Twelve Decisions That Matter More Than The Grape

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, and the full return of all the remains of our hostages. If you are driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you are relaxing at home, please open a delicious bottle of kosher wine and pour a glass, sit back and relax. Welcome back to the Kosher Terroir. Today we are going to talk about a beautiful mystery. We often speak of wines as if they were a direct transmission from the earth, a liquid postcard from a specific hillside in the Galilee or a rocky vineyard in the Judean hills. We use the word terroir to describe the "somewhere-ness" of a wine. But there is a silent partner in this relationship that we often overlook in our quest for purity. That partner is the winemaker. There is a romantic, almost sacred notion in modern winemaking called minimal intervention. You have heard that mantra: great wine is made in the vineyard, not in the cellar. And while I agree that you cannot conjure greatness from mediocre fruit, I want to challenge that idea. That winemakers are just merely passive operators or observers. Imagine a master luthier standing before a block of ancient spruce wood. The wood has its own history, its own grain, its own resonance. That is the terroir. But it is the luthier's hand, their tools, and the thousands of micro decisions that they make that transform the wood into a Stradivarius violin capable of making a concert hall weep. In the winery, the hand of man is just as vital as the spirit of the soil. From the moment the grape is clipped from the vine to the moment the cork is driven into the bottle, there are a series of forks in the road. And these forks are the moments of alchemy. Today we're opening the winemaker's toolbox. We're going to explore 12 pivotal decisions that define the soul of wine, choices that can turn the exact same harvest into two completely different experiences. If you have ever wondered why one Cabernet feels like a velvet cloak while another feels like a sharp suit of armor? Today you're going to find out. Let's grab a glass, settle in, and explore 12 decisions that matter actually more than the grape. The first decision in the toolbox actually happens before the grapes are even touched. It's the decision of when to pick. You can think of a ripening grape as a moving target. On one side you have sugar, measured in Brix, which is climbing every day, promising higher alcohol and more body. On the other side you have acidity, which is dropping, threatening to make the wine flabby. But the real geek factor here is phenolic ripeness. This is about the skins and the seeds. A grape can have enough sugar to make a 15% alcohol wine, but if the seeds are still green and bitter, the wine will feel harsh. The winemaker has to find the sweet spot where the sugar, acid, and tannins all align. For example, in a warm region like the Galilee, picking just 3 days late can be the difference between a crisp, elegant Syrah and a heavy, jammy wine that feels cooked. It is the ultimate high-stakes gamble. Once those bins of grapes arrive at the winery, we face a second decision: how much nature do we let into the tank? This is the sorting process. Some winemakers prefer a field run where everything—clusters, bits of leaves, Everything goes into the crusher. They argue that this adds soul and authenticity to the final product. But at the high end, we see a move towards obsessive sorting. Some use vibration tables, while others use optical sorters and high-speed cameras to flick away any berry that isn't the perfect shade of purple. The impact is massive. If you remove every bit of MOG—material other than grape—you get a wine with incredible fruit purity and a polished, expensive mouthfeel. If you leave a little bit of that debris in, you might get a wine that feels a bit more earthy or wild. It's the difference between a high-definition photograph and a textured oil painting. Now we decide if the berries stay on the stems. Most modern wine is destemmed, meaning the berries are stripped off of the green skeletons of the cluster. But many terroir-driven winemakers are bringing back whole cluster fermentation. Stems are fascinating because they act like a natural sponge for acid. Well, stems don't actually soak up acid so much as they change the chemistry and the feel often nudging pH upward and adding a very particular herbal spice and structural tannin signature— notes of sandalwood, clove, or white pepper. They also provide structure without the weight of oak. For example, in a Pinot Noir or Syrah, adding 20 or 30% whole clusters can give the wine a savory lift and the floral perfume that you simply cannot get from the juice alone. Without those stems, the same wine might feel a bit one-dimensional or overly fruity. Winemaker Tool 4: Before we let the yeast start the fermentation, many winemakers perform a cold soak. We keep the juice chilled, usually around 10 degrees Celsius, for several days. Since there's no alcohol yet, we are performing an aqueous or water-based extraction. This pulls out the anthocyanins, the vibrant pigments, and the delicate floral aromatics without the heat of alcohol extracting the harsher, more bitter seed tannins. In a grape like Cabernet Sauvignon, a cold soak helps ensure that deep dark color we love. In a delicate grape like Pinot Noir, it is the secret to getting that brilliant ruby glow and a perfume of fresh strawberries that jumps out of the glass. But eventually we have to let the fermentation begin, and that brings us to the choice of yeast. A winemaker can use native yeast, the wild strains that live on the grape skins, or they can pitch in a bag of cultured yeast, which are specific strains isolated in a lab. This is essentially a choice between soul and security. Cultured yeasts are predictable. They ensure the wine finishes clean. But native yeasts are slow and unpredictable, often creating funky or savory layers that many believe represent the true terroir. Imagine a Sauvignon Blanc. A commercial yeast might explode with passion fruit aromas, but the same juice fermented with wild yeast might be more restrained, offering notes of wet stone, hay, and a sourdough-like complexity that makes the wine feel more alive. Where the wine lives during fermentation is our next choice. The vessel— stainless steel is like a fridge, it's airtight and neutral, perfect for keeping things pure. But today we see a return to concrete or large oak vats. The materials matter because it determines how much the wine breathes. Concrete is slightly porous, allowing tiny amounts of oxygen to soften the wine while it's still juice. For example, a Grenache fermented in a concrete egg often feels stony or focused because the egg shape creates a natural vortex keeping the wine moving. In contrast, that same Grenache fermented in a large wooden vat will feel broader and more expansive, with tannins that feel resolved before the wine even sees a barrel. As the yeast eats the sugar, it creates heat. The winemaker has to decide how much to let that fire burn. A cool and slow fermentation around 15°C is like a low and slow braise. It preserves those delicate, volatile floral aromas. This is the goal for a crisp rosé or a Riesling. However, for a big red, we often want to turn up the heat to around 30°C. That heat helps melt the skins, extract the deep color and the grippy tannins that provide the wine's backbone. If you ferment a Cabernet too cold, it will taste thin. If you ferment a white wine too hot, you'll burn off all of those beautiful honeysuckle and peach aromas. This brings us to one of the most physically demanding and critical decisions in the winery: extraction. To understand this, you need a visual. Imagine a large stainless steel tank filled with crushed red grapes. As the yeast begins to work, it produces CO2 gas. This gas pushes all the solid matter— the skins, the seeds, the stems— to the top of the tank. They form a thick, hard crust on the surface called the cap. Here is the problem: the color and the tannins are trapped in the cap, The juice sitting below is actually clear. If you did nothing, you would end up with a slightly pink, very boozy white wine made from red grapes. To get the flavor, you have to mix the solids with the liquid, but how we mix them changes everything. It's the choice between violence and persuasion. The first method is the oldest, the punch-down. Historically, this was done with feet. Today, it's usually done with large stainless steel plungers. Imagine a giant potato masher. The winemaker stands over the top of the tank and physically pushes the hard crust of skins back down into the juice. It sounds simple, but it is intense. It grinds the skins against each other. It breaks them open. It physically forces extraction. I remember speaking with a young winemaker in the Judean hills a few years back. He had just received his first harvest of Pinot Noir, a notoriously difficult grape. Delicate, thin-skinned grape. He was used to making big Cabernets, so he treated the Pinot the same way. He did aggressive punch-downs 3 times a day, sweating over the tank, grinding those skins. The result: the wine was totally undrinkable. By physically pulverizing the delicate skins and the seeds, he had extracted bitter green tannins It tasted like oversteeped black tea. He had to sell the entire batch off as bulk wine. He learned the hard way that punch-downs are a tool for texture. They create a wide, broad mouthfeel. Used correctly on a sturdy grape such as a Syrah or a Petit Verdot, punch-downs give you that chewy, meaty richness that coats your mouth, but used carelessly destroys the elegance of the wine. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the pump-over. This is the standard for Cabernet Sauvignon. We hook a hose to the bottom of the tank, draw the juice out, and pump it over the top of the cap, often through a sprinkler or a fire hose nozzle. This is much gentler. We aren't crushing the skins, we're just washing them. It's like brewing tea by gently pouring water over the bag rather than squeezing it. But pumpovers do something else vital: they introduce oxygen. Yeast needs oxygen to survive the fermentation marathon. Early in the process, a winemaker might do a splash-racking, literally spraying the juice against the screen to aerate it. I recall a famous story from a winery in the Golan Heights during the 1990s. They had a massive tank of Cabernet that was stuck. The yeast had stopped working halfway through, leaving a sugary stalled mess. The winemaker realized the yeast was suffocating. He set up a massive pump over blasting the juice with air for an hour. The winery smelled like a bakery as the yeast woke up, took a deep breath, and finished the fermentation in record time. The batch became their award-winning reserve. Then finally, for true power wines, there is a third, more radical technique. Called rack and return. This is where the winemaker drains the entire tank of juice into a separate vessel. The cap of skins falls all the way to the bottom of the empty tank with a wet thud, breaking apart under its own weight. Then the winemaker pumps all the juice back on top of the skins at high speed. It is a violent, chaotic mixing. It extracts a massive amount of color and tannins. If you drink a high-end Israeli Shiraz that is almost black in the glass and explodes with flavors, it almost certainly went through rack and return. But the real masterstroke, however, isn't just choosing one method. It's knowing when to stop. Alcohol is a solvent. At the beginning of fermentation, the juice is basically water and sugar. You can punch it down aggressively to get color and fruit without extracting bitterness, but as the alcohol rises to 10, 12, 14%, the liquid becomes a powerful solvent. It starts stripping the harsh coatings off the seeds. A great winemaker tastes the fermenting juice every single morning. They might start with aggressive punch-downs to get the color, but the moment they taste a hint of seed tannin, they back off. They switch to gentle pump-overs. They tiptoe towards the finish line. It's a dance with chemistry. Push too hard, you get bitterness. Don't push enough and you get thin, watery wine. The hand of the maker is quite literally the hand on the pump switch. So, we have harvested, we have crushed, and we have fermented. The sugar is gone and we officially have wine. But if you were to taste it right now, it would be a confused, disjointed, and often aggressive liquid. This brings us to the refinement phase. The finishing school for the vintage. Decision number 9 is one of the most counterintuitive moves in the winemaker's playbook: extended maceration. Classically, once fermentation is done, you want to get the wine off the skins to avoid extracting bitterness. But many top-tier winemakers do the exact opposite. They seal the tank and let the wine sit on those skins, sometimes for 3 or 4 or even 5 weeks after the yeast has finished its work. This is a high-wire act. The risk of spoilage bacteria or volatile acidity, essentially vinegar, skyrockets during this time. So why do it? It comes down to the physics of tannin molecules. When red wine is young, the tannin molecules are short and jagged. Imagine them like microscopic shards of glass or rough sand. They react with the protein in your saliva and create that drying, puckering sensation that dries out your gums. During extended maceration, the presence of alcohol acts as a solvent that changes the game. It encourages those short, jagged tannins to bind with anthocyanins, color molecules, and form longer, smoother chains. This process is called polymerization. Think of it like taking a handful of sharp, loose pebbles and tumbling them in a river until they become smooth round stones. The actual amount of tannins might increase, but the perception of the tannins changes completely. It transforms them from an astringent to silky. In the Judean Hills, where our intense sun creates naturally thick grape skins and high tannins, this technique is often the secret weapon. It's how a winemaker takes a rugged, aggressive Cabernet and turns it into a wine that feels like cashmere on the palate. Eventually, we have to separate the solids from the liquid. We open the tank valve and the wine pours out by gravity. This is the free run. It is pure, low in tannin, and incredibly elegant. The filet mignon of the tank. But we are left with tons of wet skins loaded with remaining wine. We have to press them, and here lies the 10th decision: how hard do we squeeze? Modern winemakers use pneumatic bladder presses— picture a giant balloon inflating inside a cylinder— to gently squeeze the juice out. But we don't just dump all that liquid into one bucket. We separate it into cuts or fractions. The first squeeze is sweet and fruity, but as you squeeze harder, you start crushing the seeds and tearing the skins. The pH rises, the acidity drops, and the flavors turn from fruity to herbal to bitter. This creates the spice rack for the winemaker. The free-run provides the elegance in the fruit. The first cut of the press adds structure, grip, and longevity. The hard press, the final squeeze, is often too harsh and is sold off for bulk wine or distillation. The true art in winemaking is in the blending. I know winemakers who will meticulously taste through 10 different press fractions. They might decide that press cut number 3 has a specific savory, meaty note that the free-run is missing. By adding just 2% of that rougher press wine back into the main blend, they give the wine a spine. They add tension. It's a financial decision too. Using only the free-run means throwing away 15 to 20% of the volume. That's a massive hit to the bottom line. But for those ultra-premium wines that command very high prices, tossing the press wine is often the cost of perfection. While the wine settles, a second invisible transformation is waiting in the wings. This is malolactic fermentation, or malo as they call it. To understand this, You have to understand that not all acids taste the same. Grapes naturally contain malic acid. The word comes from the Latin malum, meaning apple. It is that sharp, green, biting acidity you feel on the sides of your tongue when you bite into a Granny Smith apple. For a crisp Sauvignon Blanc or a Riesling, We want that bite, so the winemaker chills the tank and adds sulfur to kill any bacteria, thereby preserving that Granny Smith apple zap to your tongue. But for most all red wines, and for richer whites like Chardonnay, we introduce a specific bacteria. These little workers eat the sharp malic acid and excrete lactic acid. Lactic as in milk. This is a much softer, rounder acid. For red wines, this is mandatory for stability. If you bottle a red wine with malic acid still in it, it might start fermenting in the bottle on the shelf, pushing the cork out and making the wine fizzy. For white wines, however, it's purely stylistic. A byproduct of this process is a compound that smells exactly like movie theater popcorn butter. The winemaker has a dial here. If they run malolactic fermentation quickly and warm, they generate a lot of that compound, giving those big, buttery California-style Chardonnays. If it runs slowly and cool, or you leave the wine on the lees, the bacteria reabsorbs that compound. The result is a wine that has a creamy texture of lactic acid but without smelling like a popcorn machine. It creates a steely creaminess rather than a buttery one. It's the decision that completely dictates the wine's personality. Finally, The wine needs a home to age in. This brings us to the final massive decision tree: the oak and the lees. We often talk about oak flavors—vanilla, clove, dill, smoke. Those come from the toast of the barrel. A heavy toasted barrel has been charred on the inside with fire, creating caramelized sugars and smoky notes. A light toast barely imparts any flavor but offers structure. But oak is about more than flavor. It allows a microscopic amount of air to enter the wine over 12 to 18 months. This micro-oxygenation softens the tannins and stabilizes the color. A wine aged in stainless steel stays grapey and simple. A wine aged in oak becomes whiny. It develops notes of leather, tobacco, and dried fruit. Then there are the lees. Lees are the dead yeast cells that fall to the bottom of the barrel after fermentation. They look like a layer of fine, creamy mud. A lazy winemaker might rack the wines off the sediment immediately, but a thoughtful winemaker uses them. As yeast cells break down, they release mannoproteins and amino acids into the wine. This adds a distinct savory character, an umami quality, and the physical sensation of weight and viscosity. Winemakers perform bâtonnage, taking a long metal rod and stirring the lees up into the suspension. Stirred frequently, You get a rich, fat, heavy wine with notes of brioche and fresh dough. Don't stir it at all and the wine stays leaner and more focused. Furthermore, the lees act as a scavenger for oxygen. They protect the wine from oxidizing too fast, keeping it fresh while it ages. So a winemaker might use the lees stirring, bâtonnage, not just for flavor but as a preservative technique to ensure that the wine can age for 20 years in your cellar. It is the final polish, the last layer of lacquer on the violin before the wine is finally put to rest in the bottle. As we look back on these 12 decisions, it becomes clear that the winemaker isn't just a spectator. They are the conductor of a very complex orchestra. Each of these tools is a knob or a dial. If you pick a little earlier, use some whole clusters, ferment in concrete with wild yeast, and avoid new oak, you've created a wine that is high energy, savory, and leans heavily into its terroir. If you pick late, sort perfectly, use cultured yeast for fruit and age in 100% new oak, you've created a wine that is powerful, opulent, and stylistically driven. Both are valid. Both can be world-class, but they are the result of conscious technical choices. The grape is the script. The terroir is the stage. But the winemaker— the winemaker is the director who decides which lines to emphasize and which to leave in the shadows. Next time you pull a cork on a bottle of Israeli wine, or any wine for that matter, I want you to look past the label. Don't look at the Cabernet or Galilee. Look for the texture. Look for the spice. Ask yourself, how did this maker's hands shape this glass? Because once you understand the toolbox, you stop just drinking wine and you start reading it. You start hearing the voices of the Maker whispering through the fruit. 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.