The Dirt Behind Great Kosher Wine

Welcome to the Kosher Teruah. I'm 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 relaxing at home, please open a delicious bottle of kosher wine and pour a glass, sit back and relax. Have you ever watched a winemaker walk their vineyard? If you pay close attention, you'll notice something interesting. They don't spend a lot of time looking at the sky. They don't even spend most of their time looking at the leaves or the grapes. They look down. They kick the dirt. They crouch down, scoop up a handful of earth, rub it between their fingers and smell it. I've even seen a few of the old-school viticulturists touch a pebble to their tongue. To the casual observer, It looks a little crazy, but to the winemaker, that handful of dirt holds the entire identity of the wine they are trying to create. Welcome back to The Kosher Terroir. I'm your host, Simon Jacob, and today we are getting our hands dirty— literally. We are embarking on a deep dive into the very foundation of wine. Over the next few minutes, we are going to explore the 7 layers of our vineyard underworld. We'll be breaking down all the different types of structures of soil, dirt, and the stones that the vines grow in, and exactly how they impact the kosher wines you pour into your glass. Because here is the beautiful truth about wine: It's a liquid recording of geology. Before we start talking about volcanic basalt or chalky limestone, we have to address a massive myth in the wine world. People love to say, "Oh, this wine tastes like slate," or, "I can taste the crushed rocks in this glass." Let's be candid. Vines do not have tiny mouths in their roots. They are not sucking up rocks and pumping liquid stone into the grapes. That flinty mineral taste in your favorite kosher Chablis or Judean Hills white, that is a complex chemical reaction born from how the soil regulates water, heat, nutrients. When you stand in a vineyard, what you are standing on is split into 3 main layers: topsoil, subsoil, and bedrock. The topsoil is where the organic matter lives. It's the bugs, the decaying leaves, the compost. It's fertile. Beneath that is the subsoil. This is the transitional zone, a mix of weathering rock and earth holding the hidden water reserves. And finally, deep down is the bedrock, the solid foundation of the earth. Now, here is the secret to great wine, and it's a concept that feels a bit counterintuitive. If you wanna grow giant, juicy, beautiful grapes, beautiful table grapes, you plant them in deep, rich, fertile topsoil. The vine drinks, it eats, it gets lazy, and it produces huge clusters of watery grapes. But wine grapes? Wine grapes are masochists. They need to suffer. There is an old French adage that says, "A vine must look at the river." but never touch it. When a vine is planted in poor rocky soil, soil that drains water away immediately, the vine panics. It realizes that survival is not guaranteed. So instead of wasting its energy growing lots of green leaves, it sends its roots plunging down into the earth. I'm talking 10, 20, even 40 feet deep. It forces its way through the microscopic cracks in the bedrock, searching for single drops of moisture. Because the vine is stressed, it focuses all its energy into reproduction, into its fruit. The resulting grapes are smaller, their skins are thicker, and the sugars and the acids are incredibly concentrated. The struggle is literally what creates the depth, the tannins, and the complexity in your glass. But as kosher wine lovers, our relationship to the soil goes even deeper than the viticulture. It's written into our halacha, our laws. Think about the agricultural mitzvot we observe. Take orlah. For the first 3 years of a vine's life, we are forbidden to use its fruit. From a purely agronomic standpoint, what is happening during those 3 years? The vine isn't producing much fruit anyway, but because we leave it alone, it's forced to focus its energy downward, establishing that deep root system in the subsoil. And then there's Shmita, the sabbatical year. Every 7 years, the land in Israel must rest. I was talking to a vineyard manager in the Galilee recently, and he told me a story about the Shmita year. He said that leaving the land fallow is terrifying from a business perspective, but he noticed something incredible the year after Shmita. The soil, which hadn't been worked, turned over, or manipulated, had regenerated its natural microbiome. The earth breathed, the natural flora and fauna returned, and the wines produced in that 8th year possessed an energy and vibrancy that he couldn't replicate with any fertilizer on the market. Thousands of years before the modern wine world invented the term biodynamic farming, Jewish law understood that the soil is not just a factory for our use. It's a living, breathing entity that requires respect, rest, and boundaries. When we respect the soil, it rewards us in the glass. So what exactly is in that soil? What happens when a vine hits an ancient lava flow versus an ancient seabed? Let's dig a bit deeper. Here we are moving out of the general anatomy of a vineyard and stepping directly into the most dramatic of the three major rock families: igneous or volcanic soil. If sedimentary rock is a slow, quiet accumulation over millions of years, igneous rock is the exact opposite. It is violent, it is sudden, it is born in fire. Igneous rock is formed from the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. When we talk about volcanic soils in the wine world, we are usually talking about things like basalt, pumice and tuff, which is essentially compacted volcanic ash. To understand what volcanic soil does to a wine, you have to understand what it looks and feels like. Imagine standing in a vineyard and picking up a chunk of basalt. It's heavy, it's dark, often charcoal black or a deep rusted red. It's packed with iron, magnesium, and potassium. And if you look closely, especially at pumice or tuft, it looks like a hard sponge. It's full of tiny little air holes created by gas bubbles escaping as the lava cooled rapidly on the Earth's surface. Those little holes are an absolute miracle for a grapevine. Why? Because they act like microscopic water reservoirs. Volcanic soil is famous for its incredible drainage. Water flows right through it, which, as we learned, forces the vine to dig deep. But those tiny pores trap just enough moisture so that the vine doesn't completely die of thirst during a blistering summer. It is the perfect balance of stress and survival. Now, when you think of volcanic wines, your mind might jump to Mount Etna in Sicily or the Canary Islands. But for the kosher wine drinker, we have a world-class volcanic terroir right in our own backyard— the Golan Heights. If you have ever driven up through the Golan Heights, you know exactly what I am talking about. You cross the Jordan River, start driving up the winding roads, and the landscape completely changes from the rest of Israel. Suddenly, scattered everywhere across fields are these jagged black basalt boulders. You can look out and clearly see the peaks of Mount Bental or Mount Avital, dormant volcanoes that hundreds of thousands of years ago violently erupted and paved the entire plateau with liquid fire. Over millennia, that hard basalt slowly weathered and broke down into deep, iron-rich, well-draining soils. I remember visiting a winery in the northern Golan near Odim, elevations pushing over 1,000 meters. The winemaker pointed to the soil. It was this rich, dark reddish-black color. He told me, this dirt is like a battery. It absorbs the intense Middle Eastern sun all day. And at night, when the temperature plummets, it radiates that warmth back up into the vine's canopy. But what does that fire actually taste like in your glass? Wines grown in volcanic soil have a very distinctive signature. Because the soil is so rich in iron and minerals, the wine often possesses a savory almost bloody or rusty quality. There is a tension to them, a high-toned acidity. If you pour a Syrah grown in the basalt of the Golan Heights, or perhaps one from the volcanic plots managed by Dalton Winery, yes, you will get the beautiful dark fruit But underneath that fruit, there is a smokiness, a scent of crushed black pepper, warm earth, and sometimes a literal hint of struck match or ash. It's a wine with a backbone, a wine that tastes like the geological violence that created it. But fire is only one way to build a vineyard. What happens when instead of volcanoes, your vineyard used the bottom of a prehistoric ocean? We are moving from the violent fires of volcanic soil into the slow, patient, and deeply historical world of sedimentary soils. If igneous rock is the earth throwing a sudden violent tantrum. Sedimentary rock is the earth keeping a diary patiently, page by page, over hundreds of millions of years. Sedimentary soil is born from water and time. It's made of particles—sand, clay, pebbles, and organic matter—that are carried by rivers and wind settling at the bottom of lakes and ancient oceans. Over millennia, the sheer crushing weight of the water above compresses these layers into solid rock. When we talk about the greatest vineyards in the world, we are almost always talking about one specific family of sedimentary rock: limestone and chalk. I want you to picture the Judean hills just outside of Jerusalem. It is the historical heartland of Jewish winemaking. When you stand in a vineyard there, say at Domaine du Castel or Tsourah, you are standing in the very same terroir where King David's contemporaries pressed their grapes. If you scrape away the top layer of that beautiful iron-rich red soil, the terra rossa, you hit blinding white rock. I was walking a vineyard in the Judean Hills a few years ago with a winemaker, and he stopped, kicked at the white rock, picked it up, and handed it to me. I rubbed my thumbs over the chalky dust and realized I wasn't holding a rock. I was holding a perfectly preserved fossilized seashell. Think about how wild that is for a second. You're standing a thousand feet above sea level in the middle of a dry, mountainous Middle Eastern landscape, and you are holding a creature that lived at the bottom of a prehistoric ocean. Limestone and chalk are almost entirely made up of crushed skeletons, shells, and coral of microscopic marine life. It's pure calcium carbonate. But why does this ancient graveyard make such a phenomenal wine? It's about chemistry and water management. The limestone acts like a sponge, but a very stingy one. In the rainy winter, it absorbs massive amounts of water. Then during the hot, dry summer, it slowly, agonizingly doles that water back out to the vine's roots. The vine never drowns, but they never completely die of thirst either. Furthermore, the high calcium content of the limestone makes it very difficult for the vine to absorb nutrients like nitrogen. The vine is essentially put on a strict diet. It stays small, the canopy stays thin, and the grapes become incredibly concentrated. When you drink a kosher wine grown in limestone and chalk, whether it's a brilliant, crisp kosher Chablis from France or a deeply elegant Cabernet from the Judean hills, you can feel it in your mouth. There is a spine to the wine, a mouth-watering, vibrant acidity that makes the sides of your tongue tingle. Wine makers often call this chalky tannins or a dusty elegance. It's a wine that feels bright, structured, and profoundly alive. But limestone isn't the only sedimentary soil. We have to talk about its heavier, moodier cousin, clay. If limestone is a strict diet, Clay is a feast. Clay soils are cold, they are dense, and they hold onto water tightly. Because clay stays cool, it delays the ripening of the grapes. It produces wines of massive power, plushness, and broad shoulders. If you love a rich, velvety, kosher Right Bank Bordeaux or a deeply colored, muscular Merlot from the Galilee, you are drinking the result of clay. Clay gives wine weight. It coats your palate. Where limestone gives a wine skeleton and high-toned energy, clay gives it flesh and muscle. And then On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we have sand. Sand drains instantly. It holds almost no water and very few nutrients. But sand has a superpower. Back in the late 19th century, a microscopic root louse called phylloxera wiped out almost every vineyard in Europe. But phylloxera cannot survive in sand. The loose grains collapse on the bugs, preventing them from traveling. Wines planted in pure sand are often on their own original rootstocks. Because sand is so light, the wines it produces are highly aromatic. They're incredibly floral with very soft, gentle tannins. So we've experienced the explosive birth of volcanic rock, and we've waded through the ancient compressed oceans of sedimentary chalk and limestone. But the Earth is not a static thing. The tectonic plates beneath our feet are constantly moving, colliding and shifting. What happens when a massive sheet of sedimentary or igneous rock gets dragged deep into the Earth's crust? What happens when it is subjected to millions of pounds of pressure and unimaginable geothermal heat, but it doesn't melt? It transforms. It becomes something entirely new. Welcome to the crucible. Welcome to metamorphic soil. Metamorphic means change of form. The most famous examples of this in the wine world are slate, schist, and gneiss. When you hold a piece of metamorphic rock, you can literally see the pressure it endured. It isn't a solid, uniform block like basalt. It's flaky. It looks like a dense pastry made of stone pressed into thin, glittering sheets. To really understand the soil, I want to take you on a trip. A number of years ago, I found myself in Catalonia, Spain, driving up into the steep, rugged mountains of the Priorat region. Priarat is famous for making some of the most intense, brooding, spectacular red wines on the planet. And for the kosher wine lover, it holds a special place. This is the home of Cellar de Capsanes, the cooperative that back in the 1990s started making a kosher wine called Pierre Habib. For the Jewish community in Barcelona, accidentally, by the way, putting the entire region back on the world map. I was standing in one of their oldest vineyards. I say vineyard, but that word implies neat, nice, flat rows of dirt. This was essentially a cliff face. It was so steep that a tractor would just flip over. They have to harvest the grapes by hand, sometimes using mules to haul the fruit up the mountain. I looked down at the ground. It was glittering. The soil there is a very specific type of slate and quartzite. That locals call lilikoleli. It's a dark, coppery black rock, and it fractures into these sharp, jagged shards. I asked the viticulturist, how on earth does a vine survive in this? It's just solid shards of rock. He smiled, walked over to the vine, and pointed to the base of the trunk. He explained that because slate is layered in these vertical sheets, the roots of the old Grenache and Carignan vines don't try to dig around the rock. They grow straight down into the microscopic vertical fissures. As the root expands, it acts like a wedge, literally prying the bedrock apart. With terrifying slow-motion strength to find water trapped deep inside the mountain. Imagine the sheer will to survive. When you drink a wine grown in a metamorphic soil, you are tasting that struggle. These rocks are dark, so they absorb a tremendous amount of heat during the day. In regions like Priarat, or the steep slate slopes where they grow kosher Rieslings in Europe. The rocks act like a space heater at night, protecting the vines from frost and helping the grapes ripen. But the real signature of metamorphic terroir is the tension. Wines grown in schist and slate have an incredible piercing minerality. Some people describe it as a struck flint aroma, like the smell of two rocks being smashed together. It's a savory, almost smoky backbone that sits right underneath the fruit. The vines are forced to dig so deeply and process so few nutrients that the resulting wine is fiercely concentrated. It is dark, it is structured, and it demands your attention. Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic—these are the three pillars of our vineyard underworld. But having the right rocks is only half the battle, because rocks alone can't grow a vine. It's about how those rocks break down into dirt, how that dirt breathes, and how it holds water. In other words, it's about the architecture of the dirt. And as we're about to see, the way a vineyard drains can be the difference between a $100 bottle of wine and a bottle of vinegar. We have spent some time talking about the ingredients of our vineyard underworld: the chemical makeup of the igneous fire, sedimentary oceans, and the metamorphic pressure. But here is the thing about the ingredients: if you dump a pile of bricks, wood, and glass into a field, you don't magically have a house. You need architecture. You need structure. In the wine world, the chemical composition of the rocks is important, but the physical size and shape of the dirt, the texture and the structure, is what actually dictates how the vine lives and breathes. To really grasp this, you have to look underground. A few years ago, I was visiting an estate on the left bank of Bordeaux. The château occasionally produces a highly sought-after kosher cuvée, and I was eager to understand what made the Cabernet Sauvignon so legendary. The winemaker greeted me, and instead of taking me into the beautiful temperature-controlled barrel room He handed me a hard hat and led me out into the vines. Right in the middle of the vineyard, they had brought a backhoe and dug a trench, a soil pit about 6 feet deep and 10 feet long. He jumped down into the hole and motioned for me to follow. Standing down in the trench, looking at the cross-section of the earth, It was like looking at a layer cake. At the very top, there was almost no actual dirt to be seen. It was just an ocean of smooth round stones, gravel, hundreds of thousands of river-washed pebbles, some the size of golf balls, some the size of softballs. Beneath that was a layer of coarse sand, And finally, deep down at the bottom of the pit, a thick, cool layer of blue clay. I asked him, 'How does a plant ever grow in this? It looks like a driveway.' He laughed and told me about the golden rule of viticulture: vines are a lot like cats. They absolutely despise having wet feet. If a vine's root system sits in a pool, stagnant water, the roots literally drown. They cannot absorb oxygen, they become susceptible to fungal disease, and they rot. This is why the physical structure of the soil is paramount. Those smooth gravel stones on the surface of that Bordeaux vineyard— and you'll see similarly rocky, gravelly soils in parts of the Upper Galilee and the coastal plains of Israel are the ultimate drainage system. When the heavy winter and spring rains hit, the water doesn't pool on the surface. It hits those rocks and instantly plummets downward, slipping through the cracks, rushing past the sand until it firmly hits the bottom layer of clay at the bottom. Where it is stored for the long, hot summer. Because the water drops so incredibly fast through the gravel, the vine's roots have to sprint to catch it. Standing in that pit, I could see thick, gnarly vine roots, some as thick as my wrist, shooting straight down past the rocks, bypassing the shallow topsoil Entirely anchored deep into the earth. But gravel has a second equally vital architectural purpose. Think about those smooth stones baking in the late afternoon sun. Again, just like the basalt in the Golan, gravel acts as a thermal mirror. It absorbs the heat of the day, and when the sun dips, below the horizon and the cool maritime air rolls in, those stones radiate heat back up into the canopy of the vine. It keeps the grapes warm, continuing the ripening process long after the sun has gone down. When you open a premium kosher Cabernet Sauvignon from a gravel-dominant terroir, You aren't just tasting the grapes, you are tasting the physical architecture of that drainage. You are tasting the warmth of those sun-baked stones which give the wine those deep, rich, dark fruit flavors wrapped up in fierce, structured tannins that can age in your cellar for decades. It is the paradox of the vineyard. The poorer, the rockier, the soil structure, the harder the struggle. And the harder the struggle, the more profound the wine. But dealing with these stressful, poor soils requires a delicate touch. You can't just plant a vine in a pile of rocks and walk away. It requires a steward. It requires a human being who understands not just the science of the dirt, but the soul of the land. We've spent a lot of time today talking about geology. We've mapped out igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, and the architectural drainage of gravel and sand. But if we stop the conversation here, we are missing the most crucial element of terroir. Because rocks on their own are dead. If you take a vine and plant it in sterilized crushed limestone, it'll die. The vine cannot literally eat a rock. In order for the mineral properties of the soil to enter the root system of a grapevine, you need a middleman. You need a microscopic army. We're talking about the soil microbiome— the fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and earthworms. Remarkably, a single teaspoon of healthy, living vineyard topsoil contains more living organisms than there are human beings on planet Earth. This microscopic ecosystem acts as a digestive tract for the vineyard. The fungi attach themselves to the vine's roots in a symbiotic relationship and secrete acids that break down the solid rock into liquid minerals, feeding them to the vine in exchange for sugars. This is where the human element, the vineyard manager, the winemaker, and for us the rules of halacha come into play. For the last 50 years, the global wine industry has relied heavily on synthetic chemicals—herbicides, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers. And sure, those chemicals killed the weeds and made the vines grow fast, but they also committed slow, invisible violence against the soil. They kill the microbiome, and when you kill the life in the soil, you're killing the terroir. The wine stops tasting like the earth it grows in and starts tasting like a chemistry experiment. Today, the greatest kosher winemakers in the world are pushing back. They are embracing organic, sustainable, and even biodynamic farming. But doing this in a kosher vineyard, especially in the land of Israel, presents a fascinating, unique challenge. Let's talk about the Torah prohibition against planting diverse kinds of seeds in a vineyard. If you visit a high-end organic, non-kosher vineyard in Napa Valley, or burgundy. You will see the rows between the vines planted with all sorts of COVID crops. They plant mustard, radish, peas, clover. These plants naturally fix nitrogen into the soil, prevent erosion, and feed the microscopic army underground. But in Israel, a strictly kosher vineyard cannot just scatter vegetables or legume seeds. Between the vines. It's a direct violation of kela'im. The entire crop could be rendered unkosher. I was walking the rows with a vineyard manager in the Upper Galilee a while back, kicking the dirt as always. I asked him, if you can't use chemical fertilizers and halacha forbids you from planting these designer cover crops, to fix your soil. How do you keep this dirt alive? He reached down and pulled up a handful of dark, crumbly earth. It smelled incredible, like a forest floor after a rain—sweet, damp, and deeply alive. He explained that the restrictions of halacha actually force him to become a better, more observant steward of the land. Instead of importing foreign seeds, they have to meticulously manage the indigenous wild flora of the Galilee, allowing native non-prohibited grasses to grow in the winter and rolling them flat in the spring to create a natural mulch that traps the morning dew. They utilize incredibly precise composting programs using the discarded grape skins and the stems from the previous harvest to feed the earth. He told me the Torah forces us not to manipulate the vineyard but to listen to it. When you drink a wine from a vineyard farm this way, you can taste the vitality The wine has an energy on the palate. The finish lingers just a little bit longer. It doesn't taste manufactured, it tastes grown. As a kosher wine consumer, when we hold a glass of wine, we are holding a product of incredible spiritual and physical stewardship. We are tasting the volcanic fire the ancient oceans, and the sheer survival instinct of the vine, all guided by a farmer who is bound by ancient laws to respect the earth. Which brings us to the final and arguably the most important part of our journey. Now that we know what's happening beneath the earth, how do we actually taste it? We have traversed the fiery birth of basalt, the ancient oceans of limestone, the crushing depths of schist, and the microscopic living cities of the topsoil. We've explored how the strict beautiful boundaries of halacha bind the kosher winemaker to the earth in a way that is utterly unique. But none of this matters if it just stays in the dirt. The entire point of the journey is what happens when you pull the cork. So how do you actually taste the terroir? If you take away one thing from this episode, let it be this: tasting the soil is rarely about flavor. It's almost always about feeling. It is about texture, tension, and structure. I want you to try and experiment this Shabbat. Go out and buy 2 bottles of kosher wine. Make them from the same grape, let's say a Cabernet Sauvignon, but from completely different soils. Pick one Cabernet grown in volcanic basalt of the Golan Heights and another grown in the chalky limestone or deep terra rossa of the Judean hills. Pour a glass of each side by side. Before you even taste them, smell. Just smell. The volcanic wine in the Golan Heights will likely jump out of the glass at you. It will smell darker, perhaps a little smokier, with a brooding, savory edge, like crushed herbs baked on hot black lava rocks. The limestone— the wine from the Judean Hills might be a bit more reserved, a bit more elegant, perhaps offering a bright red fruit and a distinct dusty floral note. Now take a sip of the Volcanic Cabernet. Don't just swallow it immediately. Let it coat your mouth. Pay attention to the physical sensation. You will likely feel a sense of weight, a bold muscular tannin structure that grabs the sides of your cheeks, and a lively high-toned acidity that gives the wine a fierce, fiercely energetic, almost vibrating core. That is the iron. That is the heart of the basalt radiating through the fruit. Then cleanse your palate and taste the limestone Cabernet. Notice the difference in the architecture of the liquid. The tannins might feel finer like cocoa powder or crushed chalk across your tongue. The acidity will be there, but it will feel leaner, more focused, pulling the wine in a long, elegant, straight line down the center of your palate. It feels graceful. It feels like a slow, patient drip of water through a prehistoric ocean floor. You aren't just tasting grapes. You are feeling the geological history of the earth, translated by a struggling vine, preserved in alcohol. In Jewish tradition, before we take a sip of wine, we pause. We hold the glass and we recite a blessing: Baruch atah Hashem, borei pri hakafen. Blessed are you, Creator of the fruit of the vine. Notice that we don't bless the winemaker, we don't bless the French oak barrels, we don't bless even the expensive fermentation tanks or the brilliant blending decisions. We bless the vine. We elevate the deeply physical agricultural reality of the earth. To a realm of holiness. Because at the end of the day, a winemaker is just a chaperone. The real artist is the dirt. The real masterpiece is the intricate, silent dance between the bedrock, the water, the roots, the microbiome, guided by the rhythm of Shmitah and the law of our ancestors. The next time you open a truly great bottle of kosher wine, I challenge you to look past the fruit. Close your eyes, dig past the blackberry and the vanilla, search for the crushed stone, the morning dew, the baked clay, and the ancient fire. The earth is speaking to you. All you have to do is listen. I'm Simon Jacob, and I want to thank you for coming on this geological journey with me today. This has been The Kosher Terroir. If you love this deep dive, please share this episode with a fellow wine geek and make sure you're subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, keep exploring, keep tasting, and always remember to look down at the dirt. L'chaim. 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 Teruah, please check out our many past episodes.