June 12, 2025 • 49 mins
Send a Text Message to The Kosher Terroir
Wine begins with passion, curiosity, and an open heart – elements that define Penina Kustanowitz's remarkable journey into winemaking. Speaking while journeying from Jerusalem to Yerucham's Pinto Winery, Penina shares how a simple love for kosher wine blossomed into a full-fledged winemaking career that's quickly establishing her as one of Israel's rising stars.
Her story unfolds organically – from joining the RCC Club and volunteering at harvests to a fortuitous phone call that led to her first assistant winemaker position. Now armed with UC Davis certification and producing her own label, Penina invites us into the intimate world of fermentation management, barrel aging, and the surprising practice of singing to her fermenting yeast (which actually responds to her voice!).
What makes this conversation special isn't just the technical insights but the human elements woven throughout. Penina's "Upstream" California-style Chardonnay embodies her winemaking philosophy: "Make what you want to drink," even when it goes against prevailing trends. Her experiences blending wines reveal the artistic side of the craft – "like painting with grapes" to create harmonious expressions that tell a story in every sip.
The warmth and generosity of Israel's winemaking community shines through as Penina recounts how established figures freely shared knowledge and opened doors for her development. From managing the challenges of desert heat waves to the careful orchestration of harvest timelines across multiple climatic regions, we witness the unique elements that make Israeli winemaking both challenging and rewarding.
Pour yourself a glass of something wonderful and join this heartfelt conversation that captures not just how wine is made, but how a winemaker is made – through passion, perseverance, and an ever-curious spirit. Whether you're dreaming of making your own wine or simply appreciate the stories behind what's in your glass, this episode offers a taste of what's possible when you follow your palate and your heart.
For More Information:
Penina Kustanowitz : Winemaker
email: Peninak@gmail.com
You can find Penina's wines at Kos Shel Beracha #16 Halamed Hei Street Jerusalem 93661 / JLMwines.com / +972-2-561-1557 / +972-54-537-5663. They do ship throughout Israel and internationally.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Solomon Simon Jacob (00:09):
Welcome to The Kosher Terroir.
I'm Simon Jacob, your host forthis episode from Jerusalem.
Before we begin, I invite you,wherever you are, to take a
quiet moment and pray for thesafety of our soldiers and the
safe return of all our hostages.
Today's episode takes us on ameaningful journey, both
(00:31):
geographically and personally.
I had the pleasure of travelingwith Penina and Jack
Kustanowitz from Jerusalem tothe Pinto Winery, nestled in the
Negev city of Yerucham.
Our visit wasn't just abouttasting wines.
It was about discovering astory still being written in
every barrel and bottle.
(00:53):
Penina Kustanowitz is one ofIsrael's rising stars in the
world of wine.
From a passionate enthusiast toassistant winemaker at Pinto
Winery, her path is filled withcuriosity, courage and
creativity.
During our drive and at thewinery, we spoke about her early
(01:14):
inspirations, the challenges ofher first vintages and how she
helped shape the identity of ayoung winery while forging her
own unique winemaking voice.
This episode is more than aninterview.
It's an invitation to witnessthe making of a winemaker.
Whether you're a seasoned winelover or just curious about the
(01:37):
stories behind the bottle,you're in for an inspiring and
flavorful ride.
So if you're behind the wheel,keep your eyes on the road ahead
, and if you're relaxing at home, pour yourself a wonderful
glass of kosher wine.
Settle in for this heartfeltconversation with Penina
Kustanowitz.
Penina, you're in a kind ofenviable position.
(01:58):
A lot of people who listen tothe podcast want desperately to
make wine, and especially makewine in Israel, which is really
kind of crazy.
How did you get started on thispath?
Penina Kustanowitz (02:17):
I've always loved wine and when we moved to
Israel and there were so manykosher wineries, and when we
moved to Israel and there wereso many kosher wineries, jack
and I started visiting and goingto wine festivals and getting
to know people in the industry.
We joined the RCC Club and meta lot of people who loved wine.
(02:39):
We met you through the RCC Clubyeah, you through the RCC club.
And uh, every once in a whilethere'd be a winemaker who would
advertise that he was lookingfor help in the harvest.
Just show up three in themorning in some vineyard on a
hilltop or in a Valley and, uh,help with the harvest, and I
(02:59):
think that's uh.
That maybe was the first timewe did a harvest together.
We went out to I think it was.
Tom.
It was Tom.
We went out to Tom.
Solomon Simon Jacob (03:12):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (03:13):
And as the sun came up, Ya'acov Oriah was
there and we'd met at differenttastings and events before and I
said to him you know, I'dreally love to help you with a
harvest at some point.
And he said, yeah, that wouldbe great.
And then I think we both forgotabout that and I moved on to
(03:35):
sommelier training.
So I was working He has toomuch work at his own winery and
too much work at Pasagot Winery.
He was the head winemaker thereat the time, and he needs the .
the system and I was just aboutto finish my level two when you
called me Simon and said I wasjust talking to Ya'acov and he's
very stressed.
Give him a call.
(03:58):
So I gave him a call and he saidwould you like to come Psagot
at and be my assistantwinemaker?
And I said well, you know, I'msommelier training.
I don't know anything aboutmaking wine.
And he said, oh, it's easy,I'll teach you.
So he did and I spent the 19thseason learning the basics of
(04:19):
running a lab and inoculatingyeast and helping out at Stem
Oshet, his winery, for a while,and then we both left Psagot and
focused all of our efforts onhis label.
And that's when the Pintofamily got involved, and when
the winery moved to Yerucham Iwent during harvest.
So I've had two harvests now inYerucham and that is, I guess,
(04:45):
a very long version of how I gotstarted in wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (04:48):
No, it's not so long, so tell me what
else you've been doing with that, because I know you've now been
taking courses in UC Davis.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:01):
Yes, I just graduated.
I just finished my winemakercertification at UC Davis.
Solomon Simon Jacob (05:07):
Yep.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:09):
And I'm about to bottle my third year of
wine under my own label,Penina's Wines.
Solomon Simon Jacob (05:17):
Wow.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:19):
And actually we are recording this podcast
in the car on the way down toYerucham, where we will be
tasting the three wines that Icurrently have in barrels.
I've got a California-styleChardonnay, which is a wine that
I try to make every year.
We've got a Syrah blend withCarignan from Zichron which, in
(05:41):
23, I was able to vinify 100%,100% Carignan.
This year needed some help fromsome Syrah.
And then I was very lucky toget my hands on some Petit
Verdot, which I am also making100% varietal that we will also
(06:02):
be tasting today.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:03):
What's?
What are the names of the winesthat you've got?
Penina Kustanowitz (06:07):
So the.
Chardonnay yeah, the Chardonnayis called.
Upstream it's called.
I originally named all of themin Hebrew and then had to kind
of translate them to English,but Neged Hazerem.
There's this huge popularity ofCalifornia style Chardonnay in
the 70s and then a massivebacklash against it, and so
(06:32):
right now it's not very trendyto make California Chardonnay.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:37):
That's like a malolactic.
Penina Kustanowitz (06:40):
It's a hundred, we vinify it in the
barrel.
We let it undergo completemalolactic fermentation.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:48):
So it's a buttery style.
Penina Kustanowitz (06:50):
It's buttery , it's soft, it does retain some
acid and because the grapesthemselves come from a very,
very special vineyard in theupper Galilee, it also retains
some fruit very special vineyardin the Upper Galilee.
It also retains some fruit.
It also has higher acid thanmost California style
Chardonnays and I think that'swhat makes it a really, really
(07:12):
interesting wine is that itreally has all of these
qualities of a CaliforniaChardonnay, but also fruit and
acid.
It's just a very, veryinteresting wine that I decided
to make because I loveCalifornia-style Chardonnay and
when I was consulting withYaakov what kind of wine to make
(07:32):
, he said make what you want todrink, make what you like.
And I said you know greatadvice.
I love California-styleChardonnay and it's very much
nega desertum.
It's against what's popular,but I'm gonna make what I like.
Solomon Simon Jacob (07:48):
So that's what I made there are a lot of
people who like butterychardonnay still, so I I think
you're gonna find a lot ofpeople interested in it, but
we'll see.
We'll see, though I actuallyown a bottle, not a bottle, a
few bottles, but I'm uh, but Ihaven't tasted them yet.
So I'm really looking forwardto tasting them.
(08:10):
No, I tasted your.
I tasted your uh wine frombefore last year the 22
chardonnay, the 22 chardonnay 23is very different yes, that's
what I'm looking foranticipating that the 24 will
also be different.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:25):
The 24 is the first time that I shifted
from Austrian New Oak to FrenchNew Oak, so I'm going to play
with how that affects the wineand see what we do moving
forward.
Solomon Simon Jacob (08:40):
Very cool.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:41):
And then the Carignan is Go With the Flow.
Solomon Simon Jacob (08:44):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:45):
Which I decided.
Whatever the grapes give me,I'm going to listen to the
grapes.
I'm not going to force a style.
I'm not going to go into makingthis red wine with a
preconceived notion and I'mgoing to just let the grapes be
what they want to be.
So that is, go with the flowand then coming out soon is my
(09:08):
special one very first red, yeah, the 22 carinian which I, uh,
I've had to rename tempest rightbecause this wine gave me so
much trouble.
I had to blend it with someother grapes before I even put
(09:29):
it in a barrel.
Then I had to blend it withanother set of grapes after it
came out of the barrel and then,once I bottled it, it went
crazy, Like it just became avery muscular, strong,
overpowering, overwhelming wine.
And now that we are in 25, Ithink it's actually finally
(09:51):
ready.
So that will come out soon.
And the other wine that I'mmaking this year and I haven't
named it yet is the 100% PetitVerdot.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:01):
Wow.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:02):
And the working title for this one is
just very literal Baby Green.
That's what it means.
Yeah, but I've also been knownto rename my wine a few times
during the winemaking processbecause I just I really want it
to be its own reflection of itsown self.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:20):
I know.
With regard to the Tempest, mydaughter, sarit, speaks very
highly of it.
She's tasted it, yeah, and sheloved it.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:28):
She's one of the few people I've given
bottles to over the years, soshe can track its development.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:34):
Yeah, so she's excited about that oh.
I'm really glad, excited aboutthe release, but the Petit
Verdot is great.
I can't wait to taste that, sothat should be great.
I can't wait to taste that, sothat should be fun.
I'm really looking forward tothe tastings.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:49):
I'm very excited.
Solomon Simon Jacob (11:02):
Tell me a little bit about what the
experience has been learning tobe a winemaker with regard to
you know the actual hands-on.
Penina Kustanowitz (11:07):
Have you ever been exposed to things like
a fermentation that's stuck?
Solomon Simon Jacob (11:09):
oh yeah, all the time unfortunately so
how that's like the dreaded, youknow, the absolute terrible
dread.
Is it that bad?
Penina Kustanowitz (11:18):
so, god, there's a lot of different ways
I can answer this question.
A stuck fermentation is really,really bad and it's really hard
to overcome.
What we do in winemaking is wetry to intervene before it gets
(11:39):
stuck.
So every single day, sometimestwice a day, when there's the
ability to do so, we will take aspecific gravity reading which
tells us more or less howquickly the sugar is converting
to alcohol.
There's a rate of conversionthat we are expecting.
We expect different rates whenwe are holding wines at
(12:01):
different temperatures.
What we try to find, what wetry to intercept before it gets
stuck, is when it gets sluggish.
So when a wine doesn't convertits sugar to alcohol at the rate
that we are expecting it to,there are a number of things
that we can do to troubleshoot.
Solomon Simon Jacob (12:22):
It's too slow.
It's doing it too slowly.
Penina Kustanowitz (12:24):
Conversion is too slow, early in the
process, we know that there's aproblem and most of the time we
can intervene by making surethat the wine is at a better
temperature for fermentation.
If it's going too fast, we'lllower the temperature because we
don't want it to go too quicklyIf it converts its sugar to
alcohol too quickly.
If it converts its sugar toalcohol too quickly, you lose a
(12:48):
lot of aromatics and otherqualities that we want to retain
.
So really what we try and do isintervene before it gets stuck.
Solomon Simon Jacob (12:57):
So how can you do that?
Penina Kustanowitz (12:59):
So temperature is one way we can.
Solomon Simon Jacob (13:03):
Raise the temperature or lower.
We can raise the temperature orlower, raise the temperature.
Penina Kustanowitz (13:07):
A fermentation will be very slow
at a lower temperature andsometimes we want that,
sometimes we will.
If a wine is at the end of thefermentation process, there's
really not a lot of sugar leftto convert, but we really don't
want that little bit left.
We can take an activefermentation, one where the
(13:30):
yeast is going very quickly, andwe can add a little bit of that
into the sluggish fermentationand that sometimes is enough to
boost it over the edge.
Sometimes we'll re-inoculate,if we are, if there's enough
sugar and it's it's going tooslow and we're not convinced
that that fermentation will besuccessful, we will re-inoculate
(13:53):
with yeast and uh, then we justmonitor things very carefully.
But really we monitor things ona very regular, daily basis so
that we can intervene before itbecomes a problem.
Solomon Simon Jacob (14:07):
Is it when you say re-inoculate?
Is that to give it a yeastthat's stronger, a yeast that's
different, that will you know,that's not as passive, that's
more powerful.
Penina Kustanowitz (14:20):
Oftentimes there are a couple of strains of
yeast that we use to helpsluggish fermentations.
There are two main types.
We use them in two differentscenarios and oftentimes that
(14:40):
will be enough.
Solomon Simon Jacob (14:41):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (14:43):
It's very important.
When you are inoculating theyeast in the first place, you're
using temperature.
You're using the correcttemperature, you're timing it
correctly, you're not shockingthe yeast, you're not
overwhelming the yeast.
You're letting it to the juicein a prescribed fashion.
(15:05):
We can also check for thingsthat might inhibit our
fermentation.
We have tools in the lab thatcan check for certain
problematic things in the winethat we can address if need be.
(15:27):
Oftentimes I find it's reallyjust a question of patience and
temperature.
So my favorite thing to do atthe winery is to inoculate yeast
.
There's a lot of debate overletting the wild yeast that
comes in on the grapes handlethe fermentation.
(15:48):
There's lots of reasons tochoose that.
There's lots of reasons not tochoose that.
Uh, wild yeast is amazing andwonderful, but it is
unpredictable and, uh, it's ahard thing to work with.
If you are making wine on acommercial scale, it's risky.
A lot of winemakers will chooseto use specific strains of
(16:12):
yeast.
We know how it behaves.
We know what qualities it willimpart or boost.
It is to get to that state ofinoculation where we add the
(16:37):
juice into the yeast that'salready been mixed with water of
a certain temperature.
And it just comes together inthis beautiful bubbly live.
What color I don't know.
Well, it depends on what colorthe juice is.
So if you're using, if you'reinoculating, a rosé, it's pink.
If you're inoculating red wine,it's this beautiful maroon
color.
If you're inoculating a whitewine, it's this lovely shade of
(17:01):
yellow.
And my favorite thing about itis how alive it is and how it
responds to my voice.
So I check on the yeast whileit's working, while it's getting
to a certain point in itsfermentation process, and I sing
to it.
And that is probably thehappiest I get in the winery is
when I'm walking around and I amsinging to my yeast and I'm
(17:23):
watching the bubbles respond tomy voice.
Solomon Simon Jacob (17:26):
How do they respond?
That's amazing, that's cool.
Penina Kustanowitz (17:29):
I will sometimes walk over to a vat
where I'm inoculating the yeastand it's not bubbling up or
moving as quickly as I'd like itto, and I will start to sing to
it and it will literallyrespond to my voice.
You'll see it bubbling up.
I have video recordings of thishappening and I really feel
like I'm teaching littlechildren, raising little babies,
(17:53):
bringing them into the world,so to speak, and it's just my
happiest thing when I'm goingfrom vat to vat and singing to
them and watching them respondto me.
I just love it.
It makes me really, reallyhappy and I really do think that
in an atmosphere of joy, helpsthe wine ferment properly.
(18:14):
There's a lot of research doneon plants and talking to plants
and singing to plants and Idon't think that yeast is too
different.
I think that they respond tohuman touch, human voice and the
atmosphere in a given winery.
I think that a happy atmosphereproduces happy wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (18:36):
Is it very specific the measurement of the
yeast that you use?
Penina Kustanowitz (18:39):
So, yeah, there are very specific
calculations that we use to comeup with the right amount of
yeast to add, based on thevolume, but also based on the
rate at which we want it toferment.
Like I said earlier, if itferments too quickly you lose a
(19:00):
lot of the fruit, the aromatics,a lot of the fruit, the
aromatics, a lot of thosespecial qualities.
You need time also and if youdose it too much then you will
lose that.
But you will also have theremnants of the yeast because,
remember, the yeast is there todo a job.
(19:20):
The yeast is there to take thesugar and convert it to alcohol.
And if you are left with excessyeast with nothing to do in
your wine and it's alreadyconverted the sugar to alcohol,
it can create microbial issues.
Later on You'll need to sterile, filter it out.
(19:40):
You don't want leftover yeasthanging out in your barrel with
nothing to do and you need toput enough in there to overcome
the natural yeast, which we saidcould be wonderful but also
unpredictable.
(20:06):
Experiments that I have beenpushing for at the winery is to
let the wild yeast work for alittle while before we go in
with the lab inoculated yeast.
Just see what it does.
It's an experiment, so we willdo that with small vats because
otherwise it's too expensive ofa failure.
If the mistake, if theexperiment goes wrong, then
(20:27):
we've ruined a lot of wine thisway.
We do it in small batches andwe learn from year to year, so
it's really it's just to learnwhat yeast is coming in from a
particular vineyard.
What does it impart to the must?
How strong is it Like?
Will it give us a strongfermentation till the finish, or
(20:48):
will it behave sluggishly andleave us mid-fermentation with
too much sugar?
That is yet to convert.
We're learning.
We're learning all the time.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:00):
Okay, so, while you've been in a winery
and while you've been makingwine, what are your favorite
varietals, what are yourfavorite wines that you've
tasted through your travels andthrough what you've been doing?
Penina Kustanowitz (21:15):
That's a really difficult question.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:18):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (21:18):
Because every time I'm exposed to
something new and interesting,that becomes my favorite new
wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:26):
Yeah, I get it, me too.
Penina Kustanowitz (21:54):
I guess I'm asking what have you been
exposed to recently?
To take a single varietal,could be Chardonnay, could be
Viognier, and he vinifies themdifferently.
So I think in the lastChardonnay, which used to be
called Playground and now iscalled Multiple Expressions, me,
we vinified 13 different ways,which means some in oak, some in
stainless steel, some incarbonic maceration, early
(22:19):
harvest, late harvest, harvestfrom a shade, harvest from more
sun exposure, different types ofyeast, and then Yakov will
blend them into a single wine,which is his multiple
expressions.
Right, and it's fascinatingwhat you can learn from a single
(22:40):
vineyard and, by the way, myChardonnay comes from that same
vineyard also.
He's done the same withViognier, which is a fascinating
varietal.
I love Viognier and I thinkthat Chenin Blanc would really
be the next natural white grapeto try that with.
I would love to make CheninBlanc, but it is in very short
supply in Israel.
(23:00):
It's very hard to get yourhands on some really
high-quality Chenin Blanc, butanytime I get a chance to taste
that, I will.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:11):
I'm seeing some super interesting reds
coming out now, with somevarietals like Tanat.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:20):
Yep.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:21):
And that are just crazy blends.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:26):
Well, Tavor has been doing Tanat for a long
time.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:30):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:34):
And I think it's.
It's amazing.
And they do the tannat blends,which I love, I think.
I think more than a favoritevarietal.
I think one of the things thatI've learned the most about and
that has really piqued myinterest has been blending why
you blend, how you blend, howmuch you blend.
That's been one of the mostincredible things that yakov has
taught me.
(23:55):
Again, it's not something youcan learn at uc, davis or online
like you really just have toexperience it over and over
again.
And it's like painting apicture.
You can you can take a verytechnical course on how to paint
a picture, but you have to sitthere with the paints and throw
something at a canvas and seewhat it looks like and if it
(24:15):
doesn't work, you try again andit's really creating art in a
glass.
When you have a blend, becauseyou're really trying to
accomplish a specific end goalwith your wine, you want to have
a certain approachability toyour wine, you want to have
certain characteristics, andsometimes a single grape and a
(24:38):
single vinification is not goingto get you there and you have
to reach for other colors, youhave to reach for other
varietals and then you kind ofplay with.
Well, how much of this do Iwant to add, does that give me
what's missing in my base grape?
And you don't want to overdo it?
And then you have to kind ofanticipate what's going to
happen in the bottle over timeor what's going to happen in my
(24:59):
barrel when I age it for a yearor two.
And that's one of the thingswe're going to be doing today.
We're going to check in on thebarrels, see if they've had
enough oak, see if they need tobe blended with anything before
we bottle them.
And we do this several timeswhile while it's aging.
Now, some people blend beforeit goes into the barrel, some
(25:22):
people blend after.
Sometimes you have to do ittwice, but it's this ever
evolving it twice.
But it's this ever evolving,changing substance.
Your wine, it it's never static, it's always going to change.
And, uh, you don't want tointervene too much, you don't
want to throw too much paint onthe canvas.
(25:43):
You're going to end up withsome big angry blotches.
You want to just get the rightharmony, the right balance of
what it is you're trying tocreate.
Solomon Simon Jacob (25:54):
Did you ever do?
Were you with us when we didthe SOB for the first time?
Penina Kustanowitz (25:59):
I was not no .
Solomon Simon Jacob (26:00):
Okay.
So that was my first blendingexperience and when we we'd
asked yakov to create sob andwhen he agreed, he actually came
to my house and we had all thepeople, including um, richard
(26:25):
davidoff from england and allthe all kind of the stakeholders
andy andy was the person whoreally started us down this path
of, he was really theinstigator for SOB, to be honest
and um and Avi Davidovitz,obviously, and and what happened
(26:45):
was, uh, he came with all thevarietals and we sat around the
table and we tasted eachvarietal and, much to my
surprise, each varietal tastedgreat, absolutely great.
So I said you know what?
(27:06):
What are we doing?
Blending.
We don't need to blend, let'sjust put these out on separate
bottles.
And Yakov said, yeah, okay, wecould Well, let's see.
So we combined two and it wasvery simple, it was very
straightforward blendingEverything was like 50-50.
(27:29):
I think the biggest differencewas maybe 60-40, but everything
was basically 50-50 blends lotbetter than each of these single
varietals were.
And then a fourth in and afifth in and self-self.
(28:12):
When we got to the end of thisexperience, it was like you were
tasting complexity, you weretasting accessibility.
It was crazy.
I'd never experienced anythinglike that by tasting wine before
it's so much different whenyou're doing comparisons.
That's the real work in awinery, when you're actually
(28:38):
blending things.
Penina Kustanowitz (28:39):
Blending is one of my favorite parts of
making wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (28:42):
I think that that is absolutely the best
.
I would be too scared toactually do it for other people,
but actually when we were doingTohu and Vohu- I remember that
I was there for that, yeah.
(29:03):
And we were tasting these thingsand I said, whoa.
So you know, yaakov would say,well, do you think that that's
okay?
And I go yeah, almost there'ssomething missing.
He goes yeah, I think so too.
He only let me speak first.
I was like I was going okay,you know, like so then we'd add
(29:30):
something.
And there was one instancewhere we added, using graduated
cylinders and what have you, butI couldn't believe that it made
(29:56):
that big a difference.
But it did.
It made a huge difference.
Penina Kustanowitz (30:02):
It's fascinating.
I think the first time I everreached out to a winemaker to
ask a question about wine wasLouis Pascoe.
Yep winemaker to ask a questionabout wine.
Was lewis pascoe?
Yeah, I had just uh tried hisuh pascoe project too and, um, I
was reading the back of thelabel lewis please forgive me if
(30:25):
I've got the wrong project, butI think it was something like
three percent carinian and Ithought to myself what can three
percent?
of anything carinian or ofanything due to a blend, and I
remember I contacted him onlineand he answered me and and he
was just only too happy toanswer all of my questions, and
I find it's really one of thevery special things about
(30:49):
winemakers in Israel is howaccessible they all are.
You asked me how I got intothis in the first place.
Really, it's at the credit ofall the winemakers in Israel who
responded to random texts fromme random invitations to come
(31:09):
host tastings at my house,random requests for me to come
and taste at their wineries UmKobe Arviv and um Amichai Luria
and um Sweatjack yes, definitely, and a soft pause, soft pause
(31:32):
as well, ellie Chiron, uh, fromum Gushitzion Winery.
Solomon Simon Jacob (31:40):
Schraga.
Penina Kustanowitz (31:41):
Schraga Sorry.
Solomon Simon Jacob (31:42):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (31:42):
Schraga actually is a fun little story.
My friend, jamie, who whoreally I should have mentioned
earlier is the one to reallyreally get me interested in wine
.
Jamie had made wine with afriend in Montreal years ago.
Jamie and I met in college atBar-Ilan and we had just come
back to Israel and he calls meand he says there's this guy in
(32:04):
a frat with a dunam of grapesand he's not making wine this
year and he's just giving itaway.
Do you want to go get somegrapes and make some wine?
And I said, yeah, sure, let'sdo that.
So off we go and we pick thegrapes and Jamie looks at me and
says we need sulfites in orderto disinfect the containers that
we're going to use.
So we drove off to GushitzionWinery and we go to the back
(32:30):
door and we knock and we saywe're gonna make some wine.
Can we have some sulfites?
And, my god, he gave us a bagof sulfites and we used it to
disinfect the plastic and wemade the most incredible wine.
The next year we did not makeincredible wine and
unfortunately that all went downthe sewer, but we got very
(32:51):
lucky that first year and thatreally lit the fire in me to
explore this some more and reachout to winemakers and just
overwhelmed by how generous theyare with their information,
their time, their knowledge and,particularly Yaakov, his
willingness to teach.
I call him my wine rabbi, likeyou said, the way he waits for
(33:15):
you to speak first and he asksyou leading questions.
Yaakov is always teaching andhe's always letting you get
there in your own pace.
And around the time that youblended the tohu of a bohu, my
youngest son, dov, had a barmitzvah and it was COVID.
It was not going to be atraditional bar mitzvah and it
was COVID.
It was not going to be atraditional bar mitzvah and he
was really bumming about that.
(33:36):
And he had made wine with Jamieat age four and he kind of grew
up with it and so, in honor ofhis bar mitzvah, he spent a day
with Yaakov at Ste Moshe andthey did a white blend and a red
blend and he patiently taughtmy 13-year-old how to taste wine
, how to blend wine, and heproduced some really really
(33:59):
amazing blends that we gave outat the bar mitzvah and to people
who couldn't be at the barmitzvah.
And the red, I think, wascalled Ad Halom and that was a
Karinia and a Pinot Noir blend.
And, jack, do you remember thewhite blend?
We called it Livnatas, napier,and I am not remembering the
(34:22):
varietals, but it was delicious.
Solomon Simon Jacob (34:26):
It's so special to see the pieces come
together.
Penina Kustanowitz (34:36):
It's just another whole experience.
It's fascinating.
Making wine is really one ofthe most fascinating things I've
ever been so lucky to get to do.
Solomon Simon Jacob (34:47):
It's also so variable, like there's so
many variables that feed into it.
People think that you make wine.
You take the grapes, you crushthem, you ferment them, you
throw them in a barrel.
After a couple of years youtake the wine out of the barrel,
put them in bottles and that'sit, you're done.
It's so so incredibly differentthan that.
(35:10):
There's so much more and somany variables that you can that
that interact.
To get a consistent wine fromone year to the next is like
almost, it's almost magical.
Penina Kustanowitz (35:27):
It is absolutely magical.
There's, there's, there's alimit to what you can impose on
a grape.
At the end of the day, your,your grape comes to you as it is
.
It almost tells you what itwants to be.
If that meets your commercialgoals, then you're very, very
(35:47):
lucky.
If not, you got to work reallyhard, uh, to, like you said,
maintain consistency from yearto year.
Solomon Simon Jacob (35:55):
It's crazy.
I don't know how winemakersactually do it.
To be honest, I don't know.
It's also one of the thingsthat made me really nuts about
Moscato, moscato d'Asti, thateverybody jokes about and laughs
about the blue bottles they are.
You know, people say it's justsugar water.
You know, they just put grapejuice in sugar water and they
(36:17):
ferment it and they make wineand that's it.
It's true wine, absolutely.
Taste of Moscato every year.
And the quantities that they'remaking are.
I've never seen a winery makemore wine than when I visited
Asti and saw the vats.
(36:39):
The vats look like nuclearmissile silos.
They're up to the ceiling.
They're these gigantic vats andyou walk into this room and
there's just lines of them andI'm telling you it looks just
like missile silos.
It's crazy.
And they're all filled.
(37:00):
And how they get a consistentwine coming out of that is
totally beyond me.
It's just amazing.
Penina Kustanowitz (37:09):
As I was listing the winemakers who have
been generous and shared theirtime with me, as I was listing
everybody, I was like my God,I'm going to forget somebody.
I'm going to forget somebody.
I'm going to insult somebody.
Israel Flan has sat with meseveral times and really talked
to me a lot about the history ofwinemaking and his time at
Carmel.
(37:29):
I would be remiss if I didn'tmention him.
He's such a special person,he's like a senior statesman.
And Ellie Benzacan, yeah and um.
And Aaron Peake yeah it would beremiss if I did not mention.
What are they?
(37:50):
The quartet now.
Solomon Simon Jacob (37:51):
Yeah, the quartet.
What was your most difficultexperience in making wine?
Penina Kustanowitz (38:01):
So here's the thing about grapes Like I
said, they tell you what theyneed.
Like I said, they tell you whatthey need and unfortunately
here in Israel we've had someheat waves that are becoming
more common than not and whatthat means for the grapes and
(38:35):
their harvest time and howquickly we need to press them or
crush them or get them safelyinto barrels and inoculate them.
The pace at which it sometimesarrives at the winery either
because they've ripened tooquickly or we're really worried
about a sunburn or a heat strokeand we want to get them off the
vines before too much heatdamage occurs I'd say the
(38:57):
hardest thing is the pace atwhich the grapes sometimes come
in to the winery and needimmediate attention.
You don't want to let them sitand get hot.
You don't want them to startfermenting on their own because
the skin sometimes break andthat happens.
(39:17):
You want to receive the grapes,get them to the temperature
that's optimal for how you wantto crush them and you want to
process them and by process Imean crush them, take their ph
um, check their sugar levels, doall the testing and all of the
(39:42):
I'd say care and feeding of themust in a timely fashion, and
sometimes you are justsurrounded by crates and crates
and crates of grapes that justarrive faster than you can
attend to.
It's like in Fantasia, theSorcerer's Apprentice, where the
(40:08):
water keeps coming and comingand coming and you look up and
there's another truck coming todeliver your grapes and you're
like, okay, I've run out ofspace to put the grapes.
Now what do I do?
I've run out of vats, I've runout of space.
I've got a backlog in the labfor taking all of their initial
(40:31):
lab readings.
And I'd say that's probably thehardest thing is the pace at
which the grapes sometimes comein, and you can never anticipate
it.
You can never anticipate it.
So it's not like you're goingto wake up one day and say, okay
, today's going to be absolutelyinsane, and so here's how we're
going to schedule the day.
A lot of times you get thegrapes when the pickers are
(40:56):
available, when the truckdrivers are available to bring
it A lot of things that are justout of your control and you
have to pivot as best you canwhen those grapes come in and
they need your attention cool,especially you're.
Solomon Simon Jacob (41:15):
You're in, you're down in the desert, so
especially the heat probablyimpacts you guys more, even
though you're getting grapesfrom all over, but you do also
have vineyards that are down inthe desert we do, we do.
Penina Kustanowitz (41:30):
We have probably one of the longest, I
guess I'd say, harvest seasonsin Israel, because the grapes
from the desert ripen first andthe grapes up north ripen last,
and we also do dessert wines andlate harvests, so we start
(41:53):
making our wine pretty early inthe season and we go late into
the fall because we are makingwine from grapes that come from
all over the country, lots ofdifferent climates and micro
climates, and that keeps us onour toes.
Solomon Simon Jacob (42:11):
Right, wow, are there any special things to
do with late harvest stuff?
Late harvest grapes Absolutely.
Penina Kustanowitz (42:19):
So, first of all, late harvest grapes are
generally used for dessert wine.
The longer you leave the grapeon the vine, the more sugar
accumulation you have.
They're used for sweet wine.
But also the longer you leaveit, the more the more pronounced
(42:40):
certain aspects are.
So you'll get more uh fruitflavors.
You'll get more tropical fruitflavors than, let's say, an
early harvest, which will giveyou more uh, let's say, in a
white wine, will give you morelike apples, citrus, those types
(43:01):
of things.
And if you leave it in a warmerclimate, you leave it on the
vine longer, you'll get morepeach even later and you'll get
more of the tropical fruits.
So you do get differentcharacteristics from the same
grape if you give it longer hangtime.
But really people use dessertwines we will take a late
(43:22):
harvest and if we want to havethose extra flavors in a
particular blend, thosecharacteristics, we'll blend
them in.
So everything really has a veryunique purpose them in.
Solomon Simon Jacob (43:40):
So everything really has a very
unique purpose.
How do you, when you're makinga dessert wine that's got a lot
of sugar, or a late harvest winethat's got a lot of sugar in it
, how do you just not let itbecome all alcohol?
How do you stop the yeast?
Penina Kustanowitz (43:55):
yeast.
So back to your earlierquestion.
Sometimes the sugar will justoverwhelm the alcohol conversion
.
It'll stop on its own, okay,and you will get a sweet wine.
And there are ways that we canstop the total conversion of all
of the sugar into alcohol sothat you are left with the
(44:17):
sweetness.
One of the ways is to play withtemperature.
You bring it down to atemperature at which it is not
optimum for the sugar tocontinue to ferment into alcohol
, and sometimes we use SO2 as away to stop the fermentation
process.
Solomon Simon Jacob (44:35):
I'm really kind of focusing on the small
boutique wineries becausethere's just so much diversity
of what's going on in thosethings.
It's really crazy.
Penina Kustanowitz (44:51):
Yeah, when you have a small production,
well, it's kind of adouble-edged sword.
On the one hand, you can reallyallow yourself to take risks
and to experiment, but ifsomething goes wrong you lose
your.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:05):
You lose your shirt.
You lose your entire batch.
I don't know how people makemoney in these small wineries.
Penina Kustanowitz (45:14):
I don't know how they it's really impossible
to I know, I don't know howthey.
It's really impossible I know,I don't know how they do it from
what I think, from what I cansee and I'm not a business
expert, but I have been doingthis for six years now uh,
really, the way you make moneyis on scale right one of the
things, uh, that I've been luckyenough to do is make on such a
small scale that I can set myprices based on what I think the
(45:40):
wine is worth and notnecessarily how much profit I
need to make.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:44):
Right, and you can drink your own wine.
Penina Kustanowitz (45:50):
I drink most of my own wine.
It's a really bad business plan.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:54):
Hey, if you make what you like and you like
what you're drinking, it'sgreat.
Why not it really?
Penina Kustanowitz (46:01):
works out.
Solomon Simon Jacob (46:03):
I know.
Penina Kustanowitz (46:04):
I will share a funny story that happens
every single year, every harvest, whether we've been in Pseigot
or Stamoshet or Yerucham,there's a point where
fermentation is very, veryvigorous and, as I said, we take
samples every morning and wecheck the specific gravity to
(46:26):
see how quickly they arefermenting.
And in those big stainlesssteel vats there are these
little spigots, there are theselittle pipes that you'll get an
explosion of the juice of themust in your face, no matter how
(47:04):
careful you're being.
Or, let's say, you've got someskins that are obscuring the
exit of that and you need toclear the pipe, you need to
clear the spigot.
And then, as soon as you dothat, then you get nailed in the
face with a really, really uhstrong and sticky stream of must
(47:26):
.
And I have a collection ofphotographs of me at various
stages of being soaked by verypicturesque and colorful wines.
Every single color has had itschance.
And one of these days I thinkI'll make a collage of these
(47:47):
photographs of me just beingcompletely soaked by wine
splatter my very first time thatthat happened at Sagat.
I was very new.
I wasn't given a uniform, Ijust came in whatever
comfortable clothes and usuallythose were khakis.
So one day I get completelysplattered with red wine and
(48:08):
Yaakov looks at me and says Ishould have mentioned earlier.
This is why we in thewinemaking industry, we wear
dark colors, we wear darkcolored clothes.
From then on, I try to onlywear dark colored clothes.
A fun way to make the ride goquicker.
Solomon Simon Jacob (48:27):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being
on The Kosher Terroir.
Penina Kustanowitz (48:30):
Thanks for having me.
Solomon Simon Jacob (48:31):
You didn't even have to come.
We started in Jerusalem, butit's kind of fun, and now we're
entering into the Pinto Winery,so that's kind of a cool end to
an episode.
Penina Kustanowitz (48:46):
Very cool.
Thank you so much.
Solomon Simon Jacob (49:03):
This is Simon Jacob, again your host of
today's episode of The KosherTerroir.
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.
Please subscribe via yourpodcast provider to be informed
of our new episodes as they arereleased.
If you are new to The KosherTerroir, please check out our
(49:27):
many past episodes.
Welcome to The Kosher Terroir.
I'm Simon Jacob, your host forthis episode from Jerusalem.
Before we begin, I invite you,wherever you are, to take a
quiet moment and pray for thesafety of our soldiers and the
safe return of all our hostages.
Today's episode takes us on ameaningful journey, both
(00:31):
geographically and personally.
I had the pleasure of travelingwith Penina and Jack
Kustanowitz from Jerusalem tothe Pinto Winery, nestled in the
Negev city of Yerucham.
Our visit wasn't just abouttasting wines.
It was about discovering astory still being written in
every barrel and bottle.
(00:53):
Penina Kustanowitz is one ofIsrael's rising stars in the
world of wine.
From a passionate enthusiast toassistant winemaker at Pinto
Winery, her path is filled withcuriosity, courage and
creativity.
During our drive and at thewinery, we spoke about her early
(01:14):
inspirations, the challenges ofher first vintages and how she
helped shape the identity of ayoung winery while forging her
own unique winemaking voice.
This episode is more than aninterview.
It's an invitation to witnessthe making of a winemaker.
Whether you're a seasoned winelover or just curious about the
(01:37):
stories behind the bottle,you're in for an inspiring and
flavorful ride.
So if you're behind the wheel,keep your eyes on the road ahead
, and if you're relaxing at home, pour yourself a wonderful
glass of kosher wine.
Settle in for this heartfeltconversation with Penina
Kustanowitz.
Penina, you're in a kind ofenviable position.
(01:58):
A lot of people who listen tothe podcast want desperately to
make wine, and especially makewine in Israel, which is really
kind of crazy.
How did you get started on thispath?
Penina Kustanowitz (02:17):
I've always loved wine and when we moved to
Israel and there were so manykosher wineries, and when we
moved to Israel and there wereso many kosher wineries, jack
and I started visiting and goingto wine festivals and getting
to know people in the industry.
We joined the RCC Club and meta lot of people who loved wine.
(02:39):
We met you through the RCC Clubyeah, you through the RCC club.
And uh, every once in a whilethere'd be a winemaker who would
advertise that he was lookingfor help in the harvest.
Just show up three in themorning in some vineyard on a
hilltop or in a Valley and, uh,help with the harvest, and I
(02:59):
think that's uh.
That maybe was the first timewe did a harvest together.
We went out to I think it was.
Tom.
It was Tom.
We went out to Tom.
Solomon Simon Jacob (03:12):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (03:13):
And as the sun came up, Ya'acov Oriah was
there and we'd met at differenttastings and events before and I
said to him you know, I'dreally love to help you with a
harvest at some point.
And he said, yeah, that wouldbe great.
And then I think we both forgotabout that and I moved on to
(03:35):
sommelier training.
So I was working He has toomuch work at his own winery and
too much work at Pasagot Winery.
He was the head winemaker thereat the time, and he needs the .
the system and I was just aboutto finish my level two when you
called me Simon and said I wasjust talking to Ya'acov and he's
very stressed.
Give him a call.
(03:58):
So I gave him a call and he saidwould you like to come Psagot
at and be my assistantwinemaker?
And I said well, you know, I'msommelier training.
I don't know anything aboutmaking wine.
And he said, oh, it's easy,I'll teach you.
So he did and I spent the 19thseason learning the basics of
(04:19):
running a lab and inoculatingyeast and helping out at Stem
Oshet, his winery, for a while,and then we both left Psagot and
focused all of our efforts onhis label.
And that's when the Pintofamily got involved, and when
the winery moved to Yerucham Iwent during harvest.
So I've had two harvests now inYerucham and that is, I guess,
(04:45):
a very long version of how I gotstarted in wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (04:48):
No, it's not so long, so tell me what
else you've been doing with that, because I know you've now been
taking courses in UC Davis.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:01):
Yes, I just graduated.
I just finished my winemakercertification at UC Davis.
Solomon Simon Jacob (05:07):
Yep.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:09):
And I'm about to bottle my third year of
wine under my own label,Penina's Wines.
Solomon Simon Jacob (05:17):
Wow.
Penina Kustanowitz (05:19):
And actually we are recording this podcast
in the car on the way down toYerucham, where we will be
tasting the three wines that Icurrently have in barrels.
I've got a California-styleChardonnay, which is a wine that
I try to make every year.
We've got a Syrah blend withCarignan from Zichron which, in
(05:41):
23, I was able to vinify 100%,100% Carignan.
This year needed some help fromsome Syrah.
And then I was very lucky toget my hands on some Petit
Verdot, which I am also making100% varietal that we will also
(06:02):
be tasting today.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:03):
What's?
What are the names of the winesthat you've got?
Penina Kustanowitz (06:07):
So the.
Chardonnay yeah, the Chardonnayis called.
Upstream it's called.
I originally named all of themin Hebrew and then had to kind
of translate them to English,but Neged Hazerem.
There's this huge popularity ofCalifornia style Chardonnay in
the 70s and then a massivebacklash against it, and so
(06:32):
right now it's not very trendyto make California Chardonnay.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:37):
That's like a malolactic.
Penina Kustanowitz (06:40):
It's a hundred, we vinify it in the
barrel.
We let it undergo completemalolactic fermentation.
Solomon Simon Jacob (06:48):
So it's a buttery style.
Penina Kustanowitz (06:50):
It's buttery , it's soft, it does retain some
acid and because the grapesthemselves come from a very,
very special vineyard in theupper Galilee, it also retains
some fruit very special vineyardin the Upper Galilee.
It also retains some fruit.
It also has higher acid thanmost California style
Chardonnays and I think that'swhat makes it a really, really
(07:12):
interesting wine is that itreally has all of these
qualities of a CaliforniaChardonnay, but also fruit and
acid.
It's just a very, veryinteresting wine that I decided
to make because I loveCalifornia-style Chardonnay and
when I was consulting withYaakov what kind of wine to make
(07:32):
, he said make what you want todrink, make what you like.
And I said you know greatadvice.
I love California-styleChardonnay and it's very much
nega desertum.
It's against what's popular,but I'm gonna make what I like.
Solomon Simon Jacob (07:48):
So that's what I made there are a lot of
people who like butterychardonnay still, so I I think
you're gonna find a lot ofpeople interested in it, but
we'll see.
We'll see, though I actuallyown a bottle, not a bottle, a
few bottles, but I'm uh, but Ihaven't tasted them yet.
So I'm really looking forwardto tasting them.
(08:10):
No, I tasted your.
I tasted your uh wine frombefore last year the 22
chardonnay, the 22 chardonnay 23is very different yes, that's
what I'm looking foranticipating that the 24 will
also be different.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:25):
The 24 is the first time that I shifted
from Austrian New Oak to FrenchNew Oak, so I'm going to play
with how that affects the wineand see what we do moving
forward.
Solomon Simon Jacob (08:40):
Very cool.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:41):
And then the Carignan is Go With the Flow.
Solomon Simon Jacob (08:44):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (08:45):
Which I decided.
Whatever the grapes give me,I'm going to listen to the
grapes.
I'm not going to force a style.
I'm not going to go into makingthis red wine with a
preconceived notion and I'mgoing to just let the grapes be
what they want to be.
So that is, go with the flowand then coming out soon is my
(09:08):
special one very first red, yeah, the 22 carinian which I, uh,
I've had to rename tempest rightbecause this wine gave me so
much trouble.
I had to blend it with someother grapes before I even put
(09:29):
it in a barrel.
Then I had to blend it withanother set of grapes after it
came out of the barrel and then,once I bottled it, it went
crazy, Like it just became avery muscular, strong,
overpowering, overwhelming wine.
And now that we are in 25, Ithink it's actually finally
(09:51):
ready.
So that will come out soon.
And the other wine that I'mmaking this year and I haven't
named it yet is the 100% PetitVerdot.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:01):
Wow.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:02):
And the working title for this one is
just very literal Baby Green.
That's what it means.
Yeah, but I've also been knownto rename my wine a few times
during the winemaking processbecause I just I really want it
to be its own reflection of itsown self.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:20):
I know.
With regard to the Tempest, mydaughter, sarit, speaks very
highly of it.
She's tasted it, yeah, and sheloved it.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:28):
She's one of the few people I've given
bottles to over the years, soshe can track its development.
Solomon Simon Jacob (10:34):
Yeah, so she's excited about that oh.
I'm really glad, excited aboutthe release, but the Petit
Verdot is great.
I can't wait to taste that, sothat should be great.
I can't wait to taste that, sothat should be fun.
I'm really looking forward tothe tastings.
Penina Kustanowitz (10:49):
I'm very excited.
Solomon Simon Jacob (11:02):
Tell me a little bit about what the
experience has been learning tobe a winemaker with regard to
you know the actual hands-on.
Penina Kustanowitz (11:07):
Have you ever been exposed to things like
a fermentation that's stuck?
Solomon Simon Jacob (11:09):
oh yeah, all the time unfortunately so
how that's like the dreaded, youknow, the absolute terrible
dread.
Is it that bad?
Penina Kustanowitz (11:18):
so, god, there's a lot of different ways
I can answer this question.
A stuck fermentation is really,really bad and it's really hard
to overcome.
What we do in winemaking is wetry to intervene before it gets
(11:39):
stuck.
So every single day, sometimestwice a day, when there's the
ability to do so, we will take aspecific gravity reading which
tells us more or less howquickly the sugar is converting
to alcohol.
There's a rate of conversionthat we are expecting.
We expect different rates whenwe are holding wines at
(12:01):
different temperatures.
What we try to find, what wetry to intercept before it gets
stuck, is when it gets sluggish.
So when a wine doesn't convertits sugar to alcohol at the rate
that we are expecting it to,there are a number of things
that we can do to troubleshoot.
Solomon Simon Jacob (12:22):
It's too slow.
It's doing it too slowly.
Penina Kustanowitz (12:24):
Conversion is too slow, early in the
process, we know that there's aproblem and most of the time we
can intervene by making surethat the wine is at a better
temperature for fermentation.
If it's going too fast, we'lllower the temperature because we
don't want it to go too quicklyIf it converts its sugar to
alcohol too quickly.
If it converts its sugar toalcohol too quickly, you lose a
(12:48):
lot of aromatics and otherqualities that we want to retain
.
So really what we try and do isintervene before it gets stuck.
Solomon Simon Jacob (12:57):
So how can you do that?
Penina Kustanowitz (12:59):
So temperature is one way we can.
Solomon Simon Jacob (13:03):
Raise the temperature or lower.
We can raise the temperature orlower, raise the temperature.
Penina Kustanowitz (13:07):
A fermentation will be very slow
at a lower temperature andsometimes we want that,
sometimes we will.
If a wine is at the end of thefermentation process, there's
really not a lot of sugar leftto convert, but we really don't
want that little bit left.
We can take an activefermentation, one where the
(13:30):
yeast is going very quickly, andwe can add a little bit of that
into the sluggish fermentationand that sometimes is enough to
boost it over the edge.
Sometimes we'll re-inoculate,if we are, if there's enough
sugar and it's it's going tooslow and we're not convinced
that that fermentation will besuccessful, we will re-inoculate
(13:53):
with yeast and uh, then we justmonitor things very carefully.
But really we monitor things ona very regular, daily basis so
that we can intervene before itbecomes a problem.
Solomon Simon Jacob (14:07):
Is it when you say re-inoculate?
Is that to give it a yeastthat's stronger, a yeast that's
different, that will you know,that's not as passive, that's
more powerful.
Penina Kustanowitz (14:20):
Oftentimes there are a couple of strains of
yeast that we use to helpsluggish fermentations.
There are two main types.
We use them in two differentscenarios and oftentimes that
(14:40):
will be enough.
Solomon Simon Jacob (14:41):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (14:43):
It's very important.
When you are inoculating theyeast in the first place, you're
using temperature.
You're using the correcttemperature, you're timing it
correctly, you're not shockingthe yeast, you're not
overwhelming the yeast.
You're letting it to the juicein a prescribed fashion.
(15:05):
We can also check for thingsthat might inhibit our
fermentation.
We have tools in the lab thatcan check for certain
problematic things in the winethat we can address if need be.
(15:27):
Oftentimes I find it's reallyjust a question of patience and
temperature.
So my favorite thing to do atthe winery is to inoculate yeast
.
There's a lot of debate overletting the wild yeast that
comes in on the grapes handlethe fermentation.
(15:48):
There's lots of reasons tochoose that.
There's lots of reasons not tochoose that.
Uh, wild yeast is amazing andwonderful, but it is
unpredictable and, uh, it's ahard thing to work with.
If you are making wine on acommercial scale, it's risky.
A lot of winemakers will chooseto use specific strains of
(16:12):
yeast.
We know how it behaves.
We know what qualities it willimpart or boost.
It is to get to that state ofinoculation where we add the
(16:37):
juice into the yeast that'salready been mixed with water of
a certain temperature.
And it just comes together inthis beautiful bubbly live.
What color I don't know.
Well, it depends on what colorthe juice is.
So if you're using, if you'reinoculating, a rosé, it's pink.
If you're inoculating red wine,it's this beautiful maroon
color.
If you're inoculating a whitewine, it's this lovely shade of
(17:01):
yellow.
And my favorite thing about itis how alive it is and how it
responds to my voice.
So I check on the yeast whileit's working, while it's getting
to a certain point in itsfermentation process, and I sing
to it.
And that is probably thehappiest I get in the winery is
when I'm walking around and I amsinging to my yeast and I'm
(17:23):
watching the bubbles respond tomy voice.
Solomon Simon Jacob (17:26):
How do they respond?
That's amazing, that's cool.
Penina Kustanowitz (17:29):
I will sometimes walk over to a vat
where I'm inoculating the yeastand it's not bubbling up or
moving as quickly as I'd like itto, and I will start to sing to
it and it will literallyrespond to my voice.
You'll see it bubbling up.
I have video recordings of thishappening and I really feel
like I'm teaching littlechildren, raising little babies,
(17:53):
bringing them into the world,so to speak, and it's just my
happiest thing when I'm goingfrom vat to vat and singing to
them and watching them respondto me.
I just love it.
It makes me really, reallyhappy and I really do think that
in an atmosphere of joy, helpsthe wine ferment properly.
(18:14):
There's a lot of research doneon plants and talking to plants
and singing to plants and Idon't think that yeast is too
different.
I think that they respond tohuman touch, human voice and the
atmosphere in a given winery.
I think that a happy atmosphereproduces happy wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (18:36):
Is it very specific the measurement of the
yeast that you use?
Penina Kustanowitz (18:39):
So, yeah, there are very specific
calculations that we use to comeup with the right amount of
yeast to add, based on thevolume, but also based on the
rate at which we want it toferment.
Like I said earlier, if itferments too quickly you lose a
(19:00):
lot of the fruit, the aromatics,a lot of the fruit, the
aromatics, a lot of thosespecial qualities.
You need time also and if youdose it too much then you will
lose that.
But you will also have theremnants of the yeast because,
remember, the yeast is there todo a job.
(19:20):
The yeast is there to take thesugar and convert it to alcohol.
And if you are left with excessyeast with nothing to do in
your wine and it's alreadyconverted the sugar to alcohol,
it can create microbial issues.
Later on You'll need to sterile, filter it out.
(19:40):
You don't want leftover yeasthanging out in your barrel with
nothing to do and you need toput enough in there to overcome
the natural yeast, which we saidcould be wonderful but also
unpredictable.
(20:06):
Experiments that I have beenpushing for at the winery is to
let the wild yeast work for alittle while before we go in
with the lab inoculated yeast.
Just see what it does.
It's an experiment, so we willdo that with small vats because
otherwise it's too expensive ofa failure.
If the mistake, if theexperiment goes wrong, then
(20:27):
we've ruined a lot of wine thisway.
We do it in small batches andwe learn from year to year, so
it's really it's just to learnwhat yeast is coming in from a
particular vineyard.
What does it impart to the must?
How strong is it Like?
Will it give us a strongfermentation till the finish, or
(20:48):
will it behave sluggishly andleave us mid-fermentation with
too much sugar?
That is yet to convert.
We're learning.
We're learning all the time.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:00):
Okay, so, while you've been in a winery
and while you've been makingwine, what are your favorite
varietals, what are yourfavorite wines that you've
tasted through your travels andthrough what you've been doing?
Penina Kustanowitz (21:15):
That's a really difficult question.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:18):
Okay.
Penina Kustanowitz (21:18):
Because every time I'm exposed to
something new and interesting,that becomes my favorite new
wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (21:26):
Yeah, I get it, me too.
Penina Kustanowitz (21:54):
I guess I'm asking what have you been
exposed to recently?
To take a single varietal,could be Chardonnay, could be
Viognier, and he vinifies themdifferently.
So I think in the lastChardonnay, which used to be
called Playground and now iscalled Multiple Expressions, me,
we vinified 13 different ways,which means some in oak, some in
stainless steel, some incarbonic maceration, early
(22:19):
harvest, late harvest, harvestfrom a shade, harvest from more
sun exposure, different types ofyeast, and then Yakov will
blend them into a single wine,which is his multiple
expressions.
Right, and it's fascinatingwhat you can learn from a single
(22:40):
vineyard and, by the way, myChardonnay comes from that same
vineyard also.
He's done the same withViognier, which is a fascinating
varietal.
I love Viognier and I thinkthat Chenin Blanc would really
be the next natural white grapeto try that with.
I would love to make CheninBlanc, but it is in very short
supply in Israel.
(23:00):
It's very hard to get yourhands on some really
high-quality Chenin Blanc, butanytime I get a chance to taste
that, I will.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:11):
I'm seeing some super interesting reds
coming out now, with somevarietals like Tanat.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:20):
Yep.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:21):
And that are just crazy blends.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:26):
Well, Tavor has been doing Tanat for a long
time.
Solomon Simon Jacob (23:30):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (23:34):
And I think it's.
It's amazing.
And they do the tannat blends,which I love, I think.
I think more than a favoritevarietal.
I think one of the things thatI've learned the most about and
that has really piqued myinterest has been blending why
you blend, how you blend, howmuch you blend.
That's been one of the mostincredible things that yakov has
taught me.
(23:55):
Again, it's not something youcan learn at uc, davis or online
like you really just have toexperience it over and over
again.
And it's like painting apicture.
You can you can take a verytechnical course on how to paint
a picture, but you have to sitthere with the paints and throw
something at a canvas and seewhat it looks like and if it
(24:15):
doesn't work, you try again andit's really creating art in a
glass.
When you have a blend, becauseyou're really trying to
accomplish a specific end goalwith your wine, you want to have
a certain approachability toyour wine, you want to have
certain characteristics, andsometimes a single grape and a
(24:38):
single vinification is not goingto get you there and you have
to reach for other colors, youhave to reach for other
varietals and then you kind ofplay with.
Well, how much of this do Iwant to add, does that give me
what's missing in my base grape?
And you don't want to overdo it?
And then you have to kind ofanticipate what's going to
happen in the bottle over timeor what's going to happen in my
(24:59):
barrel when I age it for a yearor two.
And that's one of the thingswe're going to be doing today.
We're going to check in on thebarrels, see if they've had
enough oak, see if they need tobe blended with anything before
we bottle them.
And we do this several timeswhile while it's aging.
Now, some people blend beforeit goes into the barrel, some
(25:22):
people blend after.
Sometimes you have to do ittwice, but it's this ever
evolving it twice.
But it's this ever evolving,changing substance.
Your wine, it it's never static, it's always going to change.
And, uh, you don't want tointervene too much, you don't
want to throw too much paint onthe canvas.
(25:43):
You're going to end up withsome big angry blotches.
You want to just get the rightharmony, the right balance of
what it is you're trying tocreate.
Solomon Simon Jacob (25:54):
Did you ever do?
Were you with us when we didthe SOB for the first time?
Penina Kustanowitz (25:59):
I was not no .
Solomon Simon Jacob (26:00):
Okay.
So that was my first blendingexperience and when we we'd
asked yakov to create sob andwhen he agreed, he actually came
to my house and we had all thepeople, including um, richard
(26:25):
davidoff from england and allthe all kind of the stakeholders
andy andy was the person whoreally started us down this path
of, he was really theinstigator for SOB, to be honest
and um and Avi Davidovitz,obviously, and and what happened
(26:45):
was, uh, he came with all thevarietals and we sat around the
table and we tasted eachvarietal and, much to my
surprise, each varietal tastedgreat, absolutely great.
So I said you know what?
(27:06):
What are we doing?
Blending.
We don't need to blend, let'sjust put these out on separate
bottles.
And Yakov said, yeah, okay, wecould Well, let's see.
So we combined two and it wasvery simple, it was very
straightforward blendingEverything was like 50-50.
(27:29):
I think the biggest differencewas maybe 60-40, but everything
was basically 50-50 blends lotbetter than each of these single
varietals were.
And then a fourth in and afifth in and self-self.
(28:12):
When we got to the end of thisexperience, it was like you were
tasting complexity, you weretasting accessibility.
It was crazy.
I'd never experienced anythinglike that by tasting wine before
it's so much different whenyou're doing comparisons.
That's the real work in awinery, when you're actually
(28:38):
blending things.
Penina Kustanowitz (28:39):
Blending is one of my favorite parts of
making wine.
Solomon Simon Jacob (28:42):
I think that that is absolutely the best
.
I would be too scared toactually do it for other people,
but actually when we were doingTohu and Vohu- I remember that
I was there for that, yeah.
(29:03):
And we were tasting these thingsand I said, whoa.
So you know, yaakov would say,well, do you think that that's
okay?
And I go yeah, almost there'ssomething missing.
He goes yeah, I think so too.
He only let me speak first.
I was like I was going okay,you know, like so then we'd add
(29:30):
something.
And there was one instancewhere we added, using graduated
cylinders and what have you, butI couldn't believe that it made
(29:56):
that big a difference.
But it did.
It made a huge difference.
Penina Kustanowitz (30:02):
It's fascinating.
I think the first time I everreached out to a winemaker to
ask a question about wine wasLouis Pascoe.
Yep winemaker to ask a questionabout wine.
Was lewis pascoe?
Yeah, I had just uh tried hisuh pascoe project too and, um, I
was reading the back of thelabel lewis please forgive me if
(30:25):
I've got the wrong project, butI think it was something like
three percent carinian and Ithought to myself what can three
percent?
of anything carinian or ofanything due to a blend, and I
remember I contacted him onlineand he answered me and and he
was just only too happy toanswer all of my questions, and
I find it's really one of thevery special things about
(30:49):
winemakers in Israel is howaccessible they all are.
You asked me how I got intothis in the first place.
Really, it's at the credit ofall the winemakers in Israel who
responded to random texts fromme random invitations to come
(31:09):
host tastings at my house,random requests for me to come
and taste at their wineries UmKobe Arviv and um Amichai Luria
and um Sweatjack yes, definitely, and a soft pause, soft pause
(31:32):
as well, ellie Chiron, uh, fromum Gushitzion Winery.
Solomon Simon Jacob (31:40):
Schraga.
Penina Kustanowitz (31:41):
Schraga Sorry.
Solomon Simon Jacob (31:42):
Yeah.
Penina Kustanowitz (31:42):
Schraga actually is a fun little story.
My friend, jamie, who whoreally I should have mentioned
earlier is the one to reallyreally get me interested in wine
.
Jamie had made wine with afriend in Montreal years ago.
Jamie and I met in college atBar-Ilan and we had just come
back to Israel and he calls meand he says there's this guy in
(32:04):
a frat with a dunam of grapesand he's not making wine this
year and he's just giving itaway.
Do you want to go get somegrapes and make some wine?
And I said, yeah, sure, let'sdo that.
So off we go and we pick thegrapes and Jamie looks at me and
says we need sulfites in orderto disinfect the containers that
we're going to use.
So we drove off to GushitzionWinery and we go to the back
(32:30):
door and we knock and we saywe're gonna make some wine.
Can we have some sulfites?
And, my god, he gave us a bagof sulfites and we used it to
disinfect the plastic and wemade the most incredible wine.
The next year we did not makeincredible wine and
unfortunately that all went downthe sewer, but we got very
(32:51):
lucky that first year and thatreally lit the fire in me to
explore this some more and reachout to winemakers and just
overwhelmed by how generous theyare with their information,
their time, their knowledge and,particularly Yaakov, his
willingness to teach.
I call him my wine rabbi, likeyou said, the way he waits for
(33:15):
you to speak first and he asksyou leading questions.
Yaakov is always teaching andhe's always letting you get
there in your own pace.
And around the time that youblended the tohu of a bohu, my
youngest son, dov, had a barmitzvah and it was COVID.
It was not going to be atraditional bar mitzvah and it
was COVID.
It was not going to be atraditional bar mitzvah and he
was really bumming about that.
(33:36):
And he had made wine with Jamieat age four and he kind of grew
up with it and so, in honor ofhis bar mitzvah, he spent a day
with Yaakov at Ste Moshe andthey did a white blend and a red
blend and he patiently taughtmy 13-year-old how to taste wine
, how to blend wine, and heproduced some really really
(33:59):
amazing blends that we gave outat the bar mitzvah and to people
who couldn't be at the barmitzvah.
And the red, I think, wascalled Ad Halom and that was a
Karinia and a Pinot Noir blend.
And, jack, do you remember thewhite blend?
We called it Livnatas, napier,and I am not remembering the
(34:22):
varietals, but it was delicious.
Solomon Simon Jacob (34:26):
It's so special to see the pieces come
together.
Penina Kustanowitz (34:36):
It's just another whole experience.
It's fascinating.
Making wine is really one ofthe most fascinating things I've
ever been so lucky to get to do.
Solomon Simon Jacob (34:47):
It's also so variable, like there's so
many variables that feed into it.
People think that you make wine.
You take the grapes, you crushthem, you ferment them, you
throw them in a barrel.
After a couple of years youtake the wine out of the barrel,
put them in bottles and that'sit, you're done.
It's so so incredibly differentthan that.
(35:10):
There's so much more and somany variables that you can that
that interact.
To get a consistent wine fromone year to the next is like
almost, it's almost magical.
Penina Kustanowitz (35:27):
It is absolutely magical.
There's, there's, there's alimit to what you can impose on
a grape.
At the end of the day, your,your grape comes to you as it is
.
It almost tells you what itwants to be.
If that meets your commercialgoals, then you're very, very
(35:47):
lucky.
If not, you got to work reallyhard, uh, to, like you said,
maintain consistency from yearto year.
Solomon Simon Jacob (35:55):
It's crazy.
I don't know how winemakersactually do it.
To be honest, I don't know.
It's also one of the thingsthat made me really nuts about
Moscato, moscato d'Asti, thateverybody jokes about and laughs
about the blue bottles they are.
You know, people say it's justsugar water.
You know, they just put grapejuice in sugar water and they
(36:17):
ferment it and they make wineand that's it.
It's true wine, absolutely.
Taste of Moscato every year.
And the quantities that they'remaking are.
I've never seen a winery makemore wine than when I visited
Asti and saw the vats.
(36:39):
The vats look like nuclearmissile silos.
They're up to the ceiling.
They're these gigantic vats andyou walk into this room and
there's just lines of them andI'm telling you it looks just
like missile silos.
It's crazy.
And they're all filled.
(37:00):
And how they get a consistentwine coming out of that is
totally beyond me.
It's just amazing.
Penina Kustanowitz (37:09):
As I was listing the winemakers who have
been generous and shared theirtime with me, as I was listing
everybody, I was like my God,I'm going to forget somebody.
I'm going to forget somebody.
I'm going to insult somebody.
Israel Flan has sat with meseveral times and really talked
to me a lot about the history ofwinemaking and his time at
Carmel.
(37:29):
I would be remiss if I didn'tmention him.
He's such a special person,he's like a senior statesman.
And Ellie Benzacan, yeah and um.
And Aaron Peake yeah it would beremiss if I did not mention.
What are they?
(37:50):
The quartet now.
Solomon Simon Jacob (37:51):
Yeah, the quartet.
What was your most difficultexperience in making wine?
Penina Kustanowitz (38:01):
So here's the thing about grapes Like I
said, they tell you what theyneed.
Like I said, they tell you whatthey need and unfortunately
here in Israel we've had someheat waves that are becoming
more common than not and whatthat means for the grapes and
(38:35):
their harvest time and howquickly we need to press them or
crush them or get them safelyinto barrels and inoculate them.
The pace at which it sometimesarrives at the winery either
because they've ripened tooquickly or we're really worried
about a sunburn or a heat strokeand we want to get them off the
vines before too much heatdamage occurs I'd say the
(38:57):
hardest thing is the pace atwhich the grapes sometimes come
in to the winery and needimmediate attention.
You don't want to let them sitand get hot.
You don't want them to startfermenting on their own because
the skin sometimes break andthat happens.
(39:17):
You want to receive the grapes,get them to the temperature
that's optimal for how you wantto crush them and you want to
process them and by process Imean crush them, take their ph
um, check their sugar levels, doall the testing and all of the
(39:42):
I'd say care and feeding of themust in a timely fashion, and
sometimes you are justsurrounded by crates and crates
and crates of grapes that justarrive faster than you can
attend to.
It's like in Fantasia, theSorcerer's Apprentice, where the
(40:08):
water keeps coming and comingand coming and you look up and
there's another truck coming todeliver your grapes and you're
like, okay, I've run out ofspace to put the grapes.
Now what do I do?
I've run out of vats, I've runout of space.
I've got a backlog in the labfor taking all of their initial
(40:31):
lab readings.
And I'd say that's probably thehardest thing is the pace at
which the grapes sometimes comein, and you can never anticipate
it.
You can never anticipate it.
So it's not like you're goingto wake up one day and say, okay
, today's going to be absolutelyinsane, and so here's how we're
going to schedule the day.
A lot of times you get thegrapes when the pickers are
(40:56):
available, when the truckdrivers are available to bring
it A lot of things that are justout of your control and you
have to pivot as best you canwhen those grapes come in and
they need your attention cool,especially you're.
Solomon Simon Jacob (41:15):
You're in, you're down in the desert, so
especially the heat probablyimpacts you guys more, even
though you're getting grapesfrom all over, but you do also
have vineyards that are down inthe desert we do, we do.
Penina Kustanowitz (41:30):
We have probably one of the longest, I
guess I'd say, harvest seasonsin Israel, because the grapes
from the desert ripen first andthe grapes up north ripen last,
and we also do dessert wines andlate harvests, so we start
(41:53):
making our wine pretty early inthe season and we go late into
the fall because we are makingwine from grapes that come from
all over the country, lots ofdifferent climates and micro
climates, and that keeps us onour toes.
Solomon Simon Jacob (42:11):
Right, wow, are there any special things to
do with late harvest stuff?
Late harvest grapes Absolutely.
Penina Kustanowitz (42:19):
So, first of all, late harvest grapes are
generally used for dessert wine.
The longer you leave the grapeon the vine, the more sugar
accumulation you have.
They're used for sweet wine.
But also the longer you leaveit, the more the more pronounced
(42:40):
certain aspects are.
So you'll get more uh fruitflavors.
You'll get more tropical fruitflavors than, let's say, an
early harvest, which will giveyou more uh, let's say, in a
white wine, will give you morelike apples, citrus, those types
(43:01):
of things.
And if you leave it in a warmerclimate, you leave it on the
vine longer, you'll get morepeach even later and you'll get
more of the tropical fruits.
So you do get differentcharacteristics from the same
grape if you give it longer hangtime.
But really people use dessertwines we will take a late
(43:22):
harvest and if we want to havethose extra flavors in a
particular blend, thosecharacteristics, we'll blend
them in.
So everything really has a veryunique purpose them in.
Solomon Simon Jacob (43:40):
So everything really has a very
unique purpose.
How do you, when you're makinga dessert wine that's got a lot
of sugar, or a late harvest winethat's got a lot of sugar in it
, how do you just not let itbecome all alcohol?
How do you stop the yeast?
Penina Kustanowitz (43:55):
yeast.
So back to your earlierquestion.
Sometimes the sugar will justoverwhelm the alcohol conversion
.
It'll stop on its own, okay,and you will get a sweet wine.
And there are ways that we canstop the total conversion of all
of the sugar into alcohol sothat you are left with the
(44:17):
sweetness.
One of the ways is to play withtemperature.
You bring it down to atemperature at which it is not
optimum for the sugar tocontinue to ferment into alcohol
, and sometimes we use SO2 as away to stop the fermentation
process.
Solomon Simon Jacob (44:35):
I'm really kind of focusing on the small
boutique wineries becausethere's just so much diversity
of what's going on in thosethings.
It's really crazy.
Penina Kustanowitz (44:51):
Yeah, when you have a small production,
well, it's kind of adouble-edged sword.
On the one hand, you can reallyallow yourself to take risks
and to experiment, but ifsomething goes wrong you lose
your.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:05):
You lose your shirt.
You lose your entire batch.
I don't know how people makemoney in these small wineries.
Penina Kustanowitz (45:14):
I don't know how they it's really impossible
to I know, I don't know howthey.
It's really impossible I know,I don't know how they do it from
what I think, from what I cansee and I'm not a business
expert, but I have been doingthis for six years now uh,
really, the way you make moneyis on scale right one of the
things, uh, that I've been luckyenough to do is make on such a
small scale that I can set myprices based on what I think the
(45:40):
wine is worth and notnecessarily how much profit I
need to make.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:44):
Right, and you can drink your own wine.
Penina Kustanowitz (45:50):
I drink most of my own wine.
It's a really bad business plan.
Solomon Simon Jacob (45:54):
Hey, if you make what you like and you like
what you're drinking, it'sgreat.
Why not it really?
Penina Kustanowitz (46:01):
works out.
Solomon Simon Jacob (46:03):
I know.
Penina Kustanowitz (46:04):
I will share a funny story that happens
every single year, every harvest, whether we've been in Pseigot
or Stamoshet or Yerucham,there's a point where
fermentation is very, veryvigorous and, as I said, we take
samples every morning and wecheck the specific gravity to
(46:26):
see how quickly they arefermenting.
And in those big stainlesssteel vats there are these
little spigots, there are theselittle pipes that you'll get an
explosion of the juice of themust in your face, no matter how
(47:04):
careful you're being.
Or, let's say, you've got someskins that are obscuring the
exit of that and you need toclear the pipe, you need to
clear the spigot.
And then, as soon as you dothat, then you get nailed in the
face with a really, really uhstrong and sticky stream of must
(47:26):
.
And I have a collection ofphotographs of me at various
stages of being soaked by verypicturesque and colorful wines.
Every single color has had itschance.
And one of these days I thinkI'll make a collage of these
(47:47):
photographs of me just beingcompletely soaked by wine
splatter my very first time thatthat happened at Sagat.
I was very new.
I wasn't given a uniform, Ijust came in whatever
comfortable clothes and usuallythose were khakis.
So one day I get completelysplattered with red wine and
(48:08):
Yaakov looks at me and says Ishould have mentioned earlier.
This is why we in thewinemaking industry, we wear
dark colors, we wear darkcolored clothes.
From then on, I try to onlywear dark colored clothes.
A fun way to make the ride goquicker.
Solomon Simon Jacob (48:27):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being
on The Kosher Terroir.
Penina Kustanowitz (48:30):
Thanks for having me.
Solomon Simon Jacob (48:31):
You didn't even have to come.
We started in Jerusalem, butit's kind of fun, and now we're
entering into the Pinto Winery,so that's kind of a cool end to
an episode.
Penina Kustanowitz (48:46):
Very cool.
Thank you so much.
Solomon Simon Jacob (49:03):
This is Simon Jacob, again your host of
today's episode of The KosherTerroir.
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.
Please subscribe via yourpodcast provider to be informed
of our new episodes as they arereleased.
If you are new to The KosherTerroir, please check out our
(49:27):
many past episodes.
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