The Evolving Landscape of Kosher Wines with Honest Grapes' Nathan Hill

S. Simon Jacob: 0:09

Welcome to The Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Before we get started, I ask that, wherever you are, please take a moment and pray for the safety of our soldiers and the safe return of all of our hostages. Only on very rare occasions do I feel left out as I miss a special wine event. Such an occasion occurred last January 22nd in the home of Richard and Hannah Davidoff, my good friends from the UK. Nathan Hill, co-founder and chairman of Honest Grapes, hosted a tasting of a flight of their kosher releases from Burgundy and Bordeaux, side by side with barrel and tank samples from their latest vintages and process. These incredible kosher releases from historic Chateaus with pedigrees such as Pommard, Volnay, and Puligny- Montrachet are among the peak kosher French wines ever produced.

S. Simon Jacob: 1:19

I had to know more about this. I had to look into what was going on in the kosher UK wine world and who was this? Nathan Hill and his company, honest Grapes. The following is my conversation with Nathan, an incredibly interesting personality with such a multifaceted background that truly surprised me with his breadth and especially his depth of wine knowledge. If you're commuting in your car, please focus on the road and enjoy. If you're home, please choose a delicious kosher wine. Sit back and listen in on this detailed, educational wine conversation. So, first of all, welcome to the Kosher Terroir. I was told about some of the interesting things that you do and I found some of them on the internet and I wanted to talk to you about it.

Nathan Hill: 2:13

Thank, you Thanks for reaching out.

S. Simon Jacob: 2:15

Pleasure. So, but first of all, you're based in the UK.

Nathan Hill: 2:21

That's why I'm based in London.

S. Simon Jacob: 2:23

How did you get started in this? I mean, where did the dream start? How did you end up in this cushy, easy wine job, which I know it isn't? I'm only kidding. Obviously it's crazy. I know it's a crazy world.

Nathan Hill: 2:40

Yes, I have a very different background for a wine person. Firstly, I'm Jewish. I'm not from, but I'm Jewish. I grew up in North London as a nice guy from Muswell Hill. I went to Cartmore College for seven years which was the only Jewish boarding school in Europe, I think at the time and then I went to Oxford University and became a physicist and I've spent most of my life in technology and I became a managing director of part of Oxford Instruments which makes scientific and analytical equipment. I work in space technology, I invest in satellites, so rocket science is my day job and I divide my life nowadays between space technology, my wine business and other investments and stuff I get involved with. So I have a very different background. Literally I'm a geek. I can spend most of the day looking at a little piece of laser physics that's going to go on some satellite mission or the James Webb Space Telescope. I've got technologies and all sorts of things like that.

Nathan Hill: 3:52

But how I got into wine was I lived in Germany working as a salesman back in the 1980s West Germany selling scientific equipment and it just happened that I lived in a town called Wiesbaden which was right near the wine and mine rivers, and it just happened. I landed up in one of the best places in the world for the production of Riesling and H Vape-Berbunder-Genoir wines, and I was bored and lonely. As a 20-year-old, I was trying to practice my German. I used to go down to the river and meet wine makers and drink wine, go to wine festivals, and that's how I got into German wine at first. When I moved back to the UK, I started to learn about Bordeaux and then Burgundy and I did my Wine and Spirits Education Trust, my WSET exams as an amateur, started to build a collection of Burgundy German wines, did all my exams and then in 2014, when I was already sort of being an angel investor investing in deep technology, quantum technology, aerospace and space and stuff like that, I just had this realization that the way that the merchants were selling me wine was really snooty and elitist and old fashioned and I wanted to do something internet based and I had this idea about setting up a wine club. And the wine club would be like the very best old fashioned London merchants the guy with the apron who would welcome you, give you a taste of some wine and then sell you some nice wine to take home. And I had experience of shopping from those places. But when I wanted to buy wine, seriously, I was looked down on. You know, you're not spending enough with us, you can't get this wine unless you buy that wine, and the people were all 20, 30 years older than me and just it was an environment I didn't want to be in.

Nathan Hill: 5:55

So I got together with the guy who I learned about Italian wine from, whose name's Tom Harrow and Tom. I came about through an article in the London Evening Standard, which is like the three metro newspaper. That's on the subway in London, and when I moved back to London in 2008, something like that I saw this article with this fancy guy with city suits who was talking all about Italian wine and I thought, oh, I want to learn about Italian wine. So I booked. He was doing a set of tastings in central London, doing different Italian wines with Italian food, and I booked a series of these tastings with them, took my friends along and then won the clock forward from 2008 to 2014, when I had the idea of the wine club. Tom was the natural go-to guy to talk with about him. We had the idea in March 14, and we set up honest grapes on the 1st of September 14. So we're just coming. You know we're well into our 10th year now as a business.

S. Simon Jacob: 6:57

So it's called honest grapes.

Nathan Hill: 6:59

That's honest grapes. So honest grapes is a wine club. We now have several thousand members. We're different from the old fashioned merchants in that you join our club you get privileged access to wines as they come out. We've got a nice range of wines online. We do loads of events well over 100, sometimes even 200 events in a year and we just try and make it fun for people. So it's very much about the thrill of wine, the experience on the farm, and we're not predominantly a kosher wine business at all.

Nathan Hill: 7:37

So the kosher project came along because we were already doing what we call club projects. We were buying barrels of burgundy at the Ostwieste Nuit and the Ostwieste Bern the least production of just under one hectare of San Tamiya Gongkru to make a wine called Quante Labri which we've made for, I think, six vintages. And we've done this in South Africa, in the US, finding special club wines that might be a charity auction, might just be a special label their wines we'd offer to our club members and we'd tie that together with having tours and events and tastings and stuff like that. And partly through my own Jewish heritage, partly because we had some Baltish Ruba club members who wanted to offload their non-kosher wine. I don't want to call it non-kosher wine, but that's a lot of kosher wine.

Nathan Hill: 8:37

And to buy kosher wine from us. They were asking us where could they buy wine of similar quality that they didn't seem to be able to buy for themselves in the UK, and so the kosher project started with me taking the special projects, the club wines we were making in Bordeaux that we'd started in 2015, only a year after we started the business and doing a kosher production run from 2017, 2018 and 2019 as a three-year kosher production run. So I worked with Robert Kiefer Padwer, the deputy Rochebeth din at Kosher London here in London. We found Mashkeev's showmores to do the work in Bordeaux, and the big challenge, the huge thing for us was to find projects where it would be brilliant wine that was up to our standards and where we'd persuade the winemaker that it was worth the fuss and worth the nuisance, as it were, of making kosher wine. But it had to be winemaker-led, so the phrase we used for them was great wine that happens to be kosher rather than kosher wine, and so a lot of the time that I spent setting it up was in selecting the winemakers to work with, finding the right showmores and then working with KLBD to get the right partnership where we'd have something that felt comfortable, because it's a big nuisance.

Nathan Hill: 10:10

These are well-known winemakers. They can easily sell their wine, so for them to do a kosher project, they needed the trust from Honest Grape, from Tom and myself. They needed the right showmores to work with and they needed to feel that it was going to be a wine that customers would enjoy. And so 2017, 18, 19 was our first three years of Bordeaux production, and then in 2020, those were with Jonathan Maltes, a famous British winemaker in southern ER White Bank of Bordeaux. In 2020, I managed to persuade a brilliant Domain de Montee, etienne de Montee, in Burgundy, who we've been working with as a business since we started, to start doing a kosher production run. So now we're making kosher wine in Bordeaux and Burgundy.

S. Simon Jacob: 11:03

Wow. So what attracted me and what started me down the path of looking at Honest Grape was the Burgundy tasting that you did with a group of people in London.

Nathan Hill: 11:20

I was in Heddon Right.

S. Simon Jacob: 11:25

And I looked jealously on because I couldn't get to Heddon and they're all a bunch of buddies through what they call the RCC, which is the Rosh Kodesh clubs.

Nathan Hill: 11:36

Yes.

S. Simon Jacob: 11:37

And there must be some incredible stories that you've encountered through this project, that issues that you've run into. I mean, maybe you don't wanna speak about them, but I'm just wondering actually, kudos to Yesi Horowitz for the RCC. I'm sorry.

Nathan Hill: 11:56

Yeah, my first exposure to the Roche Hodesh Club. We started to produce the Bordeaux wine for some of our existing club members and then quickly realized we'd had too much wine so I needed to find some more people who'd be interested in it, because I'd committed, I'd underwritten three years of production and so we started to advertise it and actually it was quite. We found the London Roche Hodesh Club people and people from all over the place that had got interested, but fortunately some of the guys from the London Roche Hodesh Club invited me to come along and present our wines. I live in Hampstead, which is northwest London, and they're in Glühendon again, just a couple of miles north of me, so I went and presented the wines and this would have been I can't remember now maybe 2019, something like that, and they were a friendly bunch. They're very welcoming. What's most important, of course, is they actually bought some wine. There's no making it without anybody buying it and drinking it, and because we're selling the wine mostly as a crowdfund, so we're selling it.

Nathan Hill: 13:05

Well, at the time we were harvest, or at least on Primers so people would be able to have the confidence both in terms of our financial viability that we'd actually deliver it and in terms of cash for us that we'd look after it and make sure of the brilliant wine. And so the people were very welcoming, fortunately. They placed some orders. I underwrote the projects and it sort of grown from there. In fact we called the meeting a few weeks ago. I think it must have been two or three weeks ago. Now we called a lot to the Rochefaudesh Club because it wasn't the Rochefaudesh Sibbon, it was two weeks after. How that actually originated was. It's now early February 2024, of course we're in the Burgundy-Enfremers season, the sales of the new season of Burgundy, in fact Burgundy 22,.

Nathan Hill: 14:01

And Etienne de Montt kindly sent his son, louis but also two samples of each of the Kosher Burgundies over to London for our big Enfremers tasting at 67 Palmale, to the wine club in the centre of London. Long story, it was actually held 100 yards down the road from there. That's not the story. And Louis turned up with these bottles and I said I'm not gonna have all my Kosher customers here, I'm gonna save one of them, one of each sample. And what happened between the Tuesday and the following Monday was I got samples flown over from well couriered over from Bordeaux from our production there and they were actually waiting to be picked up but weren't in transport yet. Kindly, one of our club members who'd already got his 2021s delivered they had just arrived, so he got his cases out of the storage so that we would have the 21s to compare with. So I actually had 18 different Kosher wines only from our two producers as a unique tasting, and we had David Rackler flying in from San Francisco on the way to 10 o'clock.

S. Simon Jacob: 15:14

It looked absolutely awesome.

Nathan Hill: 15:17

We had customers. We had a couple of people, I think, from Israel flew in for the evening and we had sort of 30-something people. Literally we got that within five days from the Tuesday, six days from the Tuesday to the next Monday. We had a will of the time. The Roscoe Desch Club guys very kindly hosted us and arranged some chef we've got canapes and stuff like that and so we were able to taste all the wines completely unique tasting. It was marvelous for me because for me it's a labor of luck. You know the Kosher wine project is a passion for me, to do it right and to get a wonderful Kosher wine that people don't seem to be able to find elsewhere.

S. Simon Jacob: 16:00

You can see that if you produce a product, there's certainly a passionate group of guys, and I can tell you that that passion spreads even more so globally. We've got an incredible group here in Israel. The London group is renowned as being, you know, just really special people. And in the US, all across the United States, there's their groups that are just spectacular so and they're very, very motivated, very, very driven wine drinkers and wine tasters.

Nathan Hill: 16:38

So it's yeah, and these are definitely high-end wines. They're not for everybody yet, but in a tasting by professional critics who neither know nor care about kushers or what that means in terms of our way of life and our customs, all of those wines will get in the mid to high 90s scores from professional critics and they do. People like Alan Meadows have reviewed the 2020 Kosher production from De Monte. The Kosher production of our Ponte Lappie has been reviewed by James Suckling and others many times, so I'm proud of them as wines.

S. Simon Jacob: 17:23

This is fantastic. Which is fantastic? Absolutely fantastic. Have things come about differently than you expected at the beginning? Were there any big surprises as you were going?

Nathan Hill: 17:35

through this yeah, probably two sets of surprises On the production side. You know wine makers. I'll probably get in trouble for saying this. Ok, but wine makers are like Prima Donna Ballerina's.

S. Simon Jacob: 17:55

I don't think you get in trouble for saying it, because everybody knows that.

Nathan Hill: 18:00

Sometimes fitting their heads through a normal-sized door and their ego through a normal-sized warehouse door, and actually that's unfair.

Nathan Hill: 18:08

But wine makers are naturally the ones we work with, are naturally fastidious. They're brought onto the concept that we go to them with of producing a wine that's of their quality. You know, if you look at Jonathan Maltes in Bordeaux, he's won 100 points twice for his L'Adome and 99 points once. As a British guy with a Scottish wine maker, neil White, in Bordeaux, you know he's poking a few eyes, as it were, in the Bordeaux scene, but we have made Kosher L'Adome 2020. We've made a single vineyard, garagiste, chateau, ponte, lagri as Kosher production for several years. And these are fantastic wines and the production of them, the winemakers, are fastidious. There's a level of adaptation of the recipe they follow to make one that works in terms of the chomering, the demands of making sure that the number of visits of the chomers is manageable in terms of the number of visits they have to make and the cost of it, getting the wine right and getting it to be of the same quality as the not-Kosher production. There's been a lot of detail, which I've been into, you know, sitting meetings, about how hoses are steamed and how barrels are twirled around to avoid having hermetically sealed and taped to avoid them having to be opened by the regular set of hands. So on the production side, as a wine merchant, I don't normally get involved in the production but actually being involved in it as a physicist, not an organic chemist it's been tremendous education for me. And dealing with the needs and personalities of the winemakers, the chomers, klvd, to make sure everybody is happy. My theory is that happy grapes makes happy wine and so you have to have happy people with a happy grapes making happy wine.

Nathan Hill: 20:15

The other surprise has been on the customer side. I think it's a fact you know that I'm in the UK Jewish community. It's not a large community and the number of people who want to buy kosher wine is smaller than that and the number of people who want to buy high-end kosher wine is smaller than that. So actually dealing with the need to have enough production to be interesting to winemakers naturally led me to need to internationalise the distribution of the wine and, to be honest, that was fairly fast. We sold the projects as crowdfunding, so people need to have the vision and belief in us to commit it to a very early stage. Now we do that with partners in other countries as well. That means it's easier for us to go and justify the production to the winemaker because, again, it's a real nuisance. They wouldn't do it unless they were guaranteed that the production would also.

S. Simon Jacob: 21:16

But now it's great fun. I love it. So you actually reach out to other countries with this, now with honest grapes.

Nathan Hill: 21:27

Yes, that's it. So we've made partnerships in different countries. Up to very recently that wasn't necessary because we just did enough. We made small production runs. But essentially because we're doing this, we really are doing high-end wines, where most of them are made in three barrels, which is maybe 900 bottles. That's group-on-sity. So to spread the chumrain cost, it's more efficient to be making a few more barrels than that, and so we've worked with people in different countries and also distributors.

S. Simon Jacob: 22:01

So how do you do that? Do you do that in the United States? Do you have distribution through the US?

Nathan Hill: 22:07

Yes, so we've worked with Ralph Madder of M&M wineries in New York, who's worked with us on both of the projects in Bordeaux and Burgundy, and that's also enabled us to bring some of his fantastic Italian wine to the UK to go on our website and our pastivist so he's been doing that.

Nathan Hill: 22:30

I think that'll evolve over time. Also, it's a vintage by vintage thing. In 2021, the frost and climatic conditions in Bordeaux meant that our production of Ponte Labry just couldn't happen. There weren't enough drinks, so we actually diverted the production into other directions, and so it's been. These are single vineyard wines, so you can't just manufacture more.

S. Simon Jacob: 22:57

Right? No, no, they're high-end and they're very, very specific. I didn't realize. I should have realized because I know Ralph has been, Dr Madab has been bringing some incredible wines into the US and I didn't in my own mind I hadn't put that together, but that makes a lot of sense.

Nathan Hill: 23:22

Simple numbers. There's a larger from community in New York. There is in the whole of the UK Right by long.

S. Simon Jacob: 23:31

Right? No, it's important Finding that distribution is just an important thing to do. So very good. What sort of plans do you have for the future? Anything that you can discuss about new projects or new plans that you're trying to implement?

Nathan Hill: 23:55

At this very moment. To be honest, it's about doing what we're doing really well. I think that sounds like I'm not ambitious, but the overall Honest Grape's Club has grown a lot over the years. We've gone from being nothing. We've now got several thousand members. We've got 30-odd people in the team. I bought another business a year and a bit ago. So the overall wine business and wine club has done reasonably well. In terms of our kosher production, we do these club projects and where I see opportunities to do more kosher production I'll do it. But at the moment actually to be self-effective. It maybe sounds unambitious but I think making a great range of maltose wines and a great range of de Montee wines I haven't tasted better kosher burgundy and I haven't tasted better right bank bordeaux kosher myself and obviously I'm interested in that and the guy who put the project together. But I sincerely believe they're great wines and people are seeing them for that. So I think at the moment doing that well is most important too.

S. Simon Jacob: 25:06

So you mentioned at the very beginning of the conversation that your beginnings were actually in Germany with Riesling's which have now really come of. Good kosher Riesling's have really come out and I only drink kosher wine so I can't tell you and I can't really compare against non-kosher Riesling's, but there are some fantastic kosher Riesling's that have come out. Any thoughts of going down that path into other countries?

Nathan Hill: 25:42

All I have to say, simon, is get a group of friends to sponsor a barrel or two and I'll find the winemaker to do it. I've got lots of contacts in Germany. I lived there for several years and I love German wine. So, yeah, I mean we do these things on a crowd-funded club basis. So if people come to me and say, nathan, I've really not got a great kosher Moser Riesling that costs about this many euros, pounds, dollars, shekels, whatever, then I'll do it. Absolutely Very cool. The thing that's great about my business partner, tom Harrow obviously he's not on this call, but Tom is absolutely brilliant at spotting great winemakers. My job is to find the right balance where the winemaker will want to do the kosher project from a winemaking and a project at financial perspective.

S. Simon Jacob: 26:38

Have you ever had a project that didn't go the way you wanted it to, and why?

Nathan Hill: 26:45

All the time when you play with, whether you're playing baseball in the US or cricket in the UK. If you claim to have a perfect batting average, you'd probably be a liar. So we've had lots of things go wrong. Yeah, we've had lots of problems, but my job in that sense is, as a project manager, to try and rescue things when they go wrong, to make people happy and in the end to get great wines out of it.

Nathan Hill: 27:17

But, yes, there's loads of times when things are going wrong. Wine is very complex. Wine is very complex. You're bestowed the quality, the acidity, the sucosity, the character of the grapes that God gives you in that particular vintage, in that particular terrarium. You then have to have great wine makers and sell their hands who are going to turn that wine into a fantastic ocean production, and then you've got to have everything right in order to sell it and for people to enjoy it. At the end.

S. Simon Jacob: 27:56

Yeah, there's a number of ifs.

Nathan Hill: 28:01

Yeah, and from the time I'm spending a lot of time explaining to the people in the wineries to myself, the team, who are mostly not Jewish, just explaining to everybody that from the time that grape hits the sorting table to the time the label goes on at the end, those grapes and that wine need to be mothered and modicoddled and treated like your special child. That's going to end up eventually giving somebody a great Friday night supper, but for the time being has to be looked after with loving care. It might be helpful to say a little bit about the selection of the vineyards, Please yes, I would love it. So a keto-cocha wine production on this boutique scale. We're not trying to fill big tanks. We're doing it barrel by barrel, and a barrel is about 300 litres.

Nathan Hill: 28:59

Or a barric in France would be about 225 litres, so about 300 bottles or so from a barrel. And the way we've gone about it is to take the winemaking process both in Bordeaux and in Burgundy and to make small batch, single cuve wines that where in most not in every case, but in most cases the entire cuve will be made as kosher production, or at least identifiable blocks. In Bordeaux, the tradition is generally to take larger areas and blend to get the right style. But our key wines, which have been the single vineyard wines Les Astres in 22, vieux Châtins, mazzarra in 21, le Dome in 2020, and Ponte Labry in 1780-1920. These are essentially single vineyard wines.

Nathan Hill: 29:58

So you have to choose your harvest dates, your picking dates, very carefully to get the Merlot and the Cabinet Franc to be at the right level of ripeness. You choose one picking date or two picking dates so that you're minimizing the amount of exposure. The wine has to not be altogether, as it were. And then you've got to get the fermentation process, one where you would co-ferment the Merlot and Cabinet Franc intelligently in a way that will end up with exactly the right taste at the end of it, which is a slightly different production process from the not-kosher production process because you're trying to manage it with the Moshfiax in an intelligent way for the amount of wine you're producing. In Burgundy the history is very much of terroir, of small plot vineyards, and in five of the eight I think it's five of the eight wines that are produced for us by Damonte, the entire Coupe is now kosher.

Nathan Hill: 30:59

So these are wines where you might have five barrels, eight barrels, three barrels of kosher wine and that's it. The exceptions would be the Bourgogne Blanc, the Bourgogne Rouge and the Nourie Saint-Georges Autorre, which is a larger vineyard where they make a particular part of that to take that off to make the kosher production. So it's not just a process of taking some of the harvest at the time and saying, oh, I'm going to make that kosher. It starts from the planning of which vineyards you're going to work with in order to get the right wine. So it really is quite interesting. It sort of goes down to that level. The point is that meet and in Bourgogne we're getting a Burgundy wine. It's a single vineyard wine, very unusual and pioneered by Jonathan Martus in the mid-90s when he started out with his own in 1996.

S. Simon Jacob: 31:49

It is. That's incredible, incredibly interesting, because one of the methods that they used to take was to just take a piece of the vineyard and only make kosher wine out of that piece of the vineyard. Then there were all sorts of complications as to well, when do you harvest that part of the vineyard? Do you harvest it after the non-kosher, do you harvest it during the non-kosher? Typically it was left to the end Initially. Sometimes it was harvested first. So there was a whole issue of trying to compare them and whether or not they could keep the same standards between the kosher and the non-kosher. So taking a whole vineyard, a single vineyard, gearing it towards just a kosher couvet, is, like it makes a lot of sense, because then you're focused.

Nathan Hill: 32:42

Yeah, exactly what was really interesting in the tasting we did at the Not to the Rojkodesh Club a couple of weeks ago was you get wild vintage variation. Of course, because if you're taking the fruit of one vineyard, the vines have got a year older, there's been differences in climate and weather in that year, but you take what God has given you and you turn that into wine. There's nowhere to hide. You can't throw something else in, you can't blend it. These are low intervention wines without loads of additives and stuff like that. So the vintage variation is absolutely wild between the vintages.

Nathan Hill: 33:19

I was just saying it's a pleasure and actually one thing I've been blessed with in these projects is a run of really good vintages. So, out of all the vintages I've been doing, these projects has been since 2015, told me, a bad year. Since 2015, where a good wine maker couldn't make a good wine Our Bordeaux's in 2017 and 2021, which would be the weakest of those seven years have been absolutely wonderful. In fact, when I meet new clients, I open a bottle of 2017 because they get. I know it can't be that good. It's wonderful.

S. Simon Jacob: 33:55

Awesome, Really fantastic. I was going to ask you whether there were any because of that. Any vintages that were just the bottles were just so surprising.

Nathan Hill: 34:09

God. That's a really interesting question and it's going to be different for each wine. Obviously, for Ponte Labry, which is the 0.98 hectares in Santa Mia, I've been doing the not-cocha since 15 and the cocha since 2017. Of those vintages, 2017 you would have thought would be the weakest, but actually it's pretty good. I've produced a wine that's more restrained in alcohol, about a degree lower, about 13.5, not 14.5, which to me actually is more pleasant. I'm an old-fashioned, old-style drinker in that case.

Nathan Hill: 34:45

Me too. Well, that's a bigger, heavier wine. It was quite. It was a little bit greedy when it was younger but it's now opened out and filled out in the mid-pattern beauty. The 2018 was probably the biggest, fleshiest, most bombastiest year. Much more coffee granules and ganache, dark chocolate and coffee, as well as that sort of cassis fruit.

Nathan Hill: 35:13

The Cabernet Franck is really these really old wines in Ponte Labry, dating from the late forties 47 to 57, I think, with the plantings that had sinktively about a hectare, and then 19 produced a probably the most elegant and classic of the so many years where it sort of got brilliant then all the way through like a velvet, like a plush velvet curtain with gold braid, and you just know that wine's going to last forever and ever. The 2020, very exciting because we made the dome in that year has got the richness of it, is really quite enveloping and, although a solar year, it's produced plush but very generous fruit. 21's a bit too young to see. I know there have been reviews of Kosher 21's saying they're all very disappointing. Actually, I'm pretty pleased and I do cross-test them against, not Kosher ones. I'm pretty pleased. I think the production methods that we're using there's a lot of whole bunch. Use good fermentation temperature. I think it's done well.

Nathan Hill: 36:25

Probably the biggest surprise out of the Bordeaux production would be the white l'Nardien Blanc, which is Sauvignon Blanc, a semi-ar and a bit of muscadale. In the richer years it can be a little bit on the tropical side and the leaner years more somewhat more like a menetous and a bit more steely. I think the 21 and the 22,. The entire production was Kosher, about 10 barrels or so, I think. 11 one year, 10 the other year. I think it got can't remember now some very high scores by the critics people like Suckling was giving. Don't quote me on the score, sorry no no.

Nathan Hill: 37:07

No, it is whatever has got really good reviews for a Bordeaux white. When we had the bottle of 22 the other day, it was absolutely fantastic. Burgundy we've done 2020, 2021 and 2022, three very, very different years. 2020 was a solo year on the rinse was very extractive sorry it was not extractive, it looked extractive. They're very dark even if they're not extractive. The amount of Holbonch used by De Monti was higher in that year. And then 21 was a real mess of a year in terms of production. About 80% of the Premier crew white grapes were lost through this very hard frost from April 4th to April 7th.

Nathan Hill: 37:57

But the whites we got were of extremely high quality racy, acidity, lean and focused. The surprise wine everybody talks about the Prunimarche, of course, because it's amazing, but if you want the absolute spitzer atop of the tree, go for the much more humble Monti Lee, the Monti Lee Premier crew, dioresse. It's absolutely scrumptious and the acidity in that's just gorgeous. And then the most recent year that we've just introduced, the 2022, 2022 Encremaire the reds have got this crunchy, what the French call croquante sort of red fruit, rose petals, gorgeous snubs. And because we've got a Pommar Premier crew, a Volme Premier crew, a Bonne Premier crew and the Nuit Saint-Georges Premier crew, as well as the Bourgogne Rouge. Each terroir is so delineated. You just know that that's a Nuit Saint-Georges.

Nathan Hill: 38:55

You know that's a Pommar you know that's a Volme, you know it's a Bern. The Bourgogne Rouge this year 2022, tastes like a Premier crew, doesn't taste like a regional ride.

Nathan Hill: 39:09

It's got the power and concentration. Very, very elegant year 2022. And then again we've been blessed with three very good white years 2020 for ample nurse generosity, 21 tiny production really messed up all the schedules of what we had available for ourselves and for the US. 2022, the volumes are better. They're not huge, but the volumes are better. And it's a funny year, you know, because it's a low acidity year for burgundy, but you don't really get the low acidity on the taste. You get as much better. You don't get high-racial acidity like 2021, but you get a good acidity on taste, even though technically, as a scientist acidity is only partially there, but actually they taste really great.

S. Simon Jacob: 39:56

The science, your science background really has paid off.

Nathan Hill: 40:01

I'm a geek, I know that I like it.

S. Simon Jacob: 40:05

No, it's kind of funny because you're a geek or a nerd on so many different levels optically with the satellites. But also this is you know, you said you don't have a chemistry background, but you obviously have something going there.

Nathan Hill: 40:32

Oh, I get interested in. You know, the geology of wine, the sociology of wine, the organic chemistry, I think above everything.

Nathan Hill: 40:39

Actually, on a personal level, the fact that I grew up in a not-from-angular Jewish environment in North London, went to a Jewish school for seven years, was from myself for about three of those years and now no longer. I take it very, very seriously. The responsibility of getting a wine that our picture on that is very important to me, that it's a wine that's like a perfect consultancy project, a great wine that happens to be kosher and that people can drink with trust, knowing it's been made as a beautiful wine. And you know these wines will be going on for, you know, 15, 20, 25 years, in many years' time, just like the satellites that James Webb Space Telescope was launched in a year and a bit ago, right.

S. Simon Jacob: 41:33

Is it a year and a bit ago? Yeah, maybe.

Nathan Hill: 41:36

I was involved with the base technologies with it 15 years before. So were my wines. My wines will be drunk in 15 years and even if they don't remember me, they'll remember the taste of the wine and that somebody put the effort into harvesting those grapes. You know, conceive the project harvest the grapes happy, happy, and turn those happy grapes into a happy wine.

S. Simon Jacob: 41:57

Very cool, very cool. It's pouring from me every day, yeah, but I'm sure. I'm sure it's porn for you every day, but I'm sure there's nightmares that proceed that as well sometimes.

Nathan Hill: 42:21

It's a funny industry. It's very different from my technology industry as my main day job, but doing this right gives me a lot of pleasure.

S. Simon Jacob: 42:29

It's wine tasting is subjective as much as people trying to make it try to make it Absolutely. You know, by the numbers, it's still subjective and and that's always difficult when you're trying to meet all the different subjective tastes of different people. So I my hat's off to you, it's, and I'm, I'm extremely jealous that I wasn't there at that, at that tasting, and I really look forward in the future to getting together personally with you Well, whenever you're in you, shall I'm, please, absolutely I'm, I'm smack in the middle of it, I'm. I look out of my windows at the walls of the old city, so I'm really in the middle of Jerusalem. Um, one last, a couple last questions. How does, how, do people get in touch with you? How did they get to To you know? Try your wines or try the club?

Nathan Hill: 43:34

Yeah, yeah. So I'm quite easy, as everybody nowadays. But we're on the internet, so Google honest grapes or honest grapes dot couk. I'm the easiest person in the world to find. Look for Nathan Hill. I'm Nathan dot hill at honest grapes dot couk. I find me and I'll love to tell you all about my wines and do my best to make them available. And to your question about subjectivity, you're perfectly right. You can't know. Wine can make everybody happy. The way I've gone about it is by choosing and persuading, to be honest, to wonderful wine making teams to work with us and we Tom Harrow, my business partner, and I I say we have a house style. There's certain types of wines that we like. We have the courage of our convictions to say this is the style of wine that represents us and that presents our club. And if you don't like it, there are plenty of other places to buy wine.

Nathan Hill: 44:31

You know, in the end it is a subjective thing.

S. Simon Jacob: 44:34

I'm, I'm, really, I'm really especially looking forward to tasting the burgundies, because they're just. You seem to have picked exactly the vineyards that you know a person if a person wanted to track across a group of Wonderful burgundies, that is, those are just spectacular, they're all yeah, yeah and it's, it's.

Nathan Hill: 44:59

It's wonderful that that Etienne de Monte has agreed to work with us on the project. He's had the full site and coverage and he can easily sell his wines, you know, 20 times over he's had the courage to say, yeah, this sounds like a nuisance project but I'll do it. And that comes through the friendships of working with him on the, on the Not kosher production, over many years. Now our club is in its 10th vintage with burgundy and we've been buying him every year. He's seen, he's seen our business grow and he's, you know, absolutely delighted that he's had the full site and courage and his wine makers as well, because they've got all the agrarian, the hard work to do To actually turn the to actually make kosher project.

S. Simon Jacob: 45:45

The percentage of difference between the kosher non kosher. It's about 20% kosher or 10% kosher Compared to your non kosher production.

Nathan Hill: 45:55

Oh, for my business yes yeah, oh, the kosher, the kosher wine is maybe 5% 5%, so Okay. It's important to me and it fits for our club members and sort of style of the things we do.

S. Simon Jacob: 46:11

No, you seem incredibly passionate about it. So that's really, really, that's what makes it work.

Nathan Hill: 46:17

That's what really makes it work, and I mean Even more passionate when I see some do you open up often and enjoy it. Well, that's what we've worked for in the end.

S. Simon Jacob: 46:26

So they were all singing your praises in London from that not an RCC side. They said why don't you reach out to Nathan and speak to him? So I said absolutely let's do it, because, because I Really Honestly missed being there. So, and I'm glad David Rocka got there and some of the others from America and also from even some people from Israel got across.

Nathan Hill: 46:51

So I would, I was so I was so chopped and that we you know, my team and the wine makers pulled together. I've got samples to us and that, you know, over it was, you know, 30 something. People managed to get together on a cold Monday evening in January To actually come and taste the wines. Pretty, you know, pretty unique to be able to taste two vintages of burgundy, literally fresh. You know, one of them still in barrel and tank, the other one just arrived. It literally arrived the week before the import, and so to actually get all of those together and taste them was absolutely wonderful.

S. Simon Jacob: 47:28

Amazing. It's amazing what you pulled off. Really, really special Bravo. That's a bravo.

Nathan Hill: 47:34

One thing I would say, sort of harking back to my own boots, is I went to this wonderful school called Carmel College and by Jeremy Rosen was my headmaster, and our school motto was for hold of a fair card to a and professional. And then I I think Everybody's got different ways of expressing themselves in life and in business, and for me this project is something that's very close to my heart and something I've enjoyed doing, and I hope you're, I hope your listeners, enjoy drinking the wine in the end, because ultimately that's what it's all about as I said, I love your passion and and it sounds like it's coming from an absolutely incredible place and and I really look forward to hosting you here in in Israel the next time you come, and please bring your family.

S. Simon Jacob: 48:26

That's very kind of you, thank you anytime, anytime, but I'm gonna wish you a Shalomu brachah from Jerusalem and it's um, it's a pleasure, thank you. Thank you very much. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the kosher terwa. I have a personal request no matter where you are or where you live, please take a moment to pray for our soldier safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the kosher terwa. It was exciting and informative for me as well. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you're new to the kosher terwa, please check out our many past episodes.