the— what do we have more than that? Anise, things like that, that make, present our hills.

Yeah. That's also another reason why we call the brand Tavlin and Spices. Where we live in Sur Hadassa, there is a road that David HaMelech and all the Jews took to get to the Beit HaMikdash. And that road is the road is today it's called the 375. Back then it was not called 375. Back then, I believe the name, it might be different, but it's, it's referred to also as the Shvil HaTavlinim, the spice trail. Cool. And that spice trail is where we live off of. And it's a big part of why we also call it Tavlin. And you see all the local spices that you would get. Obviously, when you make wine or you make alcohol, you talk about the, the the land, the earth, all of that. And the plants are all part of that, as Amir said. And so, yeah, we, we believe very strongly in the, in the, in the natural herbs. We don't try to bring things that are not from this, from Israel. We want it to represent what we have. And we learned to blend them in ways that really speak to each individual flavor that we're trying to make. As a side note, because I know that this is a wine podcast, but we are extremely fascinated by the wine industry, and we are trying actually in R&D to figure out what we can do with our gin to also incorporate wine into that process. And we have a bunch of ideas and a bunch of things that we've seen in the industry at large that people are testing.

And I love it.

And I think it's a lot of the follow-up that once we get there, we can definitely—

no, I'm I'm happy to even talk to you about it because it's one of the, one of the things that I've been really thinking about. But okay. So my next question apropos was let's get to the bottles.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's talk a little bit about, so what you're tasting right now, we brought basically today an array of gins. I started though, I believe it's always easier to start at the top of the ladder and walk down, even though everything is amazing. But what separates us now, and again, talking about this small little project that was a dream and really just amounted to nothing, and even to this day, we have so much more to go. What you're tasting right now is our spicy gin. And, and at this point today, it's actually, it's not just a local Israeli spirit that people know about. It's a world-renowned spirit that About 4 months ago, we received a bronze medal in the Gin Guide Award, which is the top gin award there is in gins in the world. There's 36 countries that enter. There's about 500 or 600 different bottles that enter. And we entered our spicy gin in the spicy gin category that they have. They have about 10 categories and we received the bronze medal. So a third place for, for the gin that we produce., and it's, it's, it's like the miracle on ice story because first of all, the competition takes place in London. Just to get the bottle to London was a story in itself. Okay. We had to smuggle it in with somebody to help us get it there and just to give them the samples. And then we were like, we're a nobody. Why are we even entering in this competition? And that was Amir's take. For me, I shoot for the stars and I'm like, we're going to do it. And if we lose, at least we put it in and we're going to do it again. Like, we got to keep going. And, and for us, that was, you know, that was it. That was what— that was the approach. And we got word back from, from them that we ended up winning. And it took us like completely by surprise that we won the award. And it just goes to show that Okay, we actually know what we're doing here. And it, and it definitely goes to show the craftsmanship and, and, and abilities that Amir has in terms of like the product. And yeah, we're just continuing with that focus and, and making great spirits. So I think it was worth us starting with the spicy gin. It's, it's got so much complexity on the nose. It has something you would not expect from a gin, which is garlic right off the bat. And it's so pleasing, the smell. It's not overwhelming. Yeah.

I was gonna ask you, am I smelling garlic? So it's, yes.

Yes. And I think that's the first thing you smell when you enter a home. You smell garlic cooking in the kitchen.

Yeah.

It's fresh garlic.

Yeah.

It's make big difference. If it's garlic, it's fresh, it's make his aromas and it's wonderful.

Yeah. And I think as it like, and as it kind of caramelized with the other ingredients, because you're cooking it, you then, when you drink it, you're getting a completely different taste of the garlic. And that is something that is amazing to us. And then you have a balance in there because we also added cinnamon. So it gives this like really nice you would never put cinnamon and garlic together in a dish, but for some reason in this alcohol it works like perfectly. And Amir can definitely speak more about all the ingredients, uh, if you want to get into it. But yeah, for us, we're really, really pleased with the result.

So I have a question for you then. Are these, are these products, you know, walk through the distillation itself. Are these Do the botanicals macerate in the spirit or do you hang them in vapor baskets or both? How do you put these into the spirit itself?

We have 3 different methods we use to make our gin. The first of all, it's boiled with the alcohol and second thing is the basket. But for some reason we take the alcohol at the end and we leave a few things in this alcohol and take the aroma in this stage.

So it's macerated in the alcohol.

Yes, but it's a very, I will not say a secret way, but only a few distilleries know this method that you can use the aroma without cooking.

Without cooking it.

Yeah.

Because the cooking will change the—

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, very cool.

How do you decide where your cuts are so that the gin isn't, you know, isn't too aggressive?

Well, you don't want to die, so that's the first cut.

That's the reason my whole life I've stayed away from distillation. Yeah, because I watched those shows about the hillbillies up in the— up in the mountains. And it scared the daylights out of me. I don't want to go blind because I did something wrong.

Yeah, so methanol is interesting because it has a smell for sure, so you can identify that, but Amir is the one who masters the cuts.

I have to say that the smell of the methanol is so different that you can smell it very easily when you, when you're distilling. So you can feel when it's finished. And in the beginning, you have to be close to Master Distiller, and he explain you when the smell is changed. There is another way to do it, and it's a kind of mathematics. But this is too complicated because you have to deal with the temperature, you have to deal with the quantity. It's quite difficult. The best thing to do is by smelling. And I think that this is a part of my brain that can smell methanol from distance. But this is the best thing to do and the mathematics we do to be sure that we do the right thing. We can be generous and say we will lose a few—

people?

No, no, a few liters. A few liters to be sure that our, our product is 100% okay.

So use a pot still?

Yes. Okay.

I would actually add back to the ability to smell and, and identify, because I think it's important, especially As Amir being the master distiller, I mentioned that he, you know, actually certified in distilling, which is great. But what I didn't mention, which is more pertaining to this podcast, and I think you can do an entire, a bunch of series with Amir on this, is that he's also a sommelier. And what's fascinating about how he became a sommelier is he took the course without drinking a single sip. Of wine and passed all the exams just by smell, just by smell, because the wines he was testing weren't kosher and he drinks strictly kosher. So, you know, he passed his sommelier exam with that. So his, his ability to smell, obviously, you know, yeah, there's proof, right? Obviously.

So off the charts.

So what we're tasting now This is our floral gin.

Okay.

This is back to like the representation of, of Israel and the Shvilat HaBanim, the spice trail, and all the herbs that kind of are out there, including the floral elements and the green elements. And we kind of came up with this, with this type of gin.

So it's definitely a gin. But it's, it's actually, it is, it's got botanicals that make it much more floral.

Yeah. And like one thing that we strive for, we're a boutique company and we believe in, like I mentioned, the sipping gins of the world is kind of where we're focused on. So yes, we love cocktails and the smoke and the design and the color and great. And whenever we meet a mixologist or somebody who's a bartender and says, I gotta make something with this because it's so good. But at the same time, you can drink it plain.

Yeah.

And that is the, what's really amazing about what we're trying to do. So yeah, that's, that's the next one that we, that we've got. And we can then segue into some of these more exploratory flavors that showcase the, the mastery of distilling. So we have 3 things that we brought in addition to that. And they all are very different. One, obviously the most pertaining to what you guys do here on the podcast is wine. So we made a wine brandy and we did it in collaboration with Raviv Winery. If you talk about small wineries in Israel and they make, honestly, I think they're excellent winemakers. The owner is so talented in, in how he makes wine and The next thing that we have is a play on this concept that we're trying to do where we want to make millions of different types of gins. And the first thing we thought of to make was an Arak gin. So we brought a Gin Arak here, which has this kind of balance of anise and the juniper. So it's a, it's a really interesting kind of take. And then the third thing is more of a homage thing for what Amir kind of brought to the table of something that no one ever heard of until, I don't think, at least in Israel, and that's called Aquavit. Yeah. And very few people kind of know what that is, but it's a really cool, you know, type of alcohol.

The Israeli taste in alcohol is very, is in the beginning.

Right.

And we want to open this world of different alcohol from all over the world. So we decided to make something that no one is making here in Israel. And we say we will make Akvavit because no one in Israel made Akvavit. And because we have to say that the Kimmel— Kimmel? I don't know.

Yeah. What you're tasting and smelling now is the brandy we made with Raviv Winery. And we did, back to the business aging and all that stuff, brandy, it has to sit with some form of aging.

Yep.

But there's like newer forms of aging today that move it faster, move it faster. So one of them is to just, instead of having the alcohol sitting in a barrel, you can take the barrel and put it in the alcohol. So we took basically that approach, which is wood chips.

Yeah.

And you get more surface area and you're able to age faster. And so within 6 months, we were able to age.

And you get a wonderful, wonderful pink color.

Yeah. Turning to the direction of Israel and back to kind of what Amir was saying with the brandy and introducing it to, to what's going on, is there is— just like the wine industry has had, is having its mark in Israel, and it's recognized and it has its world presence and people know about it. We're also going through that in the alcohol world and, and a big project on Amir's side. I know he's like very, very active in trying to get this done and whatever he does, it always considers and it's, it's really amazing is to build community around everyone else who's distilling, everyone else is trying to make product here because it only helps us to increase the awareness of what Israel's doing on the distilling side. Because we do have the ability to also have that, that namesake where, oh wow, Israel's making great distillations, they're making great wine, they're making great whiskey, they're making great gins and arak. So it's, it's all good. You know, it's a very, it just benefits everybody.

We are proud. This brandy was the first brandy that present Matei Yehuda.

Okay.

And it was not easy. To convince the organizer of the Mateu Dá Wine Festival to present also a brandy. But we tried to insist to say we have a very good product that can be a part of this festival. And in the end, it was one of the highlights of this festival.

Wow.

Yes. And We hope that in the next festival, we're not the only, and others will join our way to present Mateo Udá from different perspectives.

Can I talk to you a little bit about the bottle again that you— I know these bottles are all different, but the bottles for the spicy.

The ornament that we have on the bottle.

Yeah.

It's called also an Armenian ornament.

Yes.

And there's a big stress between the Palestinian and the Armenian community, Arab communities here in Israel, to say to whom it belongs, because each one said, this is ours. If you're here in Jerusalem, it's used to present as an Armenian. But if you are in Hebron, Al Khalil. It's Arab. It's Palestinian.

So is the inside of that bottle glazed too?

Yeah.

So you have to glaze the inside and the outside of the bottle.

So everything is food-grade glazed. Everything is, you know, to the standards of Misra de Briyout, the health ministry. We, yeah, we have obviously all the Even though, you know, when we think about working with, you know, our, our brethren on the, on the Judean hillside, we think of, okay, it's maybe a little bit more, you know, backyardy and in that sense, but it's quite the opposite. Actually, this company has been around for 300 years. They send about 40 to 50 containers a month to America and around the world for their art. They are a massive company that has built a great reputation. All the art that you see in the Old City, most of them come from this place. So they have standards.

All the Armenian pottery that you think is Armenian is coming out of Hebron.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, yeah. So it's very, it's comical and, and, but, but yeah, they, they obviously, yeah, it's all food grade for sure.

Wow.

So this is our first attempt at combining two worlds and merging them into one. We took Arak, which has its really definitive anise taste, and we said, okay, let's see if we can do some gin elements to it. Let's add the dryness from the juniper and the coriander and see how it comes out. And, and it's, it's really, for me, it's very pleasing.

I think this is one of my favorite Araks.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

It's kind of interesting. It's like all the good things about Arak without the bad things.

Yeah. And that's kind of what we were— our approach was that. And again, mind you, this is first pass, right?

Yeah.

And but it opened our eyes to saying, okay, we're going to do as many things as possible with this gin and come up with as many cool ideas. So somebody from India, and you would appreciate this, one of our projects that we're working on already is there is an entire world of teas that are in this world. Like we're talking in the millions.

Yep.

And we're like, why are we not making gin with tea? Like, why are we not doing this? And we got introduced to this idea actually because of— you— we were going to talk about this later, but I'll talk about it now— is we offer this workshop.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

Yeah, we offer this workshop where— and it's something that goes back to like the experiences and people making stuff— is that the workshop is You come to us and within 2 hours you become a master distiller. It's a quick little kind of like taste of what's out there, but we do it very efficiently. And what we do is we give you a pot still and we give you ingredients and we go with you along the process from beginning to end, and you actually make your own alcohol.

And you can taste different gin from Israel and from other countries. And you can develop your preference. And this is the reason that in the end, you can be very proud and you can explain your own gin.

Yeah.

I heard about this incredible whiskey hack. Okay? A hack is where you do something that's a little different to make something better or what have you. You can take the worst Scotch, let's say Johnny Walker Red Label,, and you can take tea, and if you infuse tea in that whiskey— so as an example, if you took something like Lapsang Souchong, which is a very smoky tea, and you infuse it, and you infuse it into that whiskey, that whiskey tastes like something extraordinary. It suddenly takes a pedestrian whiskey and makes it absolutely extraordinary. So yes, you can do teas and, and do crazy stuff with teas that people— I'm surprised myself that nobody, nobody does that.

Yeah. So it's— we talk about a small world, is that I was just in Budapest and I did a tea tour. Like, I took a, like, a really intense class, and the one tea that I walked away with to make our first batch in testing, and I can't even pronounce it, is this Lapsang Souchong.

Yeah.

It's because I was just like, it's the best, smokiest, craziest tea.

I, this, this was my favorite tea as a, as a kid growing up.

Yeah. So I brought back a big sack of this from Budapest, from this super authentic tea, like, I guess, what do they call it?

I don't even know where you get it in Israel, but it's, yeah, maybe you can get it, but I, I'll bring you some.

I have some.

No, but I'm telling you, all you need to do is to take that and put it in. Yeah, but you've got to be careful. You can't infuse it for too long. It's got to be infused very short period of time, and it'll make a huge difference.

That's awesome. Yeah, so that's exactly that, in that we have about— and we're adding more all the time— but right now we have about 25 different botanicals that you can choose from.

Yeah, 30.

Sorry, 30 now. Okay, good. And we want to keep adding, right? And you go there and you choose whatever flavors you front, and you smell them, you touch them, and then you watch them in the distillation process, and you go home with what you've made, and you even taste it as it's dripping out of the distiller. It's like, it's a cool experience. And what happened though was somebody made something, and it was like a tea-form gin, and Amir and I tasted it. It was, it was, they're friends of ours in the industry that came to visit us, and they made this, they wanted to make like a tea-infused, kind of a feeling of some sort of tea. And it— we looked at each other, we're like, we got to do this.

Yeah, this is crazy. It was like, you can do some amazing things. It's like, yeah, so much more intense. But the trick is, it's very intense. You've got to be careful that you only do that. Yeah, you've got to really control it.

But it's— but having the— you can only do so much on your own. Having the collaboration and the people, it opens your eyes. Even for us, like, we've had so many unique tasting gins, and we're just like, Oh, we, we should do that. Oh, we like that. Oh, that's great. Let's try this. Oh, let's mess with that. And we wouldn't have that if we didn't have this class. So for us, it's, it's just as rewarding for us as it is for the people that come. I got one more to drink here. So, uh, one more. Yeah, we got one more last thing.

Question: you release in numbered batches, batch number 1, 2, 3, now 4. I don't know where we're up— are we up to 4 beyond that, or do you do that anymore?

Yeah, we do it. And but yeah, finish your question and then I'll kind of—

The question is, and they sell out, they're often even pre-ordered. That's kind of vintage thinking, kind of like winery talk, that you make something and it's a certain vintage, it's a certain style, and that's it. It's done. And rather than, "I like this, I'm going to keep making it." So is that deliberate? Or is that what you're trying to do?

Or— So it's a little bit of both. It's 100% deliberate. We live in a world where people's minds and tastes always change and people want the newest and next best thing, right? And that's how we kind of see us also, that we want to constantly innovate and not stay stagnant and just make the same thing over and over again. So it's very deliberate in the way that we're going to make it and we're going to sell the amount that we're going to make and that's it. And whoever gets it gets it. And we'll go on to the next thing. And that is something that we really like about what we're doing, right? Is that we're able to make a product that each time is good and builds this kind of FOMO and people want to grab it before it goes. And we want to continue to sort of operate in that world. But at the same time, we also know that there's consistency and there's people out there that want that and obviously are— we— so in full transparency, right now we're selling direct to consumer. That's how we sell. The goal though, and what we're working on now, is to also sell in bars and to hotels and such. And for them, consistency is important. So we have a few of our, like, what we call our flagship sort of spirits, which would be the London Dry, which is a classic. And then our floral gin and then our spicy gin that we want to keep making. Cause you know, it really has the award and it's that, so we want to continue to make those and we are, but we, in addition to those, we want to keep making new spirits and doing that. But there's so much depth to, to that element. First of all, you see the success of that happening. Like there's a, the organization, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, they master that. They come up with a new vintage all the time, and wineries come out with it all the time. So we really like that. And then so much so that even with the factory in Hevron, like, our goal is to also release a new bottle design with every time we make something. So we work with them on the art and come up with our new kind of what design will match that alcohol, and we will make the color and the design match what's inside. And that's how we do it We complement them.

You're totally agave.

You got—

you're totally going down that path.

I'm totally going— I'm deep, I'm deep in it. I'm deep in it.

I get it.

I'm deep in it.

I totally get it.

But I— but it just works. Like, the spicy gin is this multicolored balagan.

Yeah.

And then the floral gin is like greens and purples, and the London Dry is blue and yellow, and the tea gins are going to be totally different, even patterns, right? We're just things that were— they have to reflect— there's a package, right? So for me, it's— that's what's very important.

We have Coca-Cola, we are not Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, always the same. We are different every time. And truly, we have our free, consistent gin, and we try to be in the same pattern, but we know that there are changes, there are differences, and we live with that to be very happy to say, 'We remember the second batch, he was wonderful, but the third one was less good.' Yeah. This is life. We are human.

Yeah, no, that's what I— one of the things I was going to say is that You know, you like the new— always the new stuff. But I also kind of feel like you can't do this with wine. You can't take a wine that is just something that you taste that's exceptional. I love this wine and put it on a shelf and drink it in 10 years. You can't do that. You can do it with spirits. Like, for— I bought fantastic scotches, some incredible scotches, and I just put them on the side. And every time I have a new grandchild, a new grandson, at the brit, I open up a bottle and we drink a third of it. And I seal the bottle again. At the bar mitzvah, we drink the next third. And at the wedding, please God, we'll drink the last third. I haven't had any weddings yet. But it's actually hard to do that because by the time you get to the second third, you're already You know, dipping in. But you can do that with scotches and you can do that with spirits. You cannot do that with wine. This is what now again?

Akvavit.

This is the Akvavit.

Yeah. So that's why I call it rye because it tastes like a rye brand.

Right.

But we learned that it's not.

Two questions left. One is, there's a lot of distillers going on. There's a lot of distillation going on in Israel right now. How have you found them? You know, like, this old Milk and Honey and this, what you call this?

Golani.

Golani as well. Is it like a brotherhood or is it competition? Do you feel that you're in competition with them or do you feel like, you know—

First of all, I think we have a lot, we have a lot of place that new distillery can come and present their product. For example, here in Israel, we have something like 15, 20 distilleries. In Switzerland, we have 3,000. A little different. And, but I think that we have the advantage.

They're not even known for their, their, their, what you call it, aquavit. Yes, but they're, they're not even like, when you think of spirits, do you think of, oh, I'm gonna buy a Swiss spirit?

No, no, we have, it's called William, poor William. William Pears, that are very good, that coming from Switzerland. But I think that we are so few that the relation are very good, and we all the time speaking about collaboration between them and us to do something different, to do something in common, because we have a lot to learn and we have different things to do. So we have to learn and to share the experience. For example, we have Arava Distiller. They make their eau de vie, their spirits from dates.

Dates.

Dates. And it's totally new for us. We do it from dextrose. What the possibility to make something, a good gin from dates.

Where do you want to be 10 years from now? Where are you trying to get to? Is there going to be a barrel-aged gin coming along?

Is there—

are there different botanicals?

I think my wish is that every year we have something new, something different than we did before. The success will be that we have something new to offer to the alcohol drinker. And if we are big or if we are little, it's not the question. The question is if we are relevant for the drinker. And this is my wish, this is my prayer, this is my philosophy.

Truly the last question. Where can listeners find your stuff? Where can they, where can they buy it?

Where can they get it from? So right now, as I mentioned, we sell direct to consumer on our website, which is drinktavlin.com. T-A-V-L-I-N. It's also the name of our social media handles, which is Drink Tavlin. And that's kind of where we sit right now. We're very much in that world. And what the hope is, is that As we continue to build and make and get more consistent, we're also opening the channels of distribution in some stores and restaurants and bars of the like.

So everything is in Israel right now.

Everything's in Israel. We've been approached by a bunch of distributors around the world that would like to sell our product, but we're just not there yet. You know, we're, we're trying to just master what we're doing here. It it's a whole nother world of things to do to get it out of Israel. But our focus here is just to really make sure that we're doing what we need to do here.

And we want to— Labeling is much easier to stay here. Just the labeling even is much easier to stay here.

Yeah, there's those elements. And then it's just like, again, like Amir said, we're not Coca-Cola. Like our goal is not global expansion and world dominance. We're not We're also, I always tell people, I'm like, we're the anti-AI company. Like the, you mentioned before Gen Z not drinking anymore. I think it's, if at most it's a fad, because at the end of the day, we're humans and we're consistent and something like—

We've been drinking alcohol for a long time.

We've been drinking alcohol forever. Okay. Like it has been forever. Like the wine industry is, we're not talking about decades. We're talking about millennia. You know, it's just a different— totally different conversation.

Yeah.

So it's a little bit kind of— it's just not— the context doesn't make sense. So for us, it's— we're just going to continue doing what we do. And like Amir said, as long as we are relevant and people are aware of what we're doing and we're also excited about what we're doing, those are the main things that we're caring about. And we're fortunate to be in that position to do that. And we're extremely fortunate to be doing it here in Israel. Like, I don't know where all your listeners are, but to be able to actually do what we do and be in Israel is, is literally, that already is the win. Like the rest after that, it's just icing. And it's very fortunate that, you know, that we're able to do that. So I have a very strong connection to the land of Israel. Amir has a very strong connection to the land of Israel. And we thank, God every day that we're doing what we do and you're here and we're here and we're— and, and like, I think in business, like in general, when you're doing something in business, you can see where you have successes based on like your luck or based on how things feel or, or, you know, how things go. And you have to gravitate towards the— if you see that there's a lot of wins in what you're doing, you just can continue to do that. And then on the flip side, if you feel like, wow, I just keep getting knocked down, knocked down, knocked down, there's something to that saying the world is telling you, hey, maybe you should put that on pause. You shouldn't be focused on that. And we're on that, the other side where we're feeling the wins and we're feeling the confidence and we're getting compliments and we're getting awards and, you know, we're doing things and we feel all the time when we say that we're blessed that, you know, God loves us for what we're doing. We feel like this connection. That's what we care about. Where we see ourselves in 10 years is to continue doing that. You know, that is really exciting. So.

Very cool. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We are specially invited for someone that is hearing this podcast and saying, next visiting Israel, I want to visit this distillery.

Yeah. Especially to be able to make something. Yeah. That would be. Crazy awesome.

Yeah, we would love anybody.

Thank you. Really a pleasure. Toda, toda. Thank you for being on the Kosher Teruah. Toda, shalom u'bracha. This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of the Kosher Teruah. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you are new to The Kosher Terroir, please check out our many past episodes.