Yaakov Ben Moshe's Passionate Pursuit of Winemaking

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.
Our conversation today is withYaakov Ben Moshe.

(00:31):
Homeschooled with years ofexperience garnered while
interning since his youth inwinemaking, the boutique
winemaker at Gat Basela Wineryin Eish Kodesh has created a
unique establishment that hepersonally carved out of the
bedrock beneath his home.

(00:51):
Located in the Binyamin region,this area is known for its
vineyards and wine production,with several well-known boutique
wineries operating in thevicinity.
Gat Basela Winery produces anumber of wines, including a
Cabernet Sauvignon, a Merlot andseveral blends, all with grapes

(01:12):
harvested in vineyardssurrounding Esh Kodesh.
Yakov also distills some of hiswines, producing alcohol which
he uses to fortify a simplydelicious port offering he
produces.
If you're driving in your car,please focus on the road ahead.
If you're relaxing at home,please select a wonderful bottle

(01:34):
of kosher wine.
Sit back, relax and enjoylistening in on this remarkable
self-made winemaker and hisincredible journey.
Awesome, Yaakov Ben-Moshe.
Yaakov Ben-Moshe, welcome toThe Kosher Terroir.
We're here.

Yaakov Ben Moshe (01:51):
Thank you very much.

You're giving me a little tour of the.

Yeah, I want to explain to you first what
you're seeing, what's going onover here, Usually what I
explain also to people that comeby to the winery.
I'll explain to you what you'reseeing, what's going on.
So usually I stand people overhere first and I explain to them
a little bit of history of howI actually got to live in

(02:17):
Ishkodish, how I got to be here.
So I grew up in the Statesuntil age 10.

Where In Massachusetts, in Boston.

Suburb when?
In Massachusetts, in Boston, asuburb of Sharon, Massachusetts.

In Sharon.

Cool, yeah, and then.
So I came to live in Israelwith my parents and I.
Very interesting teenage period, but at some point we can get
into it.
Later I joined what's calledthe Hilltop Youth, nara Gvot.
Yep, I lived in a cave for awhile in Chavat Ma'on.

(02:53):
Okay, I lived under an oak treenear Hebron, in the big oak
tree, Givat Monayesre.

Yes, Yes, Yes, sure, sure, yeah.
Givat Monayesre yeah, yeah,sure, you want to give us one
last story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I was there, for I was oneof the founders, if you could
say.
And then at some point I wentto prison for some of my
political activity.
Of course, okay, and it's justanother story, if you're
interested we could talk aboutit.
And then I was looking foractually to begin my own hill,

(03:22):
like my own giva, my own hilltop.
I met my friend-to-be we'restill friends still today who
had just got married with hiswife, a newlywed couple, and
they were living on a hill threekilometers east of here of
Yishkodesh.
I had actually met them attheir own Sheva Brachot.
Funny story I came to the ShevaBrachot.

(03:46):
Some friends had set up anencampment for the Sheva Brachot
in the middle of the Judeandesert.

Wow.

Uja Manaka, if you know where it is.

I don't know where that is Behind the Maale
Amos and Meitab is an old armypost from the time of the
British.
Such a beautiful view of themountains there.
It's crazy.
It's crazy, it's unbelievable.
They had set up this tent andthey were doing a mangal.

You know, they were barbecuing and they were
eating shishlik.
I told them you can't eatshishlik, it's sheva brachot,
you have to have meat.

Right.

Meat and wine you have to have.
So they said where are we goingto get meat?
We're in the middle of thedesert.
I said, ah, what's the problem?
We have a bunch of Narek Vot.
You know some wild kids overhere.
We'll go to the closest Bedouintent Tell them, you know.

Buy a goat.

Well convinced them that it's a good idea to
donate one so they don't get avisit here from all these drunk
guys.
And that's what the Jeep.
And now we had meat.
So this is how I met this guyand I told him I was looking to
found my own, givai.
He told me, listen, you cancome by where we are, where I

(04:55):
just built this house for mywife, we have another couple of
single guys.
You can come by, but you can'tlive too close.
Of course.
The whole idea is to take up asmuch space as possible right.
So I had built my tent.
I built like this tent, about,I would say, 500 meters away
from where he was and I I wasliving there.
Um, at some point I went withhim to a like to learn how to

(05:18):
raise olive trees yeah, okay,which is a raising without
irrigation I go to.
I went to learn how to do thiswith him and we left his little
younger brother, who was then 15, to babysit the sheep and the
whole hill.
Whatever Arabs from the closestnear town, kutsa, they came,
they attacked this little kid,this teenager, and basically he

(05:40):
protected the sheep.
He was able to protect thesheep but he sort of had to back
off to where the sheep were andmy tent.
The Arabs burned it down Witheverything I ever owned, all of
my possessions I have ever owned, which wasn't very much.
This was right after I got outof prison.
It wasn't very much, basicallythe only things that had

(06:02):
survived.

Thank God he stayed alive.

Well, he, yeah .
So he stayed alive and thesheep were okay.
But everything got burned downand everything was destroyed,
except two of my possessions,which was my cast-iron tea
kettle, which couldn't getburned from the fire, and my
parashiyah shiriyat of mytefillin, which survived because
of the explosion of a gasballoon.
It went flying and the outsidegot burnt, but the inside was

(06:24):
safe.
So I didn't leave the area.
I brought a mattress and Ifound myself sleeping on this
mattress there in the middle ofthis mountain, again three
kilometers from here, about Wow,and I brought out, like a tarp,
you know, to cover myself fromthe rain.
And the Arabs didn't stop, youknow, there they used to try to

(06:44):
continue and attacking us.
Every friday they would get outof, uh, you know, shul or the
mosque and try to attack us, andthey would come and uh and and
start a fight.
The men here from mishkodishwould come and try to help
defend us.
It was a very good arrangementbecause the, the men, would come
and help and then, with, youknow, all friday they would be
in this fight and then in theevening they would come back and

(07:07):
shabbos would be ready, thekids would be showered.
It was a good arrangement.
I get it, but but at some pointa what happened was an arab uh
was killed during one of thesefights, and the army decided
that enough is enough.
They got sick and tired of itand they declared our little
mountain over there a closedmilitary zone.
And now I found myself runningaway, basically, from the army

(07:32):
during the day and guarding fromthe Arabs at night, and it
became a little bit too intenseat some point.
So we decided to dismount, tocome down from the mountain for
a little while and let thingscalm down a bit.
Until, you know, until thingscalm down, then we would go back
up.
Now the end of the story is isthat today there's a jewish
settlement there?

(07:52):
There's vineyards there thatare planted?
Um, yeah, they, they havevineyards over there and there's
also people living there.
Even further out than where wewere, there were people over
there.
It's completely in Jewish hands.
So that's okay, it's good.
And what's ironic is thatduring one of these fights, I

(08:13):
met my wife, which is a wholestory in itself.
But now we decided to getmarried and to live in Eshkodish
.
Now, when you want to live inEshkodish, you have to build
something.
Back then there was about 17families living here.
And I turned to the community.
I was a single guy.
They told me listen, if youwant to build, we're working on
the plan here, the architecturalplan for the whole settlement,

(08:37):
so you can build, but we don'tknow where.
And I told them listen, I'mgoing to build over here.
At the edge of the issue.
The head of security told me Ican only build at the edge of
the settlement, which is rightover there.
That's where that tall tree is.
That was my front yard.
Now, that was the edge, thatwas the edge of Ishkodish, that
was the end and everything herewasn't here back then and they

(09:00):
told me this is public propertyover there.
You can build over there, butyou're going to have to move
your house.
So I built the house, okay, likethis front cube of the house.
I built it over there.
Yeah, okay, and this was about12 and a half years ago, almost
13 years ago.
I built it over there and Ilived there for about a year and

(09:23):
a half and then at some pointwe finished the plan here for
the, for the whole settlement,and I uh, you know, brought a
tractor.
Yeah, the tractor was standing.
Again, the house was over there, the tractor was standing right
here with the porches, yeah,and sort of digging, digging
here into the mountain anddigging this winery, okay.
Then I uh poured a bit ofcement around the hole, picked

(09:46):
up the house with a crane andput it on top of the hole, oh
right, okay.
And then afterwards I built theextension of the house which is
there, and then the porch andthe yard, and it's an ongoing
project.
You can see, a lot of thingshere aren't really finished,
because when I say that I did itand I made it, it means I say
that.
I did it and I made it.
Yeah, it means only with my owntwo hands.
My friend helped me pick up themain beam of the house, but

(10:10):
besides that, everything I'mdoing myself.
And then at first I had likethis, like trap door, that, like
you know, like in the Holocaust, like to get it.
It wasn't practical at all tomake wine like that I'm talking
about back when I was makinglike 50 bottles or something
like that.

So I dug out these steps.
You know what I want?
To get a picture of you infront of the house.
It's a sukkah and then youcover it over the top.

Yeah, so this part, I just leave it covered.
This other part, it has a tincover, but I take off the tin
cover before Sukkot and I takeoff the tin cover before Sukkot
and close it off.
We have lights, whatever, andthis is our Sukkot.
So now, I take people to seethe winery.

(10:55):
So I have this 30 poundjackhammer that I like to work
with, which I dug out the stepsover here to the winery.
Watch your step, it's a bitsteep.
I'm sure you can make it.

Yeah, I'm sure I can Wow.
It smells like because of the.

Still.
This is my new Charenti stillwow, love it.

Yeah, I'm going to hang that right there, yeah
no problem.

So then I bring people down here.
We see the still.
I'm going to hang that rightthere.
Yeah, no problem.
So then I bring people downhere.
We see the still.
We see the end of the winery,and so at first you can see the
walls here of the winery are ona slant.

You can see over here it's like on a slant.
Yeah, because when the tractoris digging it can't dig those up
.
Yeah, all the way, you're right.

So two winters ago, basically what I did also.
These walls over here were alsoin the same situation Two
winters ago.
I straightened them out with my30-pound jackhammer.

Right.

I straightened them out and I was able to push
things back and then I had 2023still in vats.
I wanted to bottle it and thenthis past winter I dug out all
of this shelving Also.
You can see this is like threebottles deep over here.

Right.

And then I bottled 2023, and most of it's
here and some of it's over here.
These bottles are from 2012 andonward.
There are different thingsgoing on here.
Some of them, you know, I keepfrom everything I make.
I keep a little bit just to see, like you know, experiments
like aging experiments.
This is 2021.

(13:00):
So is this?

fermenting still no.
No, no, no, I think it'sfermenting okay no, I'm talking
about the bottles yeah, no, no,I know the vats the vats are
this year's wine okay so there'sdifferent things going on here.

I explained to you about, but just this past
summer what happened was Ireached a decision to really
grow, to try to grow as much aspossible.
So we excavated here much more.
You can see this.
We did also with a tractor mucha step over here, and then I

(13:36):
dug out these steps, also withthe jackhammer, poured the floor
over here.
You can see it's an ongoingproject.
It's great.
Yeah, and we have to support theporch during the, you know, the
excavation, and then I'mbuilding this wall over here to
close it.
This whole thing is going to beclosed down.
It's going to be a closed room,okay.

Yeah, but you should be careful.
You need ventilation.

No no, so this is going to be like an elevator
.

Okay.

So this is going to be open.
You can always open this up.
You get enough air?
Yeah, of course you don't wantto get.
You need ventilation, and sothis was just ready in time for
this year's production.
Wow, so these are this year'swine.
Different things going on overhere, also this press the

(14:25):
hydraulic press I bought thisyear Also, and it was a whole
thing because it was in themiddle of I bought it, but it
was three phase electricity.

Right.

And I don't have three phase over here, we
don't have the electricity hereand so stable or whatever.
So I have one phase.
I basically turned myself intoa technician.
And then to a technician overhere.
I changed it to one phase.
Wow, it was like a whole thingand I had to do the press.
I was like every day likeworking on it, going to get a

(14:55):
piece and come back Just to getit to work.
And finally we got it to work.
It was like a holiday.
It was like amazing yeah.
And so there's a lot, a lot ofinvestment here.
Like I said, this isn't my mainwhat I do for my living, so
this is like.

What do you do for a living?

I do projects like panels, building with steel
frames and styrofoam panels.
Okay yeah.
So I do that.
Styrofoam panels, okay, yeah,so I, you know I do that.
I have welding projects and Ihave.
I have a bunch of stuff that Ithat I do.
I'm also a shokhet in a care bythe haggim, more people that
want to slaughter.

(15:36):
This year was a little shvachbecause of the Because of the
war, because of the war, yeah.
Yeah, you can see here when Iplaced the house.
You can just understand whathas happened here.
I told the guy he was in thetractor.
He was standing right herewhere the porch is right.

Right.

So he told me.
I told him, dig a pit fivemeters by five meters.
So he's like where?
So I took four stones.
I told him, between, we're inthe stones here over here and
that's where we put the house.
Now, when we came to excavateover here, we were digging out
and the guy told me how much amI supposed to dig, right?
So I told him dig until I tellyou to stop.

(16:13):
So we were digging, digging,digging.
This whole thing was filledwith dirt, stone, right, and
what happens is what wediscovered.
This is where the mountainstarts.
Yes, I placed the house righton the edge Okay.
Wow, imagine like if it wasanother meter.

This way it wouldn't have any support right
it was.
That looks almost like acistern, an old part of a sister
, right?

No, but it's not it.
I mean it was.
You can see, here we have tochisel a little bit chisel over
here.

No, but there that's so smooth.

That's just.
That's just poured cement.
This is concrete that I poured.
Yeah, how did you?
That's so smooth.
No this is the cement.

That's just poured cement.
This is concrete that I poured.
Yeah, how did you get it sosmooth like that?
It was in a pack.
Okay, you put like a case.

So that the house is right on the edge of
where the mountain actuallybegins.
And like.
I said everything I do bymyself.
Things are moving like a littleslowly, but yeah.
Amazing, that's basically it andthen after I explain to people
that I explain to them about theprocess, what fermentation you
know, we go, we pick the grapesin the cool night, you know, in

(17:20):
the summer, when it's nice andcool and why it needs to be cool
, and the whole thing withkeeping the yeast from
reproducing for the grapes reachso you get a hot day and you
get very cool nights.
Right.
So what I tell people first ofall is that the legend, and I
don't even remember where I gotthis from but the legend

(17:42):
basically is that after theSix-Day War, you know, people
came to this area to volunteerfor the archaeological dig in
Shiloh where the Mishkan was.
And then they wanted to, youknow, they wanted to, uh, they
wanted to volunteer on the, youknow, in the excavation and that

(18:04):
was how they were allowed tostay here in the area and then
they slowly, you know, broughtthey had to build some tents to
live in, and then they broughttheir wives and then they pulled
some electricity from somewhereand that's how you have modern
day Shiloh today.
But there were some guys overthere that were very, very
interested in making wine.
Yeah, planted some vineyards.
Didn't think very much of it,but they planted you know,

(18:27):
whatever they could.

One of the first ones.

Right, so there's a few.
There's Ira Ira, of course.

Ira's a friend.
I know Ira for years.

So some of the grapes here are from there.
Yeah, of course, and some of myone of the wines that I made in
21 was made.
I'll get into that in a second.
Anyway, so these guys planted avineyard and then they didn't
think very much of it, but atsome point one of them had some
type of a protection.

This is a legend .

They got the wine into the competition in
France to the Sommelier.

They loved it.

And then they were like, wow, this is amazing
potential, where did these winescome from?
And they figured out.
They came back home like, wow,we have to figure out how we
take this potential and you know, and build it up.
And they how this area wasdiscovered to be an amazing,
amazing, you know, amazing youknow, potential over here and uh

(19:23):
, and that's how this areabecame to be.
There's so many wineries, youknow, here, and so many uh
vineyards, and the way thesepeople plant a vineyard here and
you can, you know, make a lot.
You know you buy the grapeshere for twice as much as what
grapes cost in, let's say,bechemish area for four and a
half five shekels a kilo thecheapest the winery here pays is

(19:44):
ten shekels a kilo or aboutsomething like that it's amazing
.
so, and the reason they'rewilling to pay so much is
because the wine from the grapeshere win national and
international prizes every year.
So I'm living in this gold mineof making wine, prize-winning
wine, so how can I not make wine?

(20:06):
I've been making wine since Iwas a teenager, even before I
was a kid.
I remember myself going andpicking grapes and, you know,
playing around with fermentationand so on, so I so.

I live in this goldmine of potential.
How can I not make?
Wine so so who helps you?
Anybody helps you, or this youdo by yourself.

I do so I have my wife and my kids.
They come, you know, to thegrape picking even in the middle
of the night.
We go with flashlights and wepick, but because it's growing,
you know, to be a bigger soul,this year I had some volunteers
also showed up.
Or, you know, we have thiswhole thing over here with kids,

(20:47):
child labor.

Yeah, no, and now Baruch Hashem for all this.
Connect the kids to the no, wepay them.

You know seven shekels per box of grapes that
they pick, yeah.
And you know we go to thevineyard and you advertise on
the WhatsApp group.
You know we have a grapepicking from six in the morning.
Come on, or whatever it is foreach box.

I have a friend in Itamar, Tomer, Tomer Panini.
So he has a vineyard called Tomand I've harvested there.
But all these kids come out ofthe all of a sudden.
They come walking up the road.
It's amazing.

So here it's like the kids, here they get
rich, my kids, all of a suddenchildren are willing to get up
at 6 in the morning.
5 in the morning and go out andpick grapes, work hard.
This is something that's very,very rare in today's world that
kids are willing to do this.
And how much do they get paid?
After working for six, sevenhours, they end up with 70

(21:49):
shekels, whatever it is.
But for them it's money, it'sspending money yeah, but more
important is the ethics thatthey're getting here from the
work, so you used the press thisyear.
Yeah, yeah, we used the pressthis year and I had bought the
second hand also this pump.
I also changed it to one phaseand also I got it working.

(22:10):
This crusher, I also boughtsecond hand.
This stuff is very expensive,right?
I wasn't able to get it to workthis year, so I used this one.

Right.

But it's okay.

So I've used that.
I've used one like that before.

Yeah, so.

But this one isn't.

It's not tough enough to take these amounts.

Right that you're trying to do Right.
So how many, how many tons ofgrapes are you getting in?

wow, so it's a good question.
So there's different types ofgrapes.
Also, there's good qualitygrapes which are expensive, and
then there's grapes that I usefor other things, or let's say,
I make Moscato.

Is it in English Moscato, moscato.
It's a sweet.

Right.
So the Moscato grapes theydon't grow here in the area and
they grow up north and they're abit cheaper than that.
So I went out and I boughtabout a ton and a half of two
different types of Moscato thered one and the Hamburg-y one
and the Alexandroni.

Yeah.

And I like to play around with those grapes
also, so I bought altogether.
We did the count, you know, forthe Trumoto and the Asote.
It comes out that I think we'resomewhere around seven tons
came in, maybe more.

Okay.

About seven tons, I think, came into the
winery Wow.

So how many bottles does that turn into
approximately?

0.75.

0.75.

Approximately 0.75.
So it's about 10,000, but notall of it's going to turn into
wine that goes into a bottleSome of it's brandy, Some of
it's distilled alcohol that Iuse afterwards for fortifying my
muscat, which is something thatI started telling you about,
something that I like toexperiment and do things.

(24:12):
I'll tell you wine.
What I tell people is wine is acombination between art and
science.
Okay, and people need tounderstand that.
You need to stay inside thelines of the science.

Yeah.

Otherwise your wine is not going to be good
wine.
But on the other hand, thewhat's the word.
I'm looking for the expression.
The self-expression of thewinemaker comes inside the box

(24:53):
of the science.
So you express yourself withinthose lines and sometimes I like
to go out of the box.
But that's something that I do.
So I make traditional CabernetMerlot.

(25:16):
I have my special, you know,two blends that I make, one of
them like a Bordeaux style blend, you know, cabernet Shiraz or
Sirah, and Petit Bordeaux, andthis year I actually added a
little bit of Merlot to it tosee what happens with that.
So those are like the moretraditional types and the wine

(25:39):
comes out amazing, not justbecause of me I'm not, you know
but because of the grapes here,okay, I'm talking about.
And then there's things that Ilike to play around with, like
my Muscat, that I fortify itwith alcohol that I distill here
myself, and that's somethingthat's more like out of the box.
I don't know, I haven't seenmany people that actually do

(26:00):
this, that take a Muscat andfortify the wine with alcohol.

You can taste it Cool, yeah, come Wow.

So that's basically what I.
You know what I tell people.
Another wine that I, that Ithat I love making, is my um, uh
, like port, yeah, so it's alsofortified, it's all yeah, yeah,
it's fortified and uh, I wouldsay the say port is like a port,

(26:34):
right, yeah, you're notsupposed to call it port.
Some people say style, portstyle.

Right.

So, after a little research that I did,
there was a wine that was adessert wine that was drunk back
in the time of the I don't knowthe time of the Tanakh, but in
the time of Chazal they woulddrink this type of very
concentrated sweet wine.
This is the only one of the onlysweet wines that they had, and
the way that they would make itwas they actually, I think, they

(27:06):
imported this tradition fromCyprus, I think.
Okay, the only factory that wasfound in the archaeological
digs in Israel was near the ShuvNevet Suf, and they found these
huge circles Well, not huge,but these three-meter diameter
circles of stone that theydidn't know what it was, and

(27:27):
they figured out that this is afactory for making this wine
that's called Al-Yustan.
Okay, professors Z, for makingthis wine that's called
Al-Yustan.
Okay, professor.

Zohar Amar and.

Shibi.
Dori they have this whole thing, that they, you know, they have
articles about it, academic,academic articles, and they it
wasn't fortified.
But what they would do is theywould take the grapes, dry them
out in the sun and flip them,turn them, you know, every three
times a day for three days andit would come out sweet.

Very concentrated.

Concentrated wine.
So I do something sort of likethat.
I do fortify it a little bit, Idry them out in the sun, it's
this whole thing and I dofortify it with a little bit of
alcohol as a preservative, so itdoesn't rise the alcohol level
a little bit, but it's not toostrong.

It's 14.1%, which isn't it's interesting
Alcohol's coming through, thealcohol is coming out.

Yeah, yeah, slowly and surely, slowly and
surely, and it's reaching thelower side, which is fruitier
and more concentrated on tastebut lower in alcohol.
This is a charanté.
You know how it works.
No, can I explain to you Aregular.
Still, you know how it works,right?
Yes, yeah.
So basically what's going onhere?

(28:47):
I see it has a little leak overhere.
Don't worry about it.
Don't worry.
Here it is Okay.

It's okay Basically it's a regular Steam
is coming up through the top,yeah, so it's a regular still.

The steam comes through here and then
basically there's a coil herethat goes around and around and
comes out over here, yep, okay.
So this is just like a pot witha coil.
It's like this one, but insteadof having water in it, it has
more wine.

Okay.

You can open it up, you pour wine in it and
you have the faucet here, whichis closed, and it heats the wine
here in the meantime.
Okay, so at first it's usingthe wine to cool the steam and
then, as it heats up, now it'sgetting really hot, and once
you're finished with this one,what you can do is just open it
up, take it out, close it up andopen it up, and now you have
already hot wine.

Wine to coming back in.

To go back in.
Then you can refill it and youcan just keep it's the same
energy.

So how empty does this become?
It goes all the way down to thebottom.

So you can see it was up to you know, up to
here, and this is about whenit's finished.
About nine liters came outRight Out of 27.

Liters came out out of 27.
Okay, so it'll come down tohere, something like that it
comes out.
So then, but you need to, youneed to what you call it, you
need to, um, empty it first youcan't just keep refilling it.

No, no, well, why do that?
You're gonna?

no, no.
The question I have is it'sit's because it's already taken
the um alcohol off it, so isn'tit more concentrated then?
No, it's more liquid.
It's more water.
Yeah, there's nothing in there.
Okay, there's no alcohol left.

There's nothing good in there anymore.
Okay, because of that.
Okay, I see, I understand Ahundred percent.

I don't know what I'm thinking.
You're right.

A hundred percent.

Yeah, no, it's a good question.
I've never seen that where itrefills the wine back, it
doesn't refill, it takes thewine keeps it warm.

The idea is here it's very hot.
The idea is that you're savingenergy.

Okay, right, that's the idea.

And this is a cooling system I built out of an
external unit from the airconditioner.

Right.

So you just sort of close the circuit of the
gas with the coil.
So instead of cooling aninternal unit of air conditioner
, it compresses the gas andcools this coil, which cools the
water, and it circulates with alittle fish tank pump.

You got a fish tank pump over here, so it
circulates into this, so thatcoil goes into here.

Okay, I see.

I was wondering where the water cooling was
coming from.

It's coming from there.

So this is just a secondary step in order to
keep it, to warm the wine and touse it as the initial coolant.

Well, it cools .
At first it cools the steam.

Somewhere it cools the steam down.

But then as it heats up, and then now you have
a nice hot wine that's ready tostart.
Once you take this out, you canimmediately open it up and
it'll just keep going, and thenyou can fill this up again and
keep going.

So doesn't this?
How does the wine originallyget in there?
This doesn't feed the wine.
This feeds into the coil Right.

This feeds into the coil.
No, you open the top here andthen you just pour wine.

It's just a pot of wine.
Okay, it's a pot of wine.

That's what was confusing me, because I'm
seeing it it looks like a closedloop and I'm going like how do
you do this?
This is this, and this is this,and this is this.
Yes, got it.

Got it, got it, got it, and that's showing the
volume that Because it's hot, soit expands, so it's not really
that full Right I get you, it'snot the most sophisticated.
No, no, no.

I'm not saying it's not the best quality thing
.
You have these things that arebig and expensive.
This is like whatever.
I had this one before.
This is the one that I hadbefore.
It served me for a few yearsvery well.

So what temperature do you need to run
this at?
This is the one that I hadbefore.
Yeah, it served me for a fewyears.

very well, but yeah.

So what temperature do you need to run
this at?

So stilling alcohol is completely.
You know it's a whole branch.

Yeah, science.

It's a whole science, a whole branch, but
basically like water, which cannot rise above, you know, 100
degrees Celsius, right?

What is it?

12 Fahrenheit.
So the same thing with alcohol,alcohol steam.
So we'll only reach a certainpoint, and then it'll evaporate
like an evaporator and comes out.
So what happens is that youstart the distilling process
will start basically at.
It depends what type of alcohol.

(33:18):
Right, there's many types.
There's, you know, methanol,and then there's acetone and
ethanol.

So how do you make sure that you're not
getting the bad type?

So, first of all, temperature, yeah, okay.
So the first when you'redistilling at a certain
temperature, you make a cut Okay, meaning whatever's coming out.
You see, this is the cut, okay.
So from one temperature, from68.4 and onward until 82.

Right.

Okay, 84,.
If you're a Mahmir.

You're okay.

No, that you cut out.
You take out that's methanol,and then you start getting other
types of alcohol coming outRight.
Some of them just don't tastegood.

No, but some of them can kill you.

Right.
So the methanol.
So I'm very Mahmir that I takeout much more than what you
should.
So I do have a little bit ofbrandy over here that I you know
I age brandy.
You can taste also if you'reinterested, but I mostly use it
for fortifying my wines.

I would love to taste some of your wines.

Yeah, let's taste.
Tell me what you're mostinterested in.
I for sure want to give you totaste the Muscat, the fortified
Muscat.

Yeah, I want to taste that.

Tell you what.
I'll introduce you to it.
Go ahead From the.
We're talking about 2023.
Yeah, so I have a Cabernetfunny story about it.
So I'll tell you.
What happened is I was at.
I was at this wine fair in Yafo, yep, and I was, I, I it was.

(35:04):
It was actually a little bitstrange that I actually showed
up on time Yep, actually beforebefore the time.
I showed up before, and Ishowed up on time Yep, actually
before the time.
I showed up before and I wasalready on time and I had my.
You know, I had my wine set upand I had my little roll-up, you
know, that has my story on itand whatever.

(35:24):
And who comes early to thesethings?
You know journalists, you knowpeople that want to, you know
photographers, I don't know.
So I had everything set up andthis guy short guy, bald, short
guy walks up to me.
He has a notebook in his hand,like who goes around today with

(35:45):
a notebook.
This guy has a notebook and helooks at me and he looks at the
wine and he looks at the roll-upand all of a sudden he screams
like I don't believe in god.
I told him what, what are youtalking about?

what does that?

have to do with anything.
So he says to me and then helooks at me and he looks at the
roll-up.
He's like and you're a settlertoo.
I said dude, you want to tastemy wine?
Like, what's the story, what'sup with you?
He's like oh, what do you haveto offer?
I'm like okay, taste whatever.
And all of a sudden he screamsat me.
I was more religious than youwere.

(36:24):
This guy obviously hassomething an issue.
I don't know.
I was polite to him.
I told him listen, you want ataste.
Okay, fine, Give me a taste.
So he gave me a glass.
I poured some of my cabernetover here.
No, first I poured him themouskat.
He tastes it and he rolls itaround his mouth a bit.

(36:46):
Give me another one, Taste this, taste this, taste this.
And he tells me you know who Iam?
I'm like no, who are you?
What's your story?
He's like I'm Yonatan Livni.

I know Yonatan Livni, wow, wow.

And I'm like okay, I'm Yaakov Ben Moshe, like
it didn't mean anything to me,right?
So this guy?
So he's like no, you have tounderstand.
I was Haredi, I was religious,I went to Harvard, I have a
degree in law and I learned thisand I did that and I'm a

(37:20):
successful person.
I'm like, ok, fine, and I makewine.
He's like no, you don'tunderstand, I write for Echol
V'Shato.
Ok, I didn't mean very much tohim.
I said to him stop, you know,what do you want from me?
Do you like the wine?
You don't like the wine.
He's like no, you don'tunderstand.
You don't understand.
The problem here is that I likeyour wine.

(37:42):
Your wine is amazing, your wineis exceptional.
I'm like no, so very good, sobuy a bottle.
He's like no, you don'tunderstand.
He's like now I have to writeabout you.
Now I have to write about you.
I said no, so write about me.
He was like no, but you're asettler.
You're a settler and you'rereligious, and this I said to
him dude, what does it matter,like you know.

(38:04):
So he's like okay, fine, giveme your phone number.
So he gave me a phone numberand the next day was Friday, I
sat down with a coffee and wepicked up the phone.
We were on the phone for atleast an hour and telling him
about this wine and this wineand so on and so forth, and he

(38:37):
wrote.
So the whole thing I wastelling him about this is that
you know, it went into thearticle or whatever.
Is that what he wrote about theCabernet Sauvignon?
He's like listen, what can youalready say about Cabernet
Sauvignon?
Like everybody makes CabernetSauvignon and like what can you
already do something interestingand new about Cabernet
Sauvignon?
What is there to you know?
What can we make new about it?

What's new?

So he's like.
But this Cabernet Sauvignon isvery special, so, if you want,
we can open a bottle of Cabernet.
You can taste the Cabernet.
I'll introduce you to the otherthree red wines that I have
from 2023.
There's the Merlot, which Ihadn't opened a bottle for at
least two months.
I had no reason to open onebecause I don't also, when

(39:14):
people come by, I usually don'trefer them to the Merlot because
I thought that it needed moretime but I did open one,
actually last week, and it wasactually a second wine that I
opened.
At first we were drinkingsomething else and, um, it was
actually a second wine that Iopened.
At first we were drinkingsomething else, uh, and then,
and it was, it was amazing, itwas really amazing, uh.
So maybe it is ready to todrink.

(39:36):
The other two red wines I haveare blends.
So there's my flag wine that Iwould say my, the flagship wine
of the winery, which I callYoshfe.
It's a blend of Cabernet, syrahand Petit Verdot, and I perfect
.
Every year that goes by, Iperfect it a little bit more, do

(39:59):
something a little bitdifferent, until I finally reach
the final, you know.

What do you look for from that wine?
What's special about it?

I wanted to, so this wine is a wine that I
want to represent the blessingthat's going on here in this
region.
And what's special about blendis really when you're trying to
get all you know composition ofdifferent, attributes of each,
you know different.
Each variety, each variety, andso that's what's so good about

(40:28):
this, and I'm trying to bringthat to its peak, to its
potential, because when youdrink Cabernet, so you could
taste it's a Cabernet, andCabernet represents its terroir
very, very authentically.
Wherever you raise the Cabernet, it's going to present that
specific terroir.
You raise four or fiveCabernets in different parts of

(40:51):
Israel.
You're going to get same,exactly same yeast, same brick,
same vase, same barrel, sameeverything.
You're going to end up withfour different wines.

Yeah.

But so what I'm trying to do here with the
blend is for it to representauthentically the way that each
variety grows, specifically here, and I'm trying to the wine.
And then you're drinkingbasically oak juice.

So these are new barrels or old barrels.

I do different things with the barrel Also.
I work with old barrels and Ialso work a little bit with
chips I'm not ashamed of it no,no no.
Okay, I think it's a greatthing.
Bit with chips.
I'm not ashamed of it.
I think it's a great thing oakchips, and what's so good about
it is that you can reallycontrol what you're doing.
You can know much better and Iknow big wineries.

(41:59):
I won't go into names, butthere are big wineries that use
a lot of chips and the wholebarrel thing is more of like a
play.

There's two reasons to use oak.
One is to impart flavor but theother is oxygenation, it's true
.
So you don't get theoxygenation, but you get the.

So it's a question.
What I've seen over the yearsand I don't have so much
experience like big winemakers,but what I do see is that in
certain types of vats, the valveis not.
It's not.
The valve is not, it's notcompletely sealed, right, okay,
so the oxidation that goes on,it may be, you know.

(42:44):
So you get, the part of thewine that's near the valve is
getting more and less, but inthe end it does get mixed.
Maybe what I'm saying is nottrue, yeah, but I'll tell you
something about this before.
I is that in the time that'sgone by and I'm trying to look
into these things more and more,what happens is that I that

(43:04):
sometimes I go to professionals,that I really think of them as
professionals, people fromYa'aqib Shiloh or Yeshividuri,
for instance and I go to themand I tell them listen, what's
going to happen if I do this andthis and this?
Right, and in the end I getanswers like, really we don't

(43:26):
know, because nobody actuallydoes that, because we don't
check, because we don't believein doing things like that,
because it's not….

It's not the operation, it's not the
procedure, it's not the way wedo things Right.

It's not.
How do you say masogati it'snot traditional.

Yes.

So we don't do that and I don't know to give
you a correct answer, because wedon't do that.
So they don't know.
So these are some gray areashere where the professionals
don't research because nothing'sgoing to come out of it for
them.
So I don't know I'm gettinggood results with what I do.

(44:05):
So I don't know I'm gettinggood.
I'm getting good, good resultswith what I do.
So why?
You know why not?

And it's also you're being creative, you're
trying to express your owncreativity.
Exactly what did you get?
Any training in wine, makingwine.

So I'll tell you about my history in
winemaking in wine making wine,so I'll tell you about my
history in wine making.
There's one more wine.
I didn't tell you I'll tell youabout one more wine, and then
I'll change topics.

Good, no problem .

So the last wine that I make is I was how do
you say, a mixafti.

I don't know.
I'm sorry.

No, I was introduced.
I was introduced to thisvariety of grape, argaman, oh
sure, so a lot of people havenever heard of Argaman, which is
a shame, and I figured out thatthis is a….

It's very hard to deal with, but yes, it's hard
to deal with and it's verywatery.

It has an amazing color, but it's and I
said to myself, why aren'tpeople raising this grape more?
You know, using this grape,people use it for color but and
so I sort of developed this winethat I was able to produce in a
large portion in 2023.
It's a little hard also to getyour hands on this Argaman,

(45:24):
because it's a little hard alsoto get your hands on this
Arigaman because it's a little,so not a lot of people raise it.
So I was able to get my hands onsome and I made a wine that I
call Khoshen A whole explanationon the bottle, you can read it
if you want and it's a blendbased on Arigaman, but I bring

(45:47):
some Cabernet Merlot and thisyear I also added a bit of
Shiraz, also for the more youknow, for flavor and for body,
and so that's my other one, andI do add a little bit more oak
in this one for people that likethat aspect of the wine.

Okay, let's try the reds.

So you're going to put this just over the
Good.

That's good.

Okay, so which one should we start with?
Whatever, personally, I thinkwe should start with the
Cabernet.

Go, let's try.

Let's start with the Cabernet.
Go, let's try.
Let's start with the Cabernet.
I also.
I should have bottles withlabels in English, but they're
somewhere deep there in thebottom.


No, I know, I'm just saying every time I
think they're buried there inthe bottom for some reason.
But you know this whole thingwith the who designed the label.
Oh, so the label.
So what happened was that I,you know, it started to grow.
You have to get normal labels.
At first, the labels were liketerrible at first and like

(46:58):
stickers.
I was sticking stickers on myhand and so what happened is I,
you know, I developed a logo forthe wine, a name and a logo.
And then I went to a graphicartist and I asked her how much
she's going to charge me.
She told me, just for the logo,like 2,500 shekels.
So I said to myself, I'm notthat type of person.

(47:20):
I'm an auto-deduct.
We do things here ourselves.
I was homeschooled ever since Iwas a kid.
People ask me how do you havetime to learn to do all this
stuff?
How do you listen?
I didn't go to school.
I didn't waste my time inschool.
I had plenty of time to learn,right?
If you want to tell you moreabout my history, ask me about
my history where.
I was working in wineriesery asa kid instead of going to

(47:43):
school.
And so I said to myself listen,2,500 shekels, I can.

That's a lot of money.

I can buy my wife a laptop and she'll do it.
So that's what we did.
So I bought her a laptop.
I should have bought her a moreexpensive one, but I bought her
one for 2,500 shekels and Itold her what I want and she
worked, you know, on Canva, andthis is what we did.
This is the first time that wedid it with the machine.

(48:11):
You know you turn it by hand.

Right.

So this is the first time that it came out
like this, and we have where toyou know, advance to a little
bit, but this is what came out.
This year we hope to do it evenbetter.
This is the Cabernet.

Wow, this is the Cabernet Sauvignon.
It's pretty fruity.
Yeah, it's very fruity.
It's very good, it's very good,very interesting.

Not typical.

This is what year?
This is 2023.
This is 2023.
Wow.

So it's a bit young but it's.
People have this thing with oldwines, with aging wine, and
what I tell people that comehere.
You know this is one of themost asked questions that people
ask me.

How old will it age?

Aging and aging and aging.
And I tell them listen.
No, I tell them listen, I havethis whole thing.
Wine is like a human being.
It's the same exact thing andeverything depends on a lot, a
lot of different perimeters.
Right Perimeters, notperimeters.

Perimeters.

Yeah, you're okay.
So it depends first of all ongenealogy.
Just like a human, it dependson the genealogy where the vine
came from and then where youplanted it, just like a human
you take that most amazing humanbeing with the biggest
potential.
You plant it in a badneighborhood.
You're not going to get a goodhuman Same idea with the grape.

(49:52):
You have to plant a good soil,good terroir, and it grows and
you have to prune it a bit andmake sure that it grows in the
right direction and you water it, fertilize it, give it, give it
a lot of, you know, a goodenvironment and it grows.
And then you get grapes.
Okay, then you have, you have,like the, you get the actual,
the human being develops intosomething.

(50:13):
And then you have these grapesthat have a potential to be
turned into something and youtake the grapes and you crush
them a bit, just like a humanneeds to be a little pressured,
you know, a little crushed, alittle crushed, and it goes
through fermentation and, justlike a human, when it's young,
like a small child, developsvery, very fast.
You look at it one week and youcome back the next week.

(50:33):
It's going to be completelydifferent.
Same thing with a wine when it'syoung and when it's in the vat
and fermenting, it moves very,very fast Every hour.
You're going to come back.
It's going to be different.
Things are going to behappening in the fermentation
and changing all the time anddeveloping and moving, and
moving, and moving.
And then you press it andsqueeze it and you get out the

(50:54):
good part, you get out the juiceand you throw out the bad part,
and then you end up with thewine and things start coming
down and they move a little bitslower, just like a human.
When it gets a little bit olderthey move a little bit slower,
but it becomes wiser and withmore depth.
And then, if you behavedcorrectly you protected it from

(51:18):
bacteria, from oxygen, from badthings, bad influences from the
outside, from oxygen, from badthings, bad influences from the
outside then you end up with ahuman or a wine that has a
potential to age correctly andbecome a productive good
something.
When they're older it's thesame thing, so it doesn't matter

(51:39):
a lot on the potential of whatyou started with.
And then you can talk aboutaging and some wines are not
good, they're not meant to beyou know Age, yeah no.
Enjoy it the way it is yeah.
And that it's not going todevelop, it's not going to go
anywhere.
And then you have wines thatare that that much more of what

(52:01):
they are now.
They're going to be productive,they're going to be amazing for
the next.
So that's.
I like to age every wine that Imake.
I put aside a certain amount sothat I will.
It's a learning process for meto learn how much can you write
down what you're tasting andwhat it tastes like?

(52:23):
You have to remember what it?
was and what it tastes like.
You have to remember what itwas and what it became.
Oxidation open a bottle andthen leave it open for another
half a day or a day and thencome back the next day and taste
it and see how it developed.
It's an ongoing process.

(52:45):
It never ends.

Yeah, it's very interesting.
Tell me, what should we tastenext?

So maybe the flagship one, I don't know.

Let's taste it, let's try it.
Okay, yeah.
Let's move it on it's sobeautiful up here the vineyards
are asleep, but what's on top ofthat?

it looks like a chuppah there's a pergola
there but, yeah, it's like amitzvah, like a, but really.
But yeah, it's like a mitzvah,like a lookout, but really the
mountain over there, if you lookon the side of it, the whole
other side of the mountain isalready developed.
That's Achia.

Oh, that's Achia .

Yeah, so they're developing over there
and one day there's going to bea lot of buildings over there.
That's what the at least themoatzah here is planning to
build a lot over there.
That's what the at least theMu'atza here, you know is
planning to build a lot, a lotof they're planning to.
There's going to be a lot ofbuilding going on after the
Hazdara, you know.

What's that over there to the that's.

Achia.

That's Achia, so that's stretching.

Yeah, they're very big, they're like wow, wow.
Yeah, so there's so thatmountain, and the next mountain
is also supposedly theirs.
So what's going to happen thenwith Eshkodesh?
It's supposed to be legalized.

Okay.

We had a little bit of a fight with the
Mu'azzawit about how many peopleto stuff in the area over here.
Right, we wanted you know lesspeople and you know more spread
out, but we got over it, wefinished the fight and now
that's it.
So I'm gonna wash out the cup abit and I'm interested to hear

(54:54):
what you have to say about thisone, because this is a blend.
It's a blend of kabarneh sirahand kativerdor.

Okay, this is really lovely.
It's really nice.

All three of the varieties were raised in
Emek Shiloh, like in the ShilohValley, which has the whole Tuba
story with the maidens overthere and yeah, this is sort of
bringing Bordeaux to Israel.

(55:38):
There's a whole theory withChez Biduri that maybe the
varieties, the top varietiesthere in France, originated
maybe here in Israel.

In Choliot.

From the, you know, from the time of the
Horban Beit HaMikdash.

And the last one was the Merlot.

Yeah, the last one was the Merlot.

These are what.
These are olive trees.

No, so, sadly enough, these are enough.
You can see, these aregrapevines.

Oh the grapevines, the bottom ones On
the top there's a little bit ofolive.

These are grapevines that were uprooted
because of Bagats.
The Supreme Court order.

Really.

They were owned by Meshach Achiyah over
there in the north.
So they told them either we'regoing to come with the police
and uproot it or uproot ityourself.
So they said, oh, we'll uprootit ourselves.
They uprooted it and nowthey're.
It's not like the arab came andstarted cultivating the land.
Nobody's gonna let the arabnear there.

(56:33):
They're, they're there.
So now they, they raise um,like yearly, I think, like hay
and uh, okay, stuff like that,like so you use it for firewood.
Yeah, because the electricitysituation here is not, because
Eshkolish is not completelylegal at the moment yet, so we
don't have real electricity here.

We sort of that's why you only have two,
that's why you only have onephase.

There is three phases here, but it's not like
they all work.
They're not going to all workat the same level.
You can use three phases here.
I just I don't have personallyin my house at all, also I don't
have.
So what happened is that the wepulled the electricity from
achia and they pulled theircable from shul and they pulled

(57:18):
the cable from, so until itactually gets here and we we get
like a little trickle ofelectricity and when people are
actually using the logistics,like on friday, you really do
not have enough power.
Like you're supposed to havetwo 220 volts in your in your
socket you can have sometimes160 appliances don't work.
People send on the whatsappgroup, you know, shut off

(57:39):
everybody, shut off oneappliance so that we can bake
for shabbos and take a shower,and uh, and we have the same
size cable that we had back whenthere was like 40 families and
now we're past 100 and something110 or I think.
I don't know something likethat.
The situation is going toimprove, hopefully soon, and we

(58:00):
do.
You know we deal with what wehave.

This is definitely more low.
This is what year 2023.
This is definitely more low.
This is what year 2023.

This is 2023.

This needs to settle Right.
This really needs to settledown a bit.

So that's why I tell also people when they
come by.
They ask me what's wine?
I say, listen, let's leave it.
Come back next year, we'lltaste it more.

Okay.

Actually I enjoyed it very much as a second
one, like after I had a steakwith the, with the cabernet, and
then we had um, where I openedthe bottle very often it depends
on the company.

If the company is good, it's amazing what the?
Straight.
No, the wines.
The wines taste better withgood company Ah, you mean with
the people.
Yeah, the people make a bigdifference.
Yeah, I like this, this, this.
You really need to keep the age.
You were right, didn't you needto let it settle a bit more?
This is delicious, though.

(59:00):
They were there.
Yeah, they're all they all are,but this one is really special.
So this one sells for $180?
.

No $150.

$150, $150, $150 .

But because I don't you can tell the situation
.
I don't have so much room forstorage.

Right so.

I tell people, listen, if you want, you can
buy and store it yourself,Because if I age it for you,
you're going to pay for it.

And I'm going to raise the price at some point.

There's one more wine.
Also there's my port.
I don't know if you'reinterested in tasting.
I put most of the port intoaging for a little bit longer in
oak barrels.
But there's a few that there'slike.
I think like 50 bottles of 500liters, 500 milliliters, that
didn't fit in the barrel for the.
I think like 50 bottles of 500liters, 500 milliliters, that I
that I that didn't fit in the inthe in the barrel for the

(59:48):
continuation.
I bottled them and we'reworking on the labels at the
moment.
But if you want, you can openthem up.
I could taste it also If you'reinterested in the port.

Do you have any crazy wines we haven't tasted?

Yaakov Ben Moshe (01:00:01):
Crazy.

S. Simon Jacob (01:00:01):
Do you have any crazy wines?
We haven't tasted the port.
What the port?

Okay, I personally think it's very
unique.

You know what I'll taste it?
I'll taste it as well.

Okay, Okay.
So there's the yeah.
So that's, we're working on thelabels now.

Okay, I brought the me now Okay.

I brought the mechitot and let me wipe them
off a bit here I'll pour you,and then I'll let's do this.
So I was able to find you a fewyoshfes with English labels.

Okay, good, which is amazing.

I didn't know where they were.
I didn't know they were there,but I guess I.

Great.

Okay, so in this port, Al-Yustan, what I
call- is.
I also use the argaman.
Oh cool, so you've got anamazing color here.
Look at this and yeah.

Wow, wow, these are great.

It's fortified , but it's not too strong.

This is like 14.1%.
Wow, I'm glad I tried this.

What do you call it Alustan-Yustan?
You wanted me to tell you abouthistory.
No, how I got.

I want to know that too.

So basically I was raised as a homeschooler in
the States.
When we made Aliyah, we movedto Israel.
Your family was religious inthe states when we made aliyah,
we moved to israel.

I, your family, was religious in the states yeah
, my, my parents are okay.

Um, so we, we, when we made aliyah, I was uh,
I was homeschooled, which is uh,whatever, it's a whole the, the
, the authorities uh actuallyshowed up at our house and
started threatening my mother toenroll us in school.
And she told them listen, webasically, you know, we saw the

(01:02:15):
Kotel, we were at the IsraelMuseum and, if you want, you can
deport us, but we're not, youknow, we're homeschooling.
So they harassed us every, youknow, first of September.
They would harass us a littlebit, whatever, but at the end of
the day, I was homeschooled, Ihad a lot of time on my hands
and there was a winery in Takorwhere I grew up, and there was a

(01:02:37):
French guy there named DovLevy-Neymond who had made Aliyah
from France and he invested hiswhole life in planting vineyard
over there and he dug also awinery under his house and I
didn't understand very muchabout wine back then, but for me
it was cool, like working inthe winery, people that would

(01:02:59):
taste the wine would say thatthe wine, you know, a lot of
times I would hear them sayingthat the wine is like, not
bitter, like, not bitter, like.
Yeah chamut yeah chamut, butwhatever, it wasn't even
important to me.
Like I was working at thiswinery and he wanted to have a
hashgachal, so he wanted to bekosher.
He wasn't Shomer Shabbos.
So the mashgiach told himlisten, you're not Shom

(01:03:24):
HaShabbos.
So I ended up being the workerand the mashgiach.
At age 14, and I was working inthis one, I found myself
sometimes working for like 10-12hours a day bottling.
You know romotaj?
I remember him screaming at mein French right romotaj in
French.
Batan screaming at me in Frenchright T'as fait romotage,

(01:03:45):
romotage in French means mixingthe Batanage.

They call it batanage, batanage and romotage.

Yeah, it's the same thing and mixing it and
one time he had me jumpinginside the vat with peels like a
huge vat in my underwear.
In order to what you call it,in order to break it, to break
the cap, yeah, the cap and Ifell into the cap up to my
armpit and then I whatever withthe carbon dioxide.

It would kill you.
That's what I'm telling youabout this.
You need to have ventilation.

No, no, it was crazy.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to haveto die.

You can actually die.

Yeah, yeah no.
And then there was water in thefaucet to wash myself off
afterward.
There's this whole thing,whatever, this old, crazy french
guy.
But that's how I fell in lovewith, with making wine and um,
and he also gave me a lot of, uh, you know an idea, you know to
dig under your house yeah so.
So that's how I.
And then, at some point I went,I saw an advertisement.

(01:04:40):
They were looking for workersin carmel mizrahi and in zikron
for the summer for the harvest.
They gave us this whole thing,this whole lecture you can live
here.
And I ended up.
I told them, okay, I'm going tocome by and work.
And they told me, basically,when you show up, we were like
35, 40 people that showed up towork for the summer and they

(01:05:03):
said, if you leave early beforewe release you, then you're
signing here a paper that yougive up half of half of your
salary, of your salary.
And in the end, and and I foundmyself in zikron on the top of
the 12, 12, 12 meter vats okay,high up in the sky, and my job

(01:05:28):
was, instead of a machine doingthis, my job was to, every
couple of hours, open up the vathuge vats I'm talking about
like I don't know how many cubesand the trucks would.
I would see the trucks under mepouring the grapes into the pit
.
You know, the same pit thatthey used since 18, who knows
what.
They just added a snail into itand they're sucking the grapes

(01:05:49):
in.
The trucks would come and pourthe grapes in and then do the
crush and it would go into thevat.
And my job was to, every coupleof hours, open the vat and look
and see what level it's at and,when it reaches the right level
, to close the faucet for thisvat and open the closet for the
next one.
Because why don't, why don'tthey have a machine doing this

(01:06:11):
or a computer or something?
Because one time they did haveone and and and it didn't work
and they had grapes pouring overthe pouring all over the all
the top.
They didn't want it to happen,so it was worth it for them to
pay me this crazy salary of Idon't know what it was six 7,000
shekels, which is like nothingfor sitting there for all this
time wasting my time doingnothing.

Were you on at least a catwalk or you had to
climb a ladder.

No, no, I was on a catwalk, oh, okay.
And I was sitting therelearning Torah, listening to the
radio, you know, and I lovelearning philosophy.
I was learning Rambam, whichwas amazing, but it was like
boring, like I want to dosomething.

Super boring.

And also I saw a few accidents happening there
during that summer.
Somebody got caustic sodapoured on him.

Wow.

They have, thank God.
He knew what he was doing andthey have these emergency
showers just for this reason,and he jumped into the emergency
shower and he was doing, andthey have these emergency
showers just for this reason,and he jumped into the emergency
shower and he was saved.
Some other guy a pump fell onhis leg and broke his leg and I
figured I don't want to work inthe big industry, I want to do
something small.

(01:07:18):
So that's one of the reasonsthat I'm just living here this
potential of goldmine, of makingprize-winning wines.

Everywhere you look is vineyards.
It's unbelievable here.
It's unbelievable.

So how can I not make wine?

Right, I love it .
I love it.
This is great.
This is beautiful, thank you.
Thank you for letting me talkto you and come and visit you
here in Eshkodesh.
This is an amazing place.
Baruch Hashem Pleasure.
This is Simon Jacob, again yourhost of today's episode of the

(01:08:05):
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.
Please subscribe via yourpodcast provider to be informed
of our new episodes as they arereleased.

(01:08:26):
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