Dalton Winery: Innovating the Kosher Wine Scene with Tradition and Sustainability

Episode Transcript
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S. Simon Jacob (00:09):
Welcome to The Kosher Terroir.
I'm Simon Jacob, your host forthis episode from Jerusalem.
Before we get started, I askthat, wherever you are, please
take a moment and pray for thesafety of our soldiers and the
safe return of all of ourhostages.
Welcome back to The KosherTerroir, the podcast, where we

(00:32):
uncork the stories behind thewines, the people and the
passion that shape the kosherwine world.
Today, we're diving deep intothe heart of Israel's upper
Galilee with two powerhouses ofthe industry Alex Haruni, the
visionary behind Dalton Winery,and Guy Eshel, the masterful

(00:55):
winemaker crafting bold andexpressive wines that put Dalton
on the global map on the globalmap From pioneering Israeli
terroir to pushing theboundaries of innovation with
the Asufa series and upcoming,yet-to-be-revealed wines.
We'll explore how Dalton isredefining what it means to make

(01:17):
world-class wines in theGalilee.
What's next for Dalton?
How do they balance traditionwith cutting-edge techniques,
and what secret projects are inthe pipeline?
Stick around, because thisepisode is packed with insights,
surprises and, of course,plenty of wine talk.
If you're driving in your car,please focus on the road ahead.

(01:40):
If you're home, pour yourself aglass of wonderful kosher wine,
sit back, relax and let's divein.
Welcome to the Kosher Terroir,thank you.
Thank you for welcoming me tothe Dalton Winery.

Guy Eshel Winemaker (01:56):
It's a pleasure, it's so good to have
you here again.
Pleasure.

Guy.
Okay, you've had someincredible international
winemaking experience in France,australia, california, before
joining Dalton, I shouldpronounce it properly.
I think in 2015 you joined.

Yes, so I've completed 10 years here as
the head winemaker for DaltonWinery, going to the 11th how
have these diverse experiencesinfluenced your approach to
winemaking here?
Well, so I think what reallyinfluenced my approach to

(02:38):
winemaking in general was mytime as a student at UC Davis.
It was kind of like thebeginning of my career.
I did work in California since2007 till about 2012, when I
started my education at Davis,and when I was there I met

(03:05):
students who were like-minded,like me, you know, passionate
about why and interested,intrigued about everything that
went on there, and I thinkthat's when my learning curve
was like was was very, verysteep and everyone brought in a
lot of interesting, differentaspects and interests about

(03:25):
their wine.
We started tasting things fromall over the world, but like
very, very methodically and um,and we were tasting almost every
day or several times a week.
Um, learning about wines, uh,doing doing wine weekends, where
we would go to hit a wineregion in California or in

(03:50):
Oregon and just spend like aweekend or two nights in an area
, and just you know everyone whoyou call up and say we're a
student at Davis.
You know the doors are wideopen.
So learning was very, very,very intense and fast, alongside
the academic part, and I wasexposed to different styles of

(04:13):
winemaking when we startedpracticing.
You know, whole clusterfermentation, carbonic
maceration, use of sulfur,non-use of additives, filtering
versus non-filtering.
It just gave me like a reallyreally broad kind of like hub of

(04:33):
and it was kind of like asheltered kind of like a nest of
knowledge and experiencesToolset yeah, a very broad
toolset.
So that was the beginning of thetoolset and when I graduated I
decided to follow my passion,which was wines that have the

(04:54):
Mediterranean kind of aspect.
So I went to the Rhone inFrance and I learned all I can
about the Syrah grape and workat like one of the known
producers there, domaineFrancois Villard, and as a
harvest hand there, who alsocame back from academic school.

(05:15):
They give you a little bit moreresponsibility.
You get to like kind of run allthe fermentation monitoring and
the fruit receivable thefermentation monitoring and the
fruit receivable.
And also I had a chance to workin these amazing vineyard sites
that are along these steepslopes and it was wow, like once
in a lifetime kind of thing,and you got to see a range of

(05:39):
different ways to grow Syrah, togrow other Rhone varieties
that's where I fell in love withthe Roussan, which is one of my
other favorite varieties togrow the flavors of the wines,
the different areas, differentapproaches when to use whole
clusters, when to de-stem, whento press, how to ferment to

(06:01):
reach like different textures inthe wine.
So all of these really gave meeven more tools.
That's like a bigger upgrade inyour professional kind of skill
set.
And, following France, I went toAustralia and in Australia I
learned from Clonacilla, who isanother producer of Syrah and

(06:23):
Viognier.
So I really wanted to continuearound the world getting more
experience in Mediterraneangrapes because my ultimate dream
was to come back.
After a decade of almost adecade living in California away
from my family, I really wantedto come back to Israel to work

(06:45):
as a winemaker.
I saw that the industry wassmaller.
I seized an opportunity that Ithought would be a really,
really nice time to come andjoin this industry because it
was like really on its wave andI think the past 10 or 11 years
in Israel have massive, massiveimprovements.

Meteoric yeah.

It's more wine labels, better wines.
When I came here, the wineswere just starting to kind of
come out and there were ahandful of wineries that I could
say that I was really happywith.
And now there's so many smallproducers, more importations

(07:28):
really happy with.
And now there's so many smallproducers, more importations.
Uh, the the kosher wine sceneas well, in the past 10 years
has has, uh, gone crazy.
It's gone crazy, yeah, it's.
It's exponential, it's uh.
When I started out with makingkosher wines, we didn't have
these selections with all thesebordeaux houses and burgundies
and Barolos.
The wine shops in New York heldmostly Israeli wines and some

(07:49):
cheaper stuff, and then, ofcourse, you had all the things
that come from California.

Not that much at that time, but it didn't have
that kind of broad selection andhigh-quality selection as well.

So I think everyone's approach, I think the
consumers have improved, thewinemakers have improved and
also the winemaking skills thatyoung generation winemakers like
me, who brought experiences andinterests from other places in
the world back to Israel, reallyset a higher standard.

(08:26):
And one of the things thatreally I think contributed to
the way I approach making wineis that experience from
California and from those areas,the warmer climate regions that
make wine, Mediterraneanvarieties and when I met Alex

(08:49):
Harouni at Delton beginning towork, the first wine that kind
of struck my eye was the Shirazfrom Elkosh Vineyard.
I tried that and because it'sone of my favorite grape
varieties, and I tried the winethat they were making here and I
was like wow, okay, this is,this is really good stuff.

(09:10):
We talked about the vineyardsand after that I saw the
vineyards and now I'm managingthe vineyards and overseeing the
production and I can tell youthat the upper Galilee is to to
me one of the, if not the mostexciting region in Israel

(09:30):
because of its diversity, butalso with the quality of the
grapes and what we can do herewith the wines that we grow,
with the grapes that we growunder our umbrella.

Cool yeah, with the grapes that we grow under
our umbrella.
Cool yeah, I was wondering.
Dalton really emphasizes theconnection to the Galilee,
especially the upper Galilee.
How does the unique terroir ofthe area influence the
characteristics of your wines?

So you can really see a thread that
connects between the wines,especially what we grow under
our estate fruit.
One of the reasons why weemphasize the Galilee is because
we're the first winery, thefirst commercial winery, to
start in the Galilee.
When the Arunis, alex and Matt,began with Dalton it was in the

(10:27):
beginning of the 90s.
There wasn't much here.
Most of the grapes that weregrown in the Upper Galilee were
sold to Carmel and they wereplanted for Golan Heights Winery
and they asked for a lot ofSauvignon Blanc and then they
stopped making Sauvignon Blancin vast quantities.
I think they also wanted tofocus on the Golan.

(10:50):
They seized the opportunity asa Galilean producer to make
contracts with some farmers inthe area and in the beginning we
used solely Galilean fruit,which we still do till today.
We do have a vineyard in theGolan.
We also have one vineyard inKidron.
Those go for different stylewines, but I would say 90

(11:12):
percent of our fruit comes fromthe upper galilee, with another
vineyard in the Golan and wehave a little bit in the lower
Galilee as well.
But, that's our focus.

What differentiates between the Upper
Galilee and what you call theGolan Heights?
What's the differences between?

them.
So, first of all, the previousquestion was talking about the
terroir and what makes thesewines unique, so I'll touch that
and then I'll touch thedifferences between the regions.
What makes the Upper Galileeterroir so unique is first of
all that most the elevation,first of all.

(11:54):
High elevation.
That means the climate is moretemperate and we have dryness
anywhere east of Mount Meron,which is our kind of like staple
landmark here, and thevineyards are usually above 500
meters elevation, most of them500, 600.

(12:15):
And then here in Dalton they'rearound 800 meters elevation.
It means cooler nights.
The higher you go in elevation,the cooler it becomes you.
Still, it's intense sunradiation, which is good for the
vines, but under an open canopy, for instance, it's great, but

(12:36):
then the nights are cooler here.
So that's good for retainingcolor flavor acid in the wine.
Good for retaining color flavoracid in the wine.
And then we have about threemain terroir types here in the
Galilee.

(12:56):
We have around Dalton and KarimBen Zirma.
You have the basalt soil, whichis very similar to the Golan
Heights.
So in some areas in Dalton, inthe upper Galilee, we can
produce wines that are verysimilar to what the Golan is
known for Hot, dry climate andthen the basalt soil, making
these very robust, smoky wineswith a lot of concentration.

(13:17):
The majority of the terroir inthe Galilee is limestone and
terra rossa, which is chalk,with oxidized chalk soil that is
red in color and it's very,very rich in minerals.
It retains water very well andthen it lends to our wines this

(13:39):
really beautiful, bright, fruityfreshness.
The acidity is usually higher,we get lower ph's in the wine,
but also a freshness that isvery unique to the uh, to the
galilee wines.
So in cabernet for instance, ifwe take that as an example,
cabernet from the upper galileeto me will have more um cherry,

(14:04):
dark cherry aromas, um savoryherbs.
The tannins will be a littlebit finer, more powdery, whereas
in the basalt soil you get morelike plums, um kind of dark uh
graphite.
The fruit is like a little bitbolder and the acid sometimes is

(14:29):
a little bit lower.
And then we have the third soilthat we have in Elkosh, which
is the upper western Galilee, soit's west of Har Maron, just
west, and that's more influencedby the Mediterranean.
So humidity is higher but italso keeps the temperature lower
, so the vines love humidity.
It's just a challenge for usgrowers to keep everything

(14:51):
healthy and nice.
And like the Getting fungus yeahfungus and mildew and all that,
and we do that well undersustainable vineyard practices
with a very minimal chemical use.
But the interesting part alsois the soil.
It's like a sea sedimentarysoil and you can see fossils in

(15:12):
the soil and the soil is whiteand brown with uh, with uh,
flint, um, stone and um,different types of uh, um, um.
Also also the plants that growthere, the natural environment,
the forestry, is a little bitdifferent, so it also gives
another aspect.

(15:32):
The wines coming from there areusually more delicate, with
more finesse.
It's not going to be thosefull-bodied, bold, broad
shoulders, but those are thewines that I really love and
those wines, they, they haveexcellent aging ability and
we're going to try during thispodcast uh, a few, a few
examples of that and then we cantalk about it as well so you

(15:56):
mentioned that we're going totry some, so let's, let's take a
taste.

This is the first wine.

Yeah, this is what this is called White of
Earth.
It's a brand new release.
It's from 2023.
Available here in Israel andalso in the US.
This is your Asufa series.
This is Asufa.
It's a winemaker's series.
Alex likes to call it thewinemaker's playground, I like

(16:23):
to call it the more kind ofcuriosity wines that are made
from inspiration of other stylesand really where we can go wild
Experimentation.
Yeah, but it was releasedoriginally so we can create

(16:44):
something different, somethingnew, to talk to a new generation
of drinkers and also make winesthat we love to drink that are
inspired by wines from otherplaces.
Everything is in small batches.
Tell me a little bit about whatI'm smelling on it.
So this blend is Sauvignon blancand semillon 50.

(17:04):
I'm getting a lot of like green, green kind of like uh, apple
character, some like waxiness,like beeswax, a little bit of
grassiness and um.
It's a wine that ferments in um, in amphoras, inware, in
stoneware.
So after we try the wine,you'll see that what I was

(17:33):
trying to do here is to create awhite wine with a lot of
texture that just gives it anice crunch but also really
fills your mouth with textureand with this really really
pleasant bitterness and flavorsthat are that are a little bit
more coming from, like the ripefruit, say, like quince and

(17:59):
honey and wax some citrus aswell.

Yeah, but it's less.
It's not what I was expectingat all.
It's very interesting.
This is not like.
This is a combination ofSauvignon Blanc and Semillon so
the Semillon is coming out onthis a lot more than the
Sauvignon Blanc, which isunusual, especially since it's

(18:33):
not this is what year, 2023.
So that's pretty incredible.

It's lovely , it's it's lovely the it's not
like this, um grapefruit bomb.
No, it's a little bit more waxyand textural, like I said alex,
welcome, thank you, welcome.

Welcome to the kosher toa.
I love this.
I love this and I love thatit's different than.

No.
Sauvignon Blancs no.

Sauvignon Blancs .
I really like it much more.
It's not just purely citrus,it's got some body to it and
it's the Sauvignon gives it alittle bit of a bolder.
More shoulders, yes.

And that was the idea to create a wine
that is more texture, moreminerality like, with a nice
saltiness.
I wasn't looking for like a veryaromatic wine with a lot of
acid and zip, but more somethingthat is kind of like wh, wider,
saltier and and uh.
That's also why both of thesegrapes are grown in that same

(19:49):
vineyard in el kosh.
And again going back to what Isaid about the uniqueness of the
vineyards of the upper galileeand um and the terroir that we
have in el kosh, where is uh, isa region west of miron mountain
which, by the Dalton, was thefirst to explore and to plant
vines in the wines lend a saltykind of saline character to them

(20:16):
.
Reds and whites it's verypronounced in the whites.
I think with the type of soil,with that Mediterranean
influence that I said, thatkeeps that unique Uniqueness in
it.
So it's, it's, it's a reallygreat fermenting in them for us
and aging in them for us, whichare made of earth, I Think,

(20:38):
boosts that characteristic inthe wine and that's what we're
looking to do are they amphorasfrom someplace special?
uh, yeah, so, uh, I have severaldifferent makes of amphoras.
Yeah, uh, we have amphoras thatwe brought from spain and these
ones are actually a companythat, uh, that comes from france

(20:59):
, but they manufacture them,manufacture their amphoras with
a unique producer in Sichuan inChina that specializes with
ceramics and with porcelain.
So they make a special mixtureof earth and they use it for
their amphoras.

So it has very very low permeability.
I was going to ask what's theoxygenation?

So it's lower than a barrel, and that's
why it's able to keep thatfreshness in the wines.
Cool yeah.

Alex, I have a question for you.
Sure, All right.
In 1995, you and your fatherestablished Dalton Winery in the
Upper Galilee.
What inspired the venture andhow has the winery evolved since
its inception?

Alex Haruni CEO (21:48):
How my dad.
I grew up in England.
My dad grew up in Israel andthen moved to England before he
got married, but always yearnedto come back and always raised
money for Israeliraeli charitiesand for the joint and whatever.
And every time he came here hewould bring, uh, bring, I think,

(22:11):
call the missions up to up tothe north.
You really believe that thenorth was a forgotten and under
underestimated and undevelopedpart of the country.
Finally, I finished school, Ifinished university, came, I
came to live in israel in 91 andmy parents came in 1993.
I wasn't particularly enamoredwith the family business as it

(22:34):
was then.
My dad was a very dynamic, uh,member of the gem business, a
very uh, um, uh, a veryprominent dealer, and I found it
very difficult to be within hisshadow and I think he
understood that as well.
So he said come on, let's dosomething.

(22:55):
I've always raised money forthe North.
Let's actually do something inthe North.
Let's build a business.
I want to touch the ground, Iwant to bring people to the area
, I want to make the Galil afocus of a business.
And we were looking around forvarious businesses and we came
across the idea of building awinery, and thus the business

(23:20):
began.
It was a Zionist venture toreally bring focus to the Galil,
to the extent where the firstbottles we made had a map on the
back of the label to helppeople find where we were
because, people wouldn't havebeen able to find us otherwise.

Wow, wow.
Reflecting on the early days,what were some of the
significant challenges you facedand how did they shape the
wineries direction?

I think at the time in the in the 90s, there
was a degree of hostility fromthe larger wineries at the look.
When we started, I think therewere probably about 10 wineries
in israel, not much more thanthat, and we started in an era
when there were more and morelittle people coming into

(24:10):
business and more and morelittle wineries starting, and we
were one of those.
We started with 20,000 bottles.
20 tons was our first vintage.
It's strange because it took usa month to do 20 tons and we do
now do 20 tons in half amorning.
Month to do 20 tons and we donow do 20 tons in half a morning

(24:32):
.
Um, and we needed to get rawmaterials.
So we needed to find vineyardsand we needed to find farmers,
and it was always a battle.
First of all, the plantingmaterial.
We had people from I'm notgoing to mention names, but
large wineries coming up to usand said well, we saw your
application for these vines andwe're not going to permit them
because we need them forourselves.

(24:53):
So get to the back of the queueand maybe one day you'll get
them.
And then there was findingfarmers who are willing to sell
us, and at the time I think it'sa little bit different now, but
at the time it was very muchlike the Wild West.
You'd do a deal with a farmerwe would subsidize the planting

(25:15):
of their vineyards and then,throughout the years when they'd
be selling you, they'd be doingdeals in cash on the side and,
oh yeah, really sorry, reallylow yields.
This year it was a really badyear, really low yields.
What had happened was thatsomebody had come the night
before and paid cash for a rowor two rows and we'd get the

(25:37):
rest, which basically made usdecide that we can't really
trust anybody, we have to do itourselves, made us decide that
we can't really trust anybody,we have to do it ourselves.
So in the late 90s, in the early2000s, early 2000s, nama Sorkin
, who was our winemaker at thetime, said look, we've got to
take the matter into our ownhands.

(25:57):
We need to protect our sourceof grapes, our source of raw
materials, because that's themost important thing that makes
the wine, and we need to plantour own vineyards.
And because of her, we builtthis huge investment plan,
doubling the size of the wineryin terms of plantings, overnight

(26:22):
.
It was a huge challenge, a hugefinancial challenge for the
winery as well, because you knowthree years planting a vineyard
is income.
Leaving is negative cash flowfor three years.
So it was a real challenge, butit put us on the track of

(26:42):
becoming a proper estate winery,a proper winery that is in
charge of its own raw materials.
We have our own agriculturaldepartment and that allows us to
play around and be morecreative in the growing and more
creative in what we do in thecellar as well.
I think it doesn't put us atthe mercy of other people.

(27:06):
As you said, in those days therewas maybe 10 wineries, yeah,
and they were all very, very bigand powerful wineries.
They ran the Meutz, Giffen,Hayai and they ran the country's
wine industry.

Now we're moving in on over 400,.
I think 400, yeah.
Winerieseries.

So it's kind of uh crazy I think, and
how many only in the past 10years right.

So I've been here for 10 years and there's
been.
I think maybe when I came therewas 250 wineries or 200
wineries.
Now it's closing on 400 andthey're really and it.

it's amazing how much wine some of the
smaller wineries are making.
I'm astonished sometimes tohear the volumes of, first of
all, of the older, moreestablished wineries who, in my
memory, they started up with100,000, 200,000 bottles and now
they're making close to amillion.
I find it astonishing.

(28:05):
But just to bring theproportion back again, they're
making close to a million.
I find it astonishing.
But just to bring theproportion back again.
I still believe that 80% of thevolume of wine in Israel is
made by about 10% of thewineries made between 10% and
20% of the wineries of Israel.
So I believe that the smallwineries add a lot of colour and

(28:25):
flavour and excitement to theindustry and I think they're
really important.
I think we can't do anythingwithout them.
I think they're very importantfor the industry, but we can't
forget that most of the winethat is being drunk in Israel is
made by probably 20% of those400 wineries.

There are people who can make some incredible
wines here, some small boutiquewineries that hit it out of the
park, but what makes thedifference is if they can do it
again.
There's a lot of winemakers wholuck into all sorts of things,
but the issue is consistency.
Can you reproduce that?

(29:05):
Do you have the equipment andthe tracking to be able to do
those sort of things?

Do you have your own vineyards to be able
to supply the Asouf series?

you described as a personal playground, alex for
innovation.
Elaborate on the inspirationbehind this series and any
upcoming wines that you'reparticularly excited about.

I think the Asufo series is where we can
innovate and where we can sellwines that that your average
wine drinker won't necessarilygo to.
It's a series that's focusedfor the culinary trade.
I think people are much moreadventurous when they go and eat
out If you have a sommelier whocan explain about the wine and

(29:57):
say, look, you should try this,it's really interesting.
It's a very different take onwhat you're used to.
I think people are much moreopen to it.
I think we've seen a greatsuccess with the use of Amphora
and we want to expand on that alittle bit.
I think we want to invest morein clay and terracotta and all

(30:18):
these alternative storagedevices.
I think it also gives Guy a lotmore freedom to say look, you
know what I fancy doing this,this and this, and I'm going to
say well, you know what?
Now you have an avenue of howto sell it, because there are
wines in the Asilfa series thatI don't think we could put in

(30:40):
any of the I'll call themcommercial series, but I think
they're more Traditional.

Yeah, traditional, traditional more
straight laced.

Yeah, um, uh.
I don't think we can get awaywith having some volatility in
in the family collection seriesor in the estate series people
want clean, solid wines, wine oryeah, orange wines?
I don't think people.
People see something that's aplayground.
Their minds open up a littlebit more and they're more

(31:10):
willing to experiment and morewilling to be disappointed
somewhat than if they're goingto spend… or surprised, or
surprised, yeah.

Because I'll tell you this… it surprised me,
it totally surprised me.
I was expecting….

Who doesn't love a nice surprise?

I did but I was totally expecting pomelo,
grapefruit.
I said okay, but then I smelledit and I'm going boy, there's
something more there.

But we have wines that offer the pomelo and
the grapefruit.
We have two wines we have theFumé Blanc and we have the
Family Collection.
Sauvignon Blanc.

Those are standard classic Sauvignon
Blancs made very well Now here'sa way, but in a Galilei style,
in our house, as I said, withthe upper Galilei to a water,
because it's not.
They're special.
You know they're not your.
I think they're still different.

And here we have, in the Asufa series, a way
that Guy can.
Just Guy would come to me andsaid look, you know what?
I think we can make some Petnat.
I said what's Petnat?
He said, oh, we'll make winethat sparkles in the bottle.
We won't filter it and we canjust sell it.

I said all right , go ahead.

Yeah, we can just sell it.
I said, all right, go ahead,yeah, as long as you're not
going through all the rest ofthe steps of making look, yeah,
no, and we've done that too.
But at the end of the day, itstarts out with a, with a barrel
, or with a thousand bottles.
The following year, we made twothousand bottles.
We sold it all after threemonths.
The distributor was like whyare you even releasing this?
I can't sell it throughout theyear then?
Then we did 5,000 bottles, thenwe did 6,000 bottles.

And now we're doing 13,000 bottles and it's
like well, the guy has a brief.
He has from the moment hestarted.
I said look, you've got 20,000liters that you can do whatever
you want with, and I'm not goingto be upset if something goes
wrong.
We'll find somewhere to put itand if not, we'll deal with it
some other way.
But now we'll be able todistill wines because we're

(33:11):
going to have the distilleryacross the road.
But he has an open brief to dowhat he wants with a certain
amount of wines and imagine adifferent creative stuff.
And now we have the ad-libDuring.

COVID, which we had a lot of time in
our rooms.
We couldn't leave anywhere, sowe came to work and we had a lot
of time to play.
But let me just add something,and I mentioned that earlier
when we did our opening chat.
It is, for me at least.

(33:47):
It's dealing with the stuffthat inspires me and I think
that's the most important thing,like it, the commercial side of
it as well, and I'm and I'mvery, very like well, um, kind
of uh driven by that as well,like what can sell, and I don't
produce a new wine every yearbecause it's just not I.

(34:07):
I also think we need to.
We need some stability too andto show that consistency.
But it is the place to likemake a wine and if it doesn't
work we can cancel it and that'sfine.
But also, um, but also it'slike the stuff that I like to
drink.
You know, like when, when I goto a restaurant and I open a
bottle of sicilian wine orsomething like with skin contact

(34:29):
and wow, that's really cool.
Or stuff I grew up on in myearly years during winemaking,
where I was single and we'd hangout with friends and we'd pop a
bottle of PetNet.
It's just the stuff that I usedto love to drink and the stuff
that inspires me, or stuff thatI have a curiosity for.
Sometimes even Alex brings upan idea and we're like, okay,

(34:51):
let's do this, let's try, andit's.
It's a.
That's the greatness of thisseries.

So that one of the questions I have for you is
you know Doton Winery offersthis diverse portfolio.
Okay, Between Alma State, theCanaan series and what have you.
How do you ensure each seriesmaintains its distinct identity
while upholding the overallquality of the brand, and can

(35:18):
you share a little bit about theinsights you started to go down
that path into the creativeprocess behind developing a new
wine or a new series?
Do?

you want to start.
Yeah, first of all, I startwith the fact that we do have
many different wines that wemake and, yes, it's a challenge.
With that said, we have a cleardistinction of what we want in
every range.
We have a clear distinction ofwhat we want in every range, and

(35:52):
I think we're both Alex and Iare both individuals who think
there's good quality to be madefor everyone and we don't like
to.
You know, we always want more.
We have a hunger for more and todo more interest and more and,
and that's one of the reasonswhy we have a lot of wines and

(36:13):
that's why we develop new thingsand and and single vineyards
and, uh, it's, it's thatcuriosity, and not standing in
one spot.
So we're not the traditional, uh, kind of like a four wine
winery, but we have a range thatin the Kanaan, we're looking
for one thing.
In the estate range, we'relooking for freshness, for

(36:34):
approachability, for quality,for ease of drink and finesse,
again made from our estate fruit.
And then we go to the Almas,which is something that is an

(36:56):
excellent wine for the winedrinker who likes to drink
quality things at an everydaykind of rate where you're
willing to spend a little bitmore and have those vineyards
that come from our top fruits.
But those vineyards that comefrom our top fruits, and these

(37:16):
are blends that are verygenerous, that are fun to drink,
and the family collection,that's what the family, the
Haruni family, keeps for theirspecial events, those are the
top wines, those are vineyardswith the highest potential.

Good aging potential wines as well.

Great aging potential wines, yeah.

Wines that we drink, that we go to.
I mean, we drink Shiraz FamilyCollection on a weekly basis at
home.
These are the classics.

They're the true timeless classics with
their Galilean distinction.
And then we have Asuffa, whichwe talked about.
There's really not much to saymore than that.
But the single vineyards iskind of zooming in on a quality
from a single site that has avintage variation.

(38:01):
But we know these vineyards canportray the very best of the
site that they come from.
So that's why we choose to showthem.

They're very individual wines.
It's a snapshot of a particularday.
I see the single vineyard winesas a picture of one day from
one year, from one place inIsrael, and that's what you've
got in the bottle, and we alsofind that they're very distinct.
So when we're tasting the winesblind, we can usually identify

(38:36):
them.
And that's what's special aboutthe single vineyard is that we
can go back year after year andwe can sort of identify them
blind because they have theirown characteristic and we found
that that's that's what'simportant here.

Do you?
Do you find that that there arevariations in vintage?

oh yeah, look, we don't really have
horrible vintages like becausewe don't have summer rains here.
Um, there are in some places inEurope where you have
devastating frosts, but there isvintage variation.
There's variation between yearsthat have a more consistent

(39:19):
temperature than years that havetemperature spikes, years that
have heat waves, years that arecooler or more temperate how
much rainfall we had that year.
If we had low yields Last year,we had very, very low yields.
So I think there's smallberries, the same amount of

(39:40):
fruit grown on the vines, butthe clusters were smaller and
the berries were smaller, fewer.
So at the end of the day weharvested about 10, 15 less just
because it was moreconcentrated, so yeah you get a
little bit more, a little bitmore concentration, more acid,
less tempering with the winethat all these wines that come

(40:01):
from the from the alma familycollection estate and our
special edition wines, reallythere's not much I as a
winemaker have to do them, apartfrom just making sure they
follow through properly andusing like fermentation
techniques like these, are very,very, um low impact wines.
So they, in terms of ofintervention, right, so they

(40:24):
really really are authentic tothe place.

The fruit shines through, um don't use a very
intense oak profile on our winesour wines are supple they, so
we're drinking.

Now we're trying the shiraz elkosh 2021
from the elkosh vineyard.
It's a single vineyard.
Okay, as I said, the soil thereis soil, there is chalky with
fossils, flint, 600 meterelevation, 18 months aged.
In 500 liter barrels, 500liters.

What are we smelling?

A lot of savory character, nice fruit,
cinnamon olives, black olives,really pronounced, yeah, black
olives.
Some thyme, some pepperiness.

It's quite restrained as well.
It's not in your face.
Fruit, no, very elegant.
The tannins are very smooth.
They're very easy to drink,very, very soft and nice length
to it as well.

The Shiraz from the parallel series.
The family collection is a bitbolder.
It's almost like sweeter andfull, where this has this
elegance and finesse.
As I said, when I met Alex forthe first time, this shiraz was
the one that caught my eye, andwhen I saw the shiraz from
israel with this elegance thatwe, that I tried for the first

(41:56):
time from dalton I was like wow.
After coming back from australiaand the rhone, I was like, wow,
this is this.
This shiraz is like up thereand it it's unique and I'm
really proud of what we do withthis, because it's not very easy
to make a Shiraz that has thisfinesse to it, this European

(42:19):
almost energy.
So it's unique.
It's different than everythingelse we make, and that's why it
goes into single vineyardbecause of that.

As we've been saying, the Israeli wine
industry has seen substantialgrowth in recent years.
What do you perceive, or how doyou perceive, dalton's, dalton
Winery's role in the evolvinglandscape?

Well, I think our recent decisions have been
based on climate change, sowe've planted a lot of white
wines.
I think we're going to see alot of people drinking a lot
more white wines in the future.
Balance has always been 60%reds and 40% whites, and we're
moving more to 50-50, even alittle bit more in favor of

(43:08):
whites.
I think we're placing a lotmore focus on white wines.
I think we're experimentingwith vines that can handle the
new hot weather as well, andwe're trying to push in the

(43:29):
direction of more premiumization.
I think people deserve to drinkbetter wines and I think what
I'm seeing is people aredrinking less, but people are
drinking better, and we want toget them drinking better wines.
We offer excellent wines forunder $20.

(43:51):
I mean, there's a piece in theWine Enthusiast this week that
focused on our CabernetSauvignon, on our Estate
Cabernet Sauvignon, and gave ita 95, I think 94, 95, really
nice review saying here this isa wine that you can open every
day and not break the bank.
But I think people want to moveup and we're doing better at

(44:13):
everything and I think that'simportant.
Plus, we're still trying toremain imaginative and still
trying to bring interestingsurprises to the market.

So I'm going to kick off that a little bit more.
Alex, as someone who's kind ofleading the business side of the
Dalton Winery, how do youenvision the winery's growth in
the international markets?

The international market is really
difficult, really difficult.
I'm not going to candy coat ithere.
I've never had the opinion,I've never been of the opinion
that Israel is going to make ahuge breakthrough into the
non-Kosher, non-jewish market,because I don't see it happening

(45:04):
.
Unfortunately, I think thereare too many things against us
to make that happen.
Unfortunately, I see Greek andTurkish wines and Lebanese wines
being much more popular andspeaking much more to people on
the street than Israel.
Unfortunately, israel is alwayslinked news-wise to terrible

(45:27):
things and we were just beforelast October, just before
October 7th, I think, we weresort of on the way of getting
out of that and we were about tobe able to stand again proudly
as Israel and say, look, theseare Israeli wines, wines and we
have something to offer with nonegative connotations.

(45:53):
And unfortunately, I think,since the 7th of October, the
world has gone back on itselfand we have only ourselves to
rely on.
We have only ourselves to relyon.
And now I've seen, in terms ofmarkets, I've seen that there's
been support in the UnitedStates.

(46:14):
Unfortunately, I don't see thatsupport in the United Kingdom.
I think, as an English Jewmyself, the English have always
been very apologetic aboutthemselves.
Self-apologizing Jew, I think,is the term that we used to use

(46:35):
at university and I don't seethe support coming from the
United States.
I see support coming from theUnited States, I see support
coming from Jewish communities,but unfortunately I don't see
that we have the support of theinternational wine drinking
market, which is a huge shame inthe United States.

Elvie makes a bottle of wine.
That's a quality white thatthey sell retail in the United
States for $10.
Right, and I look at that and Igo how in the world can they

(47:18):
sell a bottle of wine?
And they have all thehashkachot issues and all the
kashrut issues that everybodyelse has, but they still have
enough of a margin to be able tosell wine at $10.

But they have also European subsidies for
exporting wines, which we don't.
So that's one of the questionsI'm going to ask.
So if you want to go into theprice, if you want to go into
talking about the price, I thinkwe need to look more at
California as a producer thanEurope as a producer, and I

(47:58):
think you need to compareIsraeli wines with Californian
wines, because our costs aremore similar to America than
they are to Europe.
America doesn't receive anysubsidies from the government to
produce and you have to counton everything.
We pay above minimum wage foreverything.

(48:23):
We have to pay all thegovernment benefits to all our
employees and even to thepickers as well.
We have to ensure thateverybody that's working for us
gets paid, not only minimum wage, but also gets the social
security benefits and all theother benefits are given to

(48:44):
those people.
It's an expensive businessmaking wine here.
Nobody's giving us anything.
Nobody's helping us along theway to promote our exports, to
make them cheaper for thecustomer abroad.
So our price proposition has tobe similar to that of the
United States and not to Europe.

So when I look at the Israeli market.
I'm sorry, I'm only focusing onAlex at the moment but, I
figure I'm going to lose himfirst.
No, it's fine, okay.
So when you're looking at theIsraeli market, I would have
said 10 years ago, the wineindustry has a real serious

(49:25):
problem here, because theyounger people were going
towards, you know, alcohol,higher-end alcohols and beers
and what have you.
I think there's been aresurgence here.
I don't know.
What do you feel?
What do you feel about yourcustomers?

I think I can answer that better than I,
because he also makes his ownwines and he's in the market a
lot more than I am.
By the way, I love that oh,yeah, you tried it.

Yeah, the Roussant.
Great, I was going to ask youyou don't make a Roussant, but
yeah, you do, you make actuallyyour own private roussat, yes,
it actually started slowing downduring the whole judiciary
reform protests.

That's when it started going down and then
the war brought it down further,with restaurants being closed
and certain markets justdisappearing for months.
Like like haifa, like the northum and tel aviv was kind of
working, but but slow, kind oflike on on autopilot, but but

(50:42):
very, very minimal.
It's a little bubble.

Tel aviv is a is a bubble that it keeps
plodding along and you can moreor less rely on it.
But I think there are otherfactors at work as well.
I think there is this general,what I call neo-prohibitionism,
this general move away fromwines in the world, perhaps not
here.
I think here we have a good.

(51:06):
We have a bit of a lag, I thinka 10-15 year lag, generational,
yeah, lag between what's goingon in the rest of the world.

yeah, yeah, so like natural wine, it was
popular 10 years ago in thestates and then it arrived here
and now it's booming here andthen slowly it's gonna fade away
because people are drinking allthe kinds of wines now and in
the States they've realized thatnatural wine is not a home for
all flavor.
And it's not the end.

And I'm told the United States is a
challenging market as well.
Young people are moving intoready-to-drinks and ready-made
cocktails and drinking morecocktails.
I was in New York a few monthsago and we went to a restaurant
and we were the only tabledrinking wine.
Everybody else was drinkingcocktails.

It was really interesting to see Mixed drinks
are big now in the States andeven here where you go into a
restaurant and they've got apage worth of cocktails that
they offer and a little sectionon wines.
That's why I kind of think thatsome of the specialty, some of

(52:17):
the not ordinary wines like this, some of the unusual wines, are
actually set for a comeback,because if a person is going to
go out and drink wine, theydon't just want to ask for.
You know, it also dependstotally on whether the

(52:39):
restaurants actually have asommelier who's pushing wines
and what have you.
But they don't want to justdrink the same stuff, they want
to drink something that'sdifferent.

And yeah, I agree, I have have whenever we
go out.
My wife likes to take a bottleof our wine to the restaurant.
It's good for business and itinterests the sommelier,
whoever's pouring the wine.
I'd say to her look, if I'mgoing out, I want to drink
something else.
I mean, I know what our winestaste like, but I want to drink.
I want to see what they've donewith their wine list, yeah, and

(53:10):
I want to know what.
And I want to drink somethingthat I don't necessarily drink
at home and for me, that's quiteimportant and I think these,
these wines offer that to theperson, to the person that's
going out as well and also onething that's happening, and I
think um, I think the only, ofcourse, and I think we all know
this wine lists are becomingshorter, smaller and more

(53:35):
focused.

So the people who are managing the wine
programs at restaurants,they're looking maybe for one
producer in each section, maybehaving wines by the glass, wines
not by the glass, but it's notthese books anymore of pages and
pages of wines that you can gothrough, and they and and
they're also pulling wine um asneeded.

(53:57):
So they're pulling six bottlesof this, six bottles of that,
six bottles of that and thenordering every week um to fill
their stocks and not keeping alot of wine on stock.
So the wine lists are becomingmore focused and, I think, more
versatile and, as a wineryproducing a range of different
things, yeah it increases ourchances that a winery, for

(54:18):
instance, you know in the city,who already has their staple
sauvignon blanc and their staplesh, but then you know we come
up with this Souffle series.
It's like wow, this old vineCarignan, how unique, it's low
alcohol, it's cool, it's vibrant, it's acid, it's nice.
Or this, you know, wines madein Amphora or wines fermented on

(54:42):
the skins or indigenousvarieties brings us into the
wine on the skins or indigenousvarieties brings us into the
wine, because they're not goingto keep wines on their list from
one producer, four or fivedifferent types of their wines.
They're going to have maybe onewine from one producer, and
that's where tickets come in.

I noticed that as well.
I noticed that as well.
Tell me about a wine that youfeel deserves more attention,
one that perhaps flies under theradar compared to your flagship
wines.

I'd say a variety that flies under the
radar would be Shiraz.
Shiraz is the perfect varietyfor Israel.
Of all the blind tastings I'vedone, the Shiraz flights have
always been a step above theother flights that I've tasted
of other varietals.
In terms of quality-wise,Israel makes really good Shiraz,

(55:35):
really good Shiraz.
We were one of the firstwineries to start pioneering it
and I think it doesn't get therespect that it deserves.
Cabernet outsells Shiraz two toone, if not more than that, and
I don't think look, we make agood cabernet.

(55:55):
But I think Israel as a countrymakes excellent, excellent
Shirazis and it's a shame thatit doesn't get that recognition.

I think it's building.

You think Ten years ago, if you went to your
distribution in America and saidI've got this great Shiraz,
they would tell you it's sittingon shelves.
Nobody wants to buy ShirazNowadays, especially with the
global warming.
There's a lot of countries thatare getting more into Shiraz

(56:38):
and I think that it's becomingmuch, much more popular.
But what's also amazing is thatthere's so many different
expressions of Shiraz that youcan get.
You can get something that'sspicy.
You can get something that'selegant.
You can get something that'selegant.
You can get something that'salmost as bold as a cab.

(57:00):
There's all sorts ofexpressions of how you make it.
It's versatile.
I'm enjoying it a lot I am atleast personally.

I just poured some Cabernet with.
That being said, all that greattalk about Shiraz, we're trying
the family collection CabernetSauvignon from Vintage 22.
18 months in oak barrels.
I use two or three differentcoopers here and it gets about

(57:37):
one quarter new oak in the blendand it's also made from a
selection of our top parcelsspreading from the western
Galilee, elkosh to Kfar Shamayin the central upper Galilee,

(57:59):
kerim, ben Zimra in Deltan, andit will be a blend of the of our
best estate fruit where we have, as I talked about earlier,
with the different terroirs.
You know, in Deltan it's morebasalt, so you have some of the
components bringing in morestructure and then the ones that
coming from the uh, from thelimestone series, are that

(58:22):
lifted fruit I like this a lot,but I'll tell you I actually
like the shiras better.

So, but, but it's um, but it's also a really
nice expression.
Let's talk a little bit aboutsustainability.
Sustainability is a growingfocus in viticulture.
What sort of sustainablepractices have you implemented

(58:49):
in the vineyard and thewinemaking?

And we do talk about it quite a bit, but I
also think that it starts inthe vineyard, but it's really
translated to the vision of thecompany and how we operate as a
business, as a family-ownedbusiness, from the vineyard, and
what we do and then also ourpractices here in the winery
using the right equipment, theright machines.

(59:15):
The winery using the rightequipment, the right machines,
the water processing and wasteprocessing that we do.
Here we have our wastemanagement processing plant that
we can really bring our wastewater to a point where it's also
state of the art.
It's a machine equipment thatwas built custom to our needs

(59:36):
and with new technology where wecan put our waste back and not
create an oxygen debt into theenvironment, into the water
supply.
And also how we treat ouremployees.
You know we look after them.
Every employee has their setprogress plan the solar power

(01:00:00):
energy that we create here andwe use our rooftops to.

Alex Haruni CEO (01:00:05):
If we could use our own electricity, we'd be
independent in electricity.
So we've got, you can see overthere that roof is completely
covered in panels and the roofin this building is completely
covered in panels and the roofin this building is completely
covered in panels and we weproduce we produce more
electricity than we consume atthe moment.
So why can't you use yourelectricity?
You're not allowed to.
You have to sell it back to thegrid.

(01:00:25):
Interesting yeah so.

Guy Eshel Winemaker (01:00:29):
So it starts in the vineyards, and now
back to the vineyards, becausethat's where it starts, the
vineyards that we grow, and wealso try to influence our
growers as well.
Um, and we, we have quite goodsuccess at them, apart for one
or two that, uh, they are very,very old school.
Um, but it's something that we,we constantly emphasize and

(01:00:50):
what we want and, um, ourgrowers are not allowed to use
any spray chemical that theywant.
We give them a list of thingsthat we consider to be friendly
and sustainable.
We use oils, horticultural oilsinstead of sulfur throughout
the growing season, and then wego into sulfur once or twice

(01:01:15):
during the year.
We try to minimize the use ofcoppers and use alternative
minerals that can combat the,the downy mildew, which is also
an issue here in Israel, andthese minerals are more

(01:01:36):
sustainable to the environmentthan copper.
Copper leaches into the waterbed and it also it's a cause of
Alzheimer's and there's a lot ofthings that are not very
healthy with copper, so we tryto use mineral-based sprays for
that, and then we have spraysthat are friendly to the

(01:02:00):
environment.
We're not organic certified,but because we like to process
sustainability, it's somethingwe put a lot of research in, and
we're not very light-handed onwhat we bring into the winery in
terms of prophylactic spraysProphylactic.

S. Simon Jacob (01:02:20):
Prophylactic sprays yeah.

And then, apart from that, we don't use
herbicides in our vineyards atall.
Everything is mowed either bysheep during the off-season, in
the spring, before the vinesdon't bud break, and then we
also use mowing systems that aremore sustainable than sprays,

(01:02:46):
because we don't sprayunderneath the vines with
herbicides herbicides or we usepest management in the vineyards
with, with owl boxes.
So we've put an owl box toevery 50 dunam of vineyards, in

(01:03:07):
all our vineyards, and then we,which is five hectares okay,
every five hectares there's anowl box and most of them have
been populated and that helpsagainst rodents that dig and
create holes and problems in ourirrigation systems.
We're trying to use grapevarieties.

(01:03:30):
Now we've planted quite a fewMediterranean grape varieties
that are a little bit moreresilient to hot climate.
We're looking at that, we'relooking at hybrid varieties,
we're looking at varieties fromGreece, from Israel, from warmer
parts of Europe like Spain andsouth of France that we're

(01:03:56):
trying to plant and and developin in that section.
So sustainability is an ongoingprocess, but I think, uh, we
tick the boxes in turn in termsof it's something that we really
care about and it shows in ourwine, like when you go, if, if,
I would take you to Elkos.
You're gonna going to say, ohmy, this is wow.
This is not like a regularvineyard.

(01:04:16):
It's like a piece of land thatis lush and all the native
vegetation is there.
Most of the vineyards that wegrow that are above 100 dunam
blocks, which is 10 hectares.
100 dunam blocks, which is 10hectares We'll have some kind of

(01:04:38):
untouched areas that are usedas natural corridors for animals
, wildlife and microbes, so thatreally helps as well.
We make our own compost.
Oh, the list goes on but it'sstuff that we do that starts

(01:04:58):
from the vineyard and finishesin the winemaking process.

So I always thought that the solar panels
were you trying to reduce yourown cost?
And I guess they do reduce yourcosts because it gets sold back
to the electric.
Yeah, it does, but it doesn'tfeed directly to you.

No, it doesn't feed directly to us unless you
buy battery farms.

We haven't got to the stage where we buy
battery farms yet, and it'ssomething that's beginning now,
I think in the industry thatbatteries are becoming Very
reasonable price.

Yeah, there's also a move to cover I was going
to ask you any of the vineyardsWith solar yeah, that's an
interesting question.

It's a new.

There's some new advancements in that, yeah.

Because I have a good friend of mine is in
that business, so I've lookedinto it a little bit.
It's the permits that are givenare quite small at the moment
still in terms of how many dunamyou can do.
But it's also a matter of likeif you own the land or not.

(01:06:21):
I think there's also thatquestion that needs to be
answered.
And if some of our vineyardsare leased, some of the
vineyards are contracted, andthen you have to see if it makes
it worthwhile doing that.

I saw an analysis where the the vines,
actually, when they're really infull um exposure to radiation
perspire, so they end up givingoff more water yeah, so you can
end up saving water by puttingsolar panels over them, and even

(01:06:55):
if they could flip, if they canrotate, so you get sun when you
want it and no sun when youdon't want it, it ends up
helping from a number of levels.
So it's something I've beenlooking at.
I was wondering if anybody was.

There's a lot of research done in that and
, yeah, it does give some amountof shade.
That can be controlled.
Bigger canopies release morewater.
That means that you have toirrigate and supplement with
more water.
There's a lot of research doneand the fact that it's good to
keep smaller canopies.
That means a leaf area for thevines, that and then they

(01:07:33):
survive in hot climates withreleasing less water into the
aspiring less, and then you haveto water, irrigate less.

Do you shade any of them?
Do you put shades over any ofthem at all?

No, we do not, but what we do, we do
practice, and that's somethingthat I brought in when I started
here as a winemaker, learningfrom California and also in
France trying to imitatehead-trained vines, so open
canopies.

(01:08:08):
Most of our vines arestructured in a VSP vertical
suit position where you have twocordons or cane pruning it
depends, but that's a little bitmore rare in Israel for the
varieties that we grow and then,instead of doing the vertical
soup position you can do, youcan let the vineyard just kind
of go kind of sprawled so thatit shades itself, and then you

(01:08:34):
have less direct radiation onthe clusters more surface area
for the vine to transpire andyou can increase quality and
manipulate the quality of yourfruit in a positive way.
So we practice that quite a bit.

(01:08:56):
So tell me a little bit aboutyour alcohol.

So about a few years ago I invested in a
distillery in La Votabashan andit was always my wish to take
the winery into distilling.
And then it became thisdistillery, Guy Guy.

(01:09:24):
This is the iron, and now we'rebuilding our own distillery.
But until our distillery comes,so I'm distilling at this place
called Verastil, which is nearus in the Galil, distilling at
this place called Verastil,which is near us in the Galil,
and we sit with them and we sitwith their master distiller and
we send them wines fordistillation.

(01:09:44):
We make the recipes togetheruntil we can make it in our own
facility.
We made a gin already.
I saw that Did you taste it.
I't.
So the gin is made with um uh,with botanicals.

That guy uh picked from the elkosh vineyard
wow, galilean inspiredbotanicals that are foraged and
near and in and around the areaof our vineyards and this Arak
is made from a wine you know.

During the war, unfortunately, we couldn't keep
our eyes on everything.
It was really, really.
It's been a really challengingyear.
A lot of stress and a lot, of,a lot of stress, a lot of
uncertainty.
Was there a real impact fromthe war?
I mean, yeah, oh, yeah, tellthere a real impact from the war
.

I mean yeah, oh yeah, tell me a little bit about
the impact.

Every day you come to work Don't know what's
going to happen and you?
Have no idea who's going to behere.
What's going to land on you,right, yeah, the sirens go off
after the booms.
Right, right here, yes, so youhave workers working in

(01:11:00):
vineyards that are they'reclassified as open spaces.

So there's no iron dome there.
Yeah, there's no iron dome andthere's no sirens.
Yeah, and then suddenly, you,you hear something and there's a
, there's a rocket landing in onthe hill in front of you.

You go into the , you go into the vineyard in
the morning and there's a hugecrater where something landed.
The previous night we gotthrough this wall by a miracle.
I have no other way ofclassifying it.
We lost 100 dunam of vineyards,30 dunam of burnt, 70 dunam.

(01:11:31):
We couldn't manage.
We couldn't go in there, wecouldn't crew them as soon as
October started At the border.

On the fence.

In the water gun.

And damages like a rocket hitting in a
vineyard, and then you loseabout half a dunam of vines Just
like that.

There would be explosions, and then you'd hear
the tinkling of shrapnel landingon the solar panels.
Just little bits of shrapnellanding.

I'm laughing, but I'm not.
I know I was up in Reconadi andwe were watching the smoke
coming up from here and thesmoke coming up from here, and
as I drove through Sfat therewas fires on both sides of the
street.
It was like crazy.

I remember.
I remember Jonathan, my wife.
So we did a lot of outreachduring the war.
So Billy, my wife and Adiel,from my cousin of Ukraine, I now
know how many cases of wine youcould fit into a Tesla, because
every weekend I would take down15 cases of wine, if not more,

(01:12:37):
for Billy and Adiel to go toShukimika, a farmer's market
Right Around Tel Aviv, aroundthe Americas, where people would
support the north.
So there was a lot of outreachduring the war where we would
have to go out because thewinery visitor center was closed
but the winery we worked.
Something that I learned fromCoronary is you keep working.
The winery visitor center wasclosed, but the winery we worked
through there.
Something that I learned fromcoronary is you keep working

(01:12:59):
because it's gonna end sometimeand if you're not working then
you're gonna have to make up ahuge backlog for not for not
doing that, but right.
It's also really important forthe morale of the employees.
It's given something to do tomake sure that they can work.
So we worked every day.
Guy came up every single day.
I came up three times a week.
It was really important for meto show the staff that although

(01:13:25):
I don't live in the area.
I'm there with them.

You live where?
In Tel Aviv?

Three times a week.
I was here.
The guy was here every day.
Everybody was here.
Everybody came to work everysingle day.
We didn't know what was goingto happen during the day.
There were sirens every otherday.
The ground shook every singleday from artillery fire from our

(01:13:49):
end or from rocket fire fromtheir end.
Maroon Arras, I don't know ifthey took you up when you were
here.
We can go and take a look now.
You see, marona russ, it's.
We're six kilometers from theborder and marona russ is, uh,
another kilometer.
Perhaps I can see it from myoffice window.
There were explosions happeningthere all the time.

(01:14:12):
It's.
It was not a year, I'd like torepeat, but nobody was hurt and
we managed to get a full harvestin, not a full harvest, we
managed to get a harvest in andwe managed to get employment to

(01:14:38):
our staff for that year and ahalf, which I think is as
important as the end of theyears.

It's huge.
It's huge because most of thepeople up north were.
I have cousins who live inDishon and they haven't been
back to Dishon in a year and ahalf.
It's crazy.

It's crazy yeah yeah, we have employees
displaced At the El Khosm Abivim.

Okay, nobody knows when Abivim will come back
, rehabilitated and repopulated,he said.

They're going to have to spend money out
of pocket to rebuild theirhomes.
They will get some kind ofgovernment subsidy, but that's
not going to be enough.

The irony is that they only just finished
repairing the infrastructure inAvibim from 2006.
Right, and now it's all goneagain.
So this why?
Because of the atmosphere thatwe had.
You know, people weren't alwaysconcentrating and people

(01:15:39):
weren't always.
Guy and I sit down usuallythree times a year to sort the
wines.
We weren't able to sit down formore than half an hour to sit
and taste some wines and say,look, this is good, this is
better, this should go there,this should go there.
Usually, we spent two full daysdoing that.
That didn't happen this Arak.

(01:16:00):
It is the result of a wine thatgot lost along the way.

But distillation made wonders.
I know.
No, it's an amazing thing.
It's made from the scat.
Yeah, it's delicious.
Muscat Arak, wow.
Just like you would drink inLebanon, syria, iran or Iraq.
Muscat Alexandria Arak, wow,delicious, it's delicious.

It's very palatable even at this time of
the morning.
It's delicious Soft.

Yeah, it's soft Splats down my throat.

An uncle who put his longevity down to the
three glasses of arak he hadbefore breakfast.
So he knew, coming from theregion in which we came, that
was the way they met.
That's what they loved in thosedays.

That's right.
Yeah, it's a really nice arak.
And then there's a few others.
There's a gin that's been beingmade kosher for passover gin
for the past few years.
It's really nice.
And, uh, we have the um.
We have a brandy.
We made a few years of brandy.
We made two years of whiskey.
That's still aging, so it's uh,that's cool.

(01:17:11):
Some people do grappa brandies.
I think it's.
It's um, it could be nice, as,like israelis usually, uh, drink
it as a nice kind of aperitif,like a digest for, like at the
end of the meal, like a littlechaser I don't know if you're a
gin drinker.

I am a gin drinker actually, so this is gin
.
We goes in Altosh, very, very.
I wasn't going to be sure therewas no.
Nobody would mistake that it'snot gin so there's a lot of
citrus in it a little bit ofZatar, a little bit of what did

(01:17:54):
we put in here, kai?

Wormwood Zatar za'atar.
A little bit of what did we putin here, guy Wormwood za'atar,
native mint juniper thatoriginally we foraged in Mehron
but we also now we usecommercial organic juniper as
well, because it's quiteendangered.
We use myrtle.

Some lemonade a bit of orange peel, lemon peel.

I think that's amazing.
High on the juniper, yeah, highon because of the gin.
But I think that's like anincredible selling point that
you're basically tasting theterroir of, you know of the're
basically tasting the terroir,yeah Of you know, of the gene
Aladin terroir inspired.
Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, and then we did this project in Tennessee
, tennessee.

In Kentucky.
They put it in barrels inKentucky.

Yeah, we sent the barrels over and they
finished it in our Anna, ourliqueur wine, right.
So they finished a few batchesin barrels that we sent them.
Very cool, Just cool.

The Anna's fantastic.

Yeah, that's really another hyper limited
wine.
Really very, very smallventures we make ever since the
new packaging.

It's just, you can't keep it on the shelves
and people want it.
We just can't make more becauseit's just.
We try to increase theproduction every year, but it
takes many, many, many takeseight or nine years, until we've
tried to expedite theproduction.
It just doesn't happen.
Work the same it needs.

It's that long aging so I I always have a
question why in the world wouldyou make champagne?
That's what I ask why would youmake champagne?
I know we're not making itanymore.
Okay for prestige, I could seeit, but it's so much effort.

Yeah, it's a lot of effort.
It's.
It's also a lot of fun, butit's a lot of effort and at the
end of the day, I'm not gonnaput houses what you call it but
have the function I can.
How I think, houses that makechampagne when you focus on it
and when your grapes, all ofyour vineyards, are made for
that.
It's just different.

(01:20:24):
It's different logistics, it'sa different way of working.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
It's a specialized equipment ofwork.
It's a lot of work.
This is a specialized equipmentyou can make.
I think it becomes worthwhilewhen you make tens of thousands
of bottles or a few thousands ofbottles of it.

No, it's hard to do.

We started it because it was another thing
to try, right we did it forthree years and we made a lot of
backstock we've got a fewthousand bottles sitting on Lees
.

We found out that making PETNAT is easier and
very, very similar and sellsquicker and we can turn over the
stock a lot easier.

And we didn't need as much as specified
equipment for it as well.

Yeah, because you don't go through the whole,
the whole.

Guy Eshel Winemake (01:21:26):
Disgorgement and gorging process.
So we know how to make.
We've done champagne threeyears.
We know how to make it.
Well, I think, I think our ittastes nice.
We took a bottle back.
Uh, we'll make it whenever wefeel like it.
You know now, we make itwhenever we feel like it.
If we run out of stocks, we'llmake a little think, because

(01:22:05):
it's a lot of work the advantageof.
Very technical.

The advantage of Champagnois is that it hasn't
been disgorged.
It doesn't go bad.
Um champagne was that hasn'tbeen disgorged.
It doesn't go bad, you can keep.
You can keep it on a.
You can keep it on lease for along, long time.

Well, I never thought of that.
I never thought of that.
That's.
That's interesting.
I never really thought of that.
Yeah, yeah, because actually itbenefits to be sitting on the
lease.
Yeah.
It gets it be sitting on theleaf.
Yeah, it gets really nice.
It's interesting.
I also like that you're goingto Amphoras for some of the

(01:22:43):
wines.
It's kind of the roots of thiscontract.

It's something going back to the.
It was one of the ideas tryingto make wines with ancestral
methods.

It's funny, one of the Amphoras that he got
from Spain, they come with theirlittle Magen Davidon, yeah, and
he asked the family who makethem.
Why is there a Magen Davidon?

They said, well, we've been putting them on
for as long as we can rememberand it seems that the family who
makes them is a family who werecrypto-Jews in the 15th century
Amphora is Moreno, leon andtheir last name is Moreno, and
Moreno is the name for yeah Jews, crypto Jews, and they have

(01:23:25):
always signed off with a Star ofDavid on their employees.

Looking ahead what are your aspirations for
Dalton Winery in the next decade?

I want to grow the winery to become bigger.
What are your aspirations forDalton Winery in the next decade
?
I want to grow the winery tobecome bigger.
I think we're at around 1.3million at the moment.
I want to get to 1.5 million 2million.
I want to be able to focus morein the premium sector.
I want to expand our premiumwine portfolio.

(01:24:00):
I want to be able, when peoplesay, name the top three wineries
in Israel, the Dalton will bein people's tongue.
That's my aspiration for thenext decade and I think we can
get there.
I think we're working hardenough and we're making real
great efforts in the cellar andin the vineyards.

(01:24:21):
That we'll be able to be whereI want to be in a decade.

Very cool well, I've only seen it getting better
and better and better, so it'sreally a pleasure.
Thank you very, very much forall the time.
Both of you.

Thank you for coming.
Thanks for coming and gettingto know us.

No, it's a pleasure, really a pleasure.
Thank you, it's really nice tomeet.
Let's talk.
Yeah, this is Simon Jacob,again your host of today's

(01:25:04):
episode of The Kosher Terroir.
I have a personal request nomatter where you are or where
you live, please take a momentto pray for our soldiers' safety
and the safe and rapid returnof our hostages.
Soldier safety and the safe andrapid return of our hostages.
Please subscribe via yourpodcast provider to be informed
of our new episodes as they arereleased.
If you're new to The KosherTerroir, please check out our

(01:25:27):
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