S. Simon Jacob 0:09

Welcome to The Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem.

S. Simon Jacob 0:16

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. During a chance meeting at a wine tasting put together by Yachiel Wogel at Jule Polonetsky's father-in-law's home here in Jerusalem, I met for the first time Natan El-Sagiv, or as he likes to be called, Neli, along with his lovely wife. She is a visiting professor of law at UC Berkeley in California and, though Neely was working in high tech in Israel, they decided to move for a few years with their wonderful children so that she could take advantage of this amazing opportunity that she was offered. As we were tasting wine and talking, Neli told me that he was currently working at Covenant Winery with Jeff Morgan. He told me his story of a chance encounter with Jeff, where he became intrigued with working at the winery. He started in the winery cellar but has enjoyed his experience in all different tasks over the last couple of harvests and is returning back to California for one more round.

S. Simon Jacob 1:35

Please listen as Neli shares his Israeli perspective on the United States and especially Berkeley, during our currently challenging period of time, not to mention his hands-on wine education at the side of Jeff Morgan, if you're listening in your car. Please focus on the road ahead. If you're relaxing at home, please select a wonderful bottle of kosher wine and sit back and enjoy. I have the pleasure of welcoming into the studio Natanel Nili Sagiv, who's an assistant winemaker at Covenant, berkeley. And wow, it's a pleasure to have you here and you shall line in my studio. Thank you, really a pleasure, and you actually brought some wine to taste as well, which is amazing. Which is the Covenant? Which one Tell me? Which is this?

Neli Sagiv 2:32

Chardonnay La van 2023.

S. Simon Jacob 2:36

So we're going to taste this in a moment. But first, you're not a typical American. No, not an American at all. I know I'm giving you a hard time. Tell me a little bit about your background. Where are you from?

Neli Sagiv 2:53

So I'm an Israeli, I was born in here and in the past three years we're in California. I was born and raised here and, because of my wife that's, we went to California. When I was here I was working high-tech, I was a product manager and for ten years and we moved to California and after a while I we met Jeff at Shul and then they were looking for someone just for the harvest and I went off to the winery. I was sitting with Jeff and I remember two things. That was in this meeting. He told me first, you're going to go to the winery for the harvest and it's going to be three, four months really hard. You're going to work like the winery for the harvest and it's going to be three, four months, really hard. You're going to work like you work on computers and stuff. It's going to be very intense. Either you're going to like it or you're going to hate me for the rest of your life. And here I am after three years and I like it and it's awesome, after three years and I like it and it's awesome. And before I left at this meeting, jeff was looking at me and he asked me what do you drink? And as an Israeli.

Neli Sagiv 4:18

I grew up not drinking really wine. I was my child memory of wine is a kiddish sweet wine, Carmel Mizrahi, which all my friends. We had the sweet wine and I was looking at him. I told him listen, I just learned to drink wine with my mother-in-law. She was teaching me drinking wine in the past few years, but I don't know, I mostly like red. He said, okay, so take a white wine. So you need to start on drinking white wine. I told him I'm not a guy for white wine. He said, okay, so learn. And I can say I kind of converted into whites after I drank the Chardonnay Jeff's Chardonnay. It's the Levant that we make the covenant. It's amazing and that's what also I brought here, the Levant. So this is the story of me, how I got into the wine.

S. Simon Jacob 5:23

Where were you brought up? In Israel? Where in Israel did you?

Neli Sagiv 5:26

I grew up in Petach Tikva Okay, and went to Nechalim Yeshiva Okay, in Rav Bagad Okay. Then I went to Mechina, in Eli.

S. Simon Jacob 5:38

In Eli.

Neli Sagiv 5:39

In Eli, and then I went to the army for four and a half years and then university you know high tech.

S. Simon Jacob 5:48

Where did you go to university?

Neli Sagiv 5:49

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan yeah Cool, where I met my wife.

S. Simon Jacob 5:53

Okay, so you talked about the Levan. We have it here in front of us, so let's take a taste. Blessing over wine. This is extremely fresh. I'm trying to feel oak, but it's not oaky. It's just really, really nice. It's not. It's also not a buttery Chardonnay. It's a fresh, very crisp Chardonnay and it's got great acid. Awesome and very balanced front to back palate, nicely balanced. It's really great. It's a great Chardonnay.

Neli Sagiv 6:48

Totally agree.

S. Simon Jacob 6:52

So what do you do at Covenant?

Neli Sagiv 6:55

So I started. At Harvest, I work at the cellar.

S. Simon Jacob 7:03

So do you work with the winemaker at all? Do you work with? So?

Neli Sagiv 7:06

I work with Jonathan. ,J onathan Haidu, yeah, very tight. Everything you know, from the getting to the grapes, crushing them, putting them into the tanks, testing them, tasting them, testing them, tasting them, all the things in the cellar that he has to do like crushing and barreling down, taking it out, mixing, taking care of the wines.

Neli Sagiv 7:41

Because you're a religious person did they allow you to touch the wine and do, yeah, what you know there was. Jeff was asking me okay, are you so much about? That was the criteria of hiring you. Hiring me because I said I have no clue in wine industry. As I told you, as childhood I was drinking sweet wine and as growing up as a Shoma Shabbat was yeah, that's obvious. That's how I grew up. My kids, I sent my kids to the Hebrew Day School. I was partly working there at the beginning and that's all I need to do, just to work at the winery. I asked him and he said yeah. I said okay, that's amazing. You know it's a win-win.

Neli Sagiv 8:28

They can teach you all the rest of the stuff, but yeah, it was just like just Shabbat and he'll do it tomorrow. That's he's gonna, and yeah, that's about it.

S. Simon Jacob 8:42

So how do you feel over the years? I mean now it's been how long you've been there three years three, that's.

Neli Sagiv 8:48

Uh, I'm gonna start now the third harvest. I'm just gonna land the day after I'm gonna go into bottling.

S. Simon Jacob 8:56

Uh, no, mercy of jet lag, okay uh, but this is last year's harvest that you're bottling.

Neli Sagiv 9:05

Last year's harvest and also this is 2022 reds.

S. Simon Jacob 9:10

Reds yeah, 22 reds and the 23 whites.

Neli Sagiv 9:13

And the 23 whites. We have Chardonnay, I think, on this bottling and some Sauvignon Blanc we're going to bottle also.

S. Simon Jacob 9:24

The question I have is now that you've gotten into wines, especially in California, when you came back to Israel. You've come back a couple of times to Israel. Have you tasted any of the wines here? Anything that was interesting?

Neli Sagiv 9:43

So we just had a couple weeks ago we tasted uh with you when, when I met you, uh the agoura the agoura. Yeah, that was that was something that it was a syrah blend with something yeah, that was something different. Like, um, I was growing up something different. Like um, I was growing up, uh, in the wine, learning how to drink uh Covenant and also Haiti wines. That's the wines that I, uh, usually you have access to. I have access to, yeah, and do you taste any of this?

S. Simon Jacob 10:18

Do you taste any of the Shira wines, Shira brothers Once?

Neli Sagiv 10:23

Shira wines, Shira brothers. I tasted it once at the winery. We had Shira brother wine. We tasted it, but the impression the Agur wine, it was something different that I it's kind of awesome. Yeah, never tried it before. Also, with my wife we said, oh wow.

S. Simon Jacob 10:44

It's an unusual winery. Um, it's an unusual winery. Uh. There's a lot of little wineries here now that are just making some exceptional wines. Some of these winemakers are really, um, hitting it out of the park. They're really delicious. I'm enjoying it very much. There's so many new wineries here in Israel, but I miss I really really miss Covenant, and especially because some of the wines, when they were getting released initially out of Israel, were drinking very young and the, the, the responses or the. They always got good, um, overall, uh, comments, but some of the responses were drinking these wines long before they should have been drinking them. And now they're coming of age and I'm seeing literally a whole bunch of people online commenting positively about Covenant and it's really really nice to see. It's really nice to see. I just wish they were back here in Israel again because I miss them, but besides that, that's me being. You know I can be jealous, but they're making fantastic wines now. This is delicious, this is amazing.

Neli Sagiv 12:18

I know. I hope when I come back in a year or so I might convince Jeff to come back here. I'm going to try.

Sensory Experience in Winemaking

S. Simon Jacob 12:27

From your mouth to Jeff's ears and God's ears. So tell me about what were some of the hardest things when you first started becoming a seller rat, or all the things that you needed to do. What were some of the hardest things?

Neli Sagiv 12:46

So like learning how to use your mouth and your nose. It's a new thing to me, like I never used to smell the wine before I drink it. Just okay, we have a glass of wine and enjoy the wine. But one of the things that I'm learning a lot with Jeff, with Sagi, who is the managing director in Covenant.

S. Simon Jacob 13:20

You want to know something Even more than missing Jeff and Jodi. I miss Zoe and her husband.

Neli Sagiv 13:26

She's awesome. You know, she had a baby.

S. Simon Jacob 13:29

Yeah, I do, I do, but I really miss them. They were awesome. She used to handle customer service for VIP customers and what have you and she was always super responsive.

Neli Sagiv 13:46

Really nice yeah, great, all the Morgan family are amazing, yeah, so one of the thing that I'm learning, like, before you drink it, smell it, try to feel it, trying to feel what. What does it make and what does it make you think what it's making feel? And I remember, remember one of the first grapes that we had what I think was all V on the a or I think it was aognier, yeah, and we were just crushing it and I'm smelling the putting it after, when we put it into the barrels and I was smelling it and I said that's not a wine smell, that smells like an apricot juice. And the year, last year, I was smelling it. It smells like a grape, not a grape juice, it smells like apple juice. Yeah, and it's the same Viognier from the same vineyard. And how does it end to be the smell and the aroma that we feel now?

Neli Sagiv 14:53

And I remember, as my mother-in-law was teaching me how to drink wine at the beginning, I was looking at the back of the wine and it says some smells of fresh apples, fresh apricots, whatever. And and it was a shocking moment at the winery that I'm smelling and say, yeah, voila, now you can smell it, I can smell it. Now I understand, and after the wine was ready, you know aged, and then we bottled it and we put it into a cup after a few weeks and we're smelling it. So it has this smell. It's not so strong and it's not so juicy like you smell it at the beginning of apricots or pomegranates or whatever, but now you can smell it gentle and it comes into, uh, uh, into the taste. It mix, and then you taste the wine and you put all the senses that I was never using them and that's a muscle that I'm training now and I have great guidance in Covenant.

S. Simon Jacob 16:08

Yeah, jeff is good at that. Jeff is very good at teaching it. He's run many classes and he's an educator from that perspective for years and years. But the whole thing with getting that sense of smell and picking up nuances in the sense in what you're smelling and what you're tasting, and also the texture of the wine in your mouth, across your palate, across your on the sides of your mouth and surrounding your mouth, and having it, you know, having the front of your palate taste something and then have it continue through mid palate and then finally in the back of your palate and then having also this, um, like this.

S. Simon Jacob 17:07

This has a nice long finish. I'm still tasting it. So it's not like it's hits the back of your palate and it goes gone, nothing, and there's like this hole. It's funny because there are many wines, unfortunately, that you can taste that have holes where there's like no mid palate or there's no. The wine ends and it just dies. There's no additional flavor coming off of it. Here, though I tasted it a minute or so ago, I'm still tasting on the back of my palate this wine. It's lovely and it's still full-bodied in my mouth.

S. Simon Jacob 17:56

It's great, it's wonderful, he's, he's, they're definitely uh, making fantastic ones, and jonathan has become really uh, uh, wonderful as well as you know, as well as jeff. But yeah, they're all growing and they're really developing and the wine is really showing it. So, what are the things that were difficult for you?

Neli Sagiv 18:29

Besides the physical work that I've….

S. Simon Jacob 18:32

What sort of physical work, I thought. Winemakers, just you know, drink wine. They don't do anything physical.

Neli Sagiv 18:38

Yeah, but that's what we do when I'm telling to my friends yeah, I'm just climbing up some barrels and checking, taking some samples, and you drink from the barrel. Yeah, because it comes into. You know, you take with a siphon hose, so putting the let's say, when the whites are coming, and you're putting into the press, like you need to push it right into fill the press as much as you can because otherwise you're going to stay there till midnight. Right, you use the most of the press when you uh, when you're putting it. So it's really hard sitting on top of the press and putting the grapes into the place and with all the bees around you and the yellow jacket and all the flies that comes, because it's, it's a great uh, sweet, it's sweet the grapes are sweet, yeah, and you're getting stuck, because the juice you're stuck into like um, it covers you.

Neli Sagiv 19:39

It covers you. You're sticky at the end of the day, but it's, it's a great feeling, you know it's. It's like, uh, it's the first time in my life like I enjoy uh, I don't know how to say it in english physical labor with your hands yeah, yeah, it's like it doesn't translate good. No, it doesn't.

S. Simon Jacob 19:59

It's creation with your hands.

Neli Sagiv 20:01

Yeah, creation.

S. Simon Jacob 20:02

It's more than just physical effort.

Neli Sagiv 20:04

It's creation and you know you put in your effort and you wait for the end result, and it's a feeling that I never had before in high tech. Okay, you may program and after a day, a week, whatever you have, okay, we did it. That let's move to the next. Anything that teach me patience yeah, it's not.

S. Simon Jacob 20:30

It's not um instant gratification. By any means. If you want to go into instant gratification, make beer, don't make wine.

Neli Sagiv 20:39

As an Israeli, it's really hard to wait. Okay, wait, now you put it into the barrels. Now you have to wait, you have to check it, you have to mix it, you have to rack and return.

S. Simon Jacob 20:52

So you do racking, you have to rack it.

Neli Sagiv 20:54

We have to rack. So how do racking? You have to rack it.

S. Simon Jacob 20:56

We have to rack. So how do you rack? What do you do? Some people don't know what that means.

Neli Sagiv 21:01

So you lay down the barrels that you're going to rack. Let's say we'll take Syrah, for example, and you want to. How do you say lash foot to make even all the barrels? Because every barrel? That was also so I know. A shocking thing for me this is the same grape, we crush them at the same time, we put them at the same time in the barrels. How come they're different? They're different the difference between two barrels and it's the same cooperage and the same year that was made, and it's different. And I and the same year that was made and it's different. And I was asking Jeff once why it's so different. But it's not like you could feel the difference between two barrels. And he was saying you know, this one was five high stack is point one degree hot, and this is point one degree and1 degree. And if you don't use a new oak, it might have different wine in the past and it has.

S. Simon Jacob 22:04

Although you clean it, and you clean it really well, it leaves some residue, yeah, it leaves some residue, yeah, but also the're different, as much as they're even the same vineyard that you're taking the wine out of the grapes out of. They're different nuances in the plot and some of them hit different minerals underneath the ground and some of them get more sun and some of them have more shade, and because of that, there's so many little nuances to making these. That's why blending is such an important thing, because you're taking these barrels and you're not just bottling it. You're basically blending the barrels to get what you want.

Neli Sagiv 22:51

Yeah, you want, yeah, and and you're reminding me that what you just said, that I think I'm talking about a lot about Jeff, because, as I told you before, he's my rabbi of wine, I think, when I did something wrong, or, and he came over and he's whispering in my ear everything matters, everything you do, think of it, everything makes a difference, everything matters. And then he's keeping repeating it every time and so, and as you said, I get to know, wow, everything really matters. You know, if you forget to top one barrel, it changes everything. Okay, now we need to take it aside. See what we're going to do with this barrel, and hopefully it's not going to.

S. Simon Jacob 23:50

You know it's funny when you're doing self-root, when you're doing self-root and you're writing a Sefer Torah or Tefillin or what have you, every time you put your hand on something you have to say L'shem K'tushat Sefer Torah or L'shem K'tushat Tefillin or what have you. And this is the same thing. You know everything you do matters and that's exactly what that means. You know the shame could do shot. It's you have to have, you have to be cognizant of every step that you're making because it matters, it just really matters. So it's, it's. That's an interesting thing. I'd never heard him say that. You're the first person to tell me but um me, but I've never been under the gun with him standing behind me, going, you know, like, get this done. But that's exactly the same attitude that people have when they're doing something with Kedusha. And wine is Wine is special because of that, so wow.

Neli Sagiv 24:54

Like you're saying, I'm also learning a lot of hot, that I okay, learn it sometime, or you never learned it because you never make wine by yourself. You just look for the kosher sign at the supermarket and that's it. Well, in israel you don't even do that, because all the wine Almost, almost, all the wine but and my friend Dashal, he's like he was teaching me okay, we taste it.

Neli Sagiv 25:23

We take composite of all the barrels that we have and it's quite like it's ends up like almost two bottles if you have a lot of barrels. And I said, okay, we tasted it, now let's put it back. He said, no, like it ends up like almost two bottles if you have a lot of pearls. And I said, okay, we tasted it, now let's put it back. He said, no, this is a kospergum. And I said, okay, dasha, teach me what is kospergum. And he said you can do Kiddush on this one, because if you drink it you can do Kiddush. And I said, but I didn't really touch the wine, he just put it in and said, no, this is the Madeline Don't and that's a thing I never knew before and that's that's also uh, and in my um, personal perspective, or uh for, uh, my inner self, like it's fun to come and also not learning only winemaking but learning also Yahadut, that I, yeah, the halachot, that comes, comes, that surrounds it.

S. Simon Jacob 26:29

Yeah, because you can even learn it before you know. You learn things in the Gemara and you hear it and you hear the stories, but it's nothing like now. This applies to me, it applies to exactly what I'm going to do now and, yeah, it's very different. It's very different.

Neli Sagiv 26:47

Every time we're talking and then the Asher is coming with, okay, the Chai, adam says this and Rashi was talking about making wine. I just wow, they were talking a thousand years, almost a thousand years ago, or a few hundred years ago, and they knew how to make wine, or they didn't know. No, they didn't. They knew how to make wine.

S. Simon Jacob 27:13

But it wasn't only in France, it was in Israel. I mean, if you go around, you know, I've been frequenting the wineries in the Judean Hills and the Judean Hills are covered with gut covered, with wine presses Covered. I mean it's almost like you can if you throw a stone in the air it's going to land on a goth. That's how crazy it is, that's how many thousands of them there are. But then, if you think about it, all of Bnei Yisrael was here. We were all surrounding, you know, close to Jerusalem or around it, and we all needed wine because otherwise you couldn't do anything. So there was a reason we needed the wine and there was a reason we made wine and it was all ritual.

S. Simon Jacob 28:03

And it's funny because a lot of the wines now there's a few. There's one specific professor winemaker who's up in Ariel University, he also works and he also is the winemaker for Gvod. He has been researching all the old varietals and actually the vast majority of varietals were light reds and whites that were among what Jews drank and it's amazing. It's amazing to see those and they're trying to revive some of them now which are just like. They have one called a betuni, which is just like a Pinot Noir.

Neli Sagiv 28:56

It's a native Israeli grape and it's and it's light and just wonderful you probably had this story that Jeff was telling us a lot of times about Chardonnay. What is the name? That was really nice, you know.

S. Simon Jacob 29:17

Yeah, it's there's a grape called Macabeo that comes from Spain, but with a name like Macabeo, where do you think it came from? You know like, where do you think the origins of that? It wasn't some, you know, christian, whatever.

Neli Sagiv 29:38

It's interesting.

S. Simon Jacob 29:39

It's interesting Our generations were surrounded by our religion and our people were surrounded by wine, just absolutely surrounded by wine in every way, mean shape or form. That's why it's so important and so so many halachot that are focused on wine. Yeah, tell me a little bit more about you know kind of some of the any stories about fun things that happen not fun, not fun things not fun things, yeah, so let's go back also to the racking.

Neli Sagiv 30:15

You lay down the barrels and now you need to take them out. Uh, take the wine, you put the hoses, you put the, the workshop, the pump, yeah, put it into the huge tank and then the the thing that the easy thing is take it out from the barrels and put it back, although you need to make sure, if you feel on it super clean, you need to make sure you don't think we don't take all the schmutz from the bottom and the bottom, the leaves.

Neli Sagiv 30:42

Yeah, but we call each moots. Yeah, it is, it's a dish, yeah, so the easy part is to take it out into the tank, but the trickiest thing is to put it back into the barrels.

S. Simon Jacob 30:58

So you clean the barrels between the.

Neli Sagiv 31:00

You clean the barrels, you take out the wine, you take off the schmutz. It depends what Jonathan and Jeff are planning With this wine. It's gonna rack and return again, I don't know. But basically you put it into the tank, then you clean the barrels really good. Also, it depends. Sometimes you want to leave on the leaves. It really depends. But let's say the wine, the Chardonnay, you want to put the leaves out. You want to put it as much as clean as you because you don't want to filter it at the end, and then putting it back into the barrels. That's the tricky part, because you have to.

S. Simon Jacob 31:47

You don't want to set the stuff at the bottom.

Neli Sagiv 31:49

You don't want to set the stuff at the bottom, but you don't want also Because you're controlling the pump. You have this little, uh, tiny um remote control valve.

Neli Sagiv 32:01

You have the valve and you have a remote control about the speed and you're trying to look between the, the hose that goes into the tiny hole of the barrel and you have a little gap to see the wine level and you're trying with a flashlight to see inside and then when you miss it you got a whole flash. And it happens from time to time. We try not to, you try to be aware and uh, everything's matter.

S. Simon Jacob 32:30

We said, yeah, you know you have to it just wastes all the wine that comes pouring over the top of the barrel.

Neli Sagiv 32:35

Yeah, and it's not fun at all to be soaked with wine for the rest of the day, because when you go out, all the yellow jackets come back at you. Yeah, but this is one of the trickiest things that I don't like to do. When it happens, it happens. We're tasting this.

S. Simon Jacob 32:58

Chardonnay, but I also. I brought a bottle of Israeli Covenant up for us to taste as well, and it's the Syrah from 2014. It has a great label. On the front of it it has a map of Eretuseral. It was an inspiration that Jeff had to put this map on the front of the bottle. He got some um pushback from some of our left-wing brethren Uh, but he's um, but that was. It was brethren, but that was an incredible bottle. And though I showed Neely a bottle of the 2013, which I'm saving for Jeff when he comes back to Israel, we're going to taste a 2014. Tell me a little bit more. Any other interesting stories over two and a half years?

S. Simon Jacob 34:01

What about the harvest? Do you actually do people? Do you go out and pick in the vineyards or you just get, you get. Not just you get the grapes brought in.

Neli Sagiv 34:13

We get the grapes brought in. We get the grapes brought in. Jeff and Jonathan are really in close touch with the growers when to do the picking. We go up to the vineyards very often Jeff usually and Jeff and Jonathan are going up to taste the grapes. He took me once. It's a nice field trip for a cellar rat, as you do, yeah, so we get the grapes. We're not picking them. Usually they are being picked early morning and we get them as soon as it gets traffic.

S. Simon Jacob 34:54

So how far away are the vineyards from you?

Neli Sagiv 34:57

So you have vineyards all over California. You have Napa, you have Sonoma, you have Loda, you have Lake County, but you have also from South California, benicito, I think. It's almost six hours driving from us. Wow, and one of the great Syrah we make it's from Benicido. I think Jonathan is making also wines from grapes. Last year, the year before, he got grapes from Washington also. Okay, it was quite a schlep Up north, up north, yeah.

The Bottling Process

S. Simon Jacob 35:32

Up north. What about later on? Actually, the bottling process. They don't hand bottle. Do they have people come in with machines and do bottling?

Neli Sagiv 35:44

We have people on machine do bottling, a few special orders that we hand bottling, but usually we do bottling. My kids love it. It's amazing. It's a huge machine that comes into the winery and rock there for a week. It's like the Charlie Chaplin movie the huge machine that you put something at the beginning and it comes out.

S. Simon Jacob 36:13

It's amazing to watch all of the beginning and it comes out, yeah, at the end, At the end. It's amazing to watch all of the different. And it does. It flips the bottles.

Neli Sagiv 36:19

It flips and it takes and checking it and every now and then, because we need to see to be there inside the machine and press the buttons and touch the bottles if it's not cooked yet, if there's a malfunction in the machine. So you have to take out the bottles and make sure that no one touches it, because we are the only one where just know me, dash on me.

Neli Sagiv 36:46

Oh, jonathan, in the, in the bottling line, and usually it's boring. You're just watching on, you press the button and you're just watching on the bottles. That goes, and thousands of bottles a day. It's it's like watching a machine that do the same. But it's the one of the fun things, that when you change wines between that's the most funky and fun bottles that you have, you take a case or two aside because you clean the machine. You don't clean the machine between reds, let's say, but you do want you empty the machine as much as you can, and then you put the new wines, but you want to take out the rest of the wine. That was little drops at the hole. So you put the first case or the second, the first cases, aside and this is the special wines that you taste, because that's the wine that we got, we're getting at the end of the day. You know, just stay home, because it's not going to sell it because it has a cabernet with syrah, whatever, and it's a interesting, blend yeah, it's a machine blend.

Neli Sagiv 38:04

It's an interesting taste that every bottle is a little bit different than the other one. Yeah, it's a really nice. That's the fun part in the bottling. But usually bottling it's's like getting there very early in the morning, open the winery and just make sure that they clean everything, the machine and it's actually cashing the machine. Every day they're putting hot water with pressure. Every day they're putting hot water with pressure and and then it's like there used to be a, an Israeli commercial for pre got.

Neli Sagiv 38:43

We just put the oranges in the machine, we don't touch them. So you just hook the, the hose into the machine and you just press the button and we don't touch the wine. It's fun. You know, that's the. As we said before, that's the maasei adecha. That's the end of the process, that you see it. And then every time I I don't know if it's me imagining or you know or not it's like when you see Jeff and Jody walking around and you see them like they're happy. That's a big step. Now it's going to go and wait in the storage and it sits for a while.

Neli Sagiv 39:31

It sits for a while until they're going to sell it, and then you see Segui was in charge balsam and it sits for a while. It sits for a while until they're going to sell it, and then you see, segui was in charge of the sales.

S. Simon Jacob 39:40

Okay, what are we going to do? It's amazing. It's amazing. It's such a long process that when you finally get to that and the bottles are actually coming out of the machine and they're going into boxes and they're getting packaged, it's like wow, there's so many things that could have happened to mess it up until you get to those bottles, and that you actually accomplished it and got the bottles out is huge. It's a huge deal.

Neli Sagiv 40:08

It's a story that we it's happened, not to us, but a guy that we know that we it's happened, not to us, but a guy that we know that he was sending. It was a pallet with, I think, two, three, three high stack of cases, mm-hmm, and he took a turn, not in a slow play, he was driving fast and all the pad on the road bottles were broken and it was. We saw a picture and say, yeah, go have a live, yeah, see it, and so much, leave the money that the winemaker lost. But it was go have a live, you see it.

S. Simon Jacob 40:50

It's the pain in your heart that you get from watching something that so much effort went into and you're so close it's. You know, right now in Israel, up north, they're experiencing the same thing. They've got these vineyards that they're right next to you know, right, almost ready to harvest. We're probably 30 days away from harvest for a number of the wineries up north A little more for some, but 30 for some of them and then all of a sudden a piece of shrapnel lands in the vineyard and they get burnt, they burn up and it's like all of that work, all of that effort, all of that time waiting for the grapes to you know, waiting for the vines to mature enough that you could actually use them for grapes, for wine, and then just watching these things burn up is like heartbreaking. It's so sad, it's like crazy. Heartbreaking, it's so sad, it's like crazy it's.

Comparison of Jerusalem and Berkeley Life

S. Simon Jacob 41:55

You know, people don't understand how, it's not something that you can just say, okay, yeah, well, we'll replant them, you know, and wait three and a half years, four years to start the whole process again and then go through the all of the efforts and work and it's really crazy. So this is a syrah, a 2014 syrah. I believe that this was from telpharis. Uh, was the vineyard that the syrah grapes came from. This is beautiful and dark. There's a little funk that's got to blow off of it.

S. Simon Jacob 42:45

It starts very smooth at the beginning and then he made some fantastic wines here, just some crazy wines. He meaning Jeff, I think the winemaker here was Ari Earl. The 2013 was the first wine I tasted of the Syrah, but the first white was the Viognier, and the Viognier was just like over the top. I mean, it was just crazy, especially when it's hot here and you just want something that's crisp and delicious. It shows so much not only patience, but it's nurturing the art involved in making good wine. It's just great. It's a wonderful, wonderful wine. It's got the acid that people want and it's not sweet, it's not buttery. It's a really lovely Chardonnay Lovely Chardonnay, so very cool. Again, this Syrah is balanced, still has some tannins, but they're integrated and it's just lovely. And it also has this long finish Very nice. So Berklesham Okay, what's the difference between living in Berkeley and living in Shoham? Oh, wow, wow.

Neli Sagiv 44:37

So living in Shoham is family and it's a great place. It was good to us Living in Berkeley. The first thing that comes into my mind comparing Berkeley and Shom, it's traffic. Like I can walk to work and I'll be there in 30 minutes, or drive it's less than 10 minutes to work in Shom. It's like everywhere you want to go, you're going to traffic. If you want to go to Tel Aviv or Shalem, you're going to stand in traffic. No matter what time of the day you're going to go, you're going to traffic. If you want to go to Tel Aviv or Shalem, you're going to stand in traffic. No matter what time of the day you're going to go, unless you're going to go after midnight.

S. Simon Jacob 45:19

That's so funny because I thought for sure you were talking about Berkeley having traffic and Shom not having traffic.

Neli Sagiv 45:25

Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. The minute you go out from Shom, you get into traffic nowhere. If you go to Tel Aviv or Sholom, you go into Kvish. Number one, number one and that's it.

S. Simon Jacob 45:41

You're standing. Shoam is located where.

Neli Sagiv 45:42

Right next to Ben Gurion Airport, five minutes from the airport.

S. Simon Jacob 45:47

So that's a hot place because it's in the Shvela, it's in the lower basin that goes out to the Mediterranean and it has a tendency. It's an agricultural Well, it used to be an agricultural place. It still has some agriculture, but it's also high tech. There's a lot of new little high tech parks that are growing on there.

Neli Sagiv 46:12

Yeah, lot of new little high-tech parks that are growing on there. Yeah, um, but okay, you, in climate, uh aspect, you have the heat and, uh, humid, from the michel, from the, from the beach, yeah, and you have the sun and the heat from the desert, the judan desert, so, and you're just sitting in the when they meet, yeah, when they so it's, it's, it's a sauna, but it's other than that, it's, it's a great place.

Neli Sagiv 46:42

It's like living in sauna all day long you know, night and day, but, um, if I'm talking about berkeley, you have the.

Neli Sagiv 46:53

I think that's one of the best climate places on earth you have the, the, the great, um, cool air that comes from the ocean, uh, through the bay. You don't have the super, uh, super winds that you have in san francisco. It's mild and it's much more tolerable and it's not so cold because you have when you get 20, 30 minutes east from Berkeley it's like getting into the desert, like getting into Shoham, but it's like air condition you have on Berkeley. It's getting there. It's like a air-conditioned you have on Berkeley. Let's say it's a great place.

Neli Sagiv 47:37

I was reading something history that they used to back then, before San Francisco was what it is today. They used to make the. They was, they used to bring the grapes from all over the place and the wineries themselves were in San Francisco because you don't need to have air condition. It's always cold. So it's a great place for winery. On an aspect of Jewish life in Berkeley, it's not related to wine, but Jewish life, especially since October 7, and also a little bit before. It's complex. We have a great, we're living in a great community over there Beit Yisrael Congregation, beit Yisrael, with Rabbi Jonathan and Freda. They're amazing, amazing, kehila.

S. Simon Jacob 48:39

We live there and where do kids go to school?

Neli Sagiv 48:45

they go to Oakland Hebrew Day School. It's it's actually the Kehila school. All the kids from Oakland and Berkeley are going over there. Berkeley is very unique as much as I learned about America as an Israeli who comes to see America, jewish life in America that the Orthodox we're going to the Orthodox school over there CBI, we call it Congregation Beit Yisrael which is, as I said, they're amazing. But the relationship between the Orthodox and the conservative and the Reformed community also before October 7, is so inspiring. They go to each other by mitzvah. When I, a friend of my daughter, was having a bar mitzvah at the conservative show, we came for the kiddush and and then you see the rabbi of the Orthodox show goes and blessing the kid and in the kiddush and he's coming over. We all use the same catering because there's only two guys who make catering and kosher catering in the Bay Area, in the area, and that's very inspiring to see that Jewish life.

Neli Sagiv 50:10

No matter how you practice your Judaism, it's respectful and tolerant for each other. People are tolerant and you see, even Jeff, he comes to Shul every Shabbat, but it's not a Shabbat. He's not touching the wine Every time. That was mind-blowing for me. He wanted to taste the wine. He said okay, nelly, can you bring me a cup of this tank or this, whatever? Because he said I can't touch the wine. This is his wine, his grapes, and it's mind-blowing for me.

S. Simon Jacob 50:52

He's a special person because a lot of the winemakers go really crazy about that. I mean they just go absolutely nuts about it, because winemaking is something that's very hands on.

Neli Sagiv 51:04

Yeah.

S. Simon Jacob 51:04

And many of those people are, you know, like super passionate about what they're doing and and it's so hands on, and then to tell them, well, you can't touch the wine, you actually have to ask that person to do it for you. It's like using somebody else's hands to do um, to do something that's very important and that requires touch, and it's it's, you know, it's really crazy.

Neli Sagiv 51:32

That's something that I was looking at at the beginning. But you're a Jew, we are all Jews here. But he said no, that's the rules, I respect the rules. I don't follow all the rules, he says, but I say these are the rules, this is what Rabbi Nadenzen said, that's what I'm going to do, no questions, that's it and that's part of the. I think that's for me, it's part of the uniqueness of this community in Berkeley also that everybody has, as an Israeli doesn't have patience Because we Israelis Israeli doesn't have patience because we Israelis, we don't have patience for everything. We need to chop, chop, chop, do everything fast, calm down, think and listen. That's the thing that I'm learning in Berkeley, also through the wine. As we said before, this is for the extreme. You have to have patience and also day-to-day life, and I wanted to add also that, especially in these times, the community, the Kehillah, is super important and as an Israeli, I never felt it before because we grew up in Israel. Everything is safe here and then you grew up in the fishbowl.

S. Simon Jacob 53:02

Yeah, I always think of you, know, like you grew up in the fishbowl of Kedusha and now you're outside that fishbowl and it's not like it's all there. You have to make a life for yourself, so it's a little harder.

Neli Sagiv 53:14

And if you want to be part of the Jewish community, if you want to be, if you want to practice Judaism, you have to be part of something. You have to choose it. It's not like it's surrounding you, it's not like I'm lucky to work at a kosher winery, so the calendar is a Jewish calendar. But friends who are working in different places my wife works at the University the calendar is not a Jewish calendar and she has to cancel lessons because of Yom Kippur before because of Rosh Hashanah, whatever. It's quite an experience and I'll go back to the winery, one of the things that I'm also a community.

Neli Sagiv 53:55

There was a lot of Jewish students around Berkeley and we saw them once they met at the winery. They came and Jodi came up to them for their event and she was saying to them listen, this is a Jewish place, this is a safe place for you. Every time you need to come and get away from all the madness and the craziness in Berkeley because you probably saw in the news what happens in the university this is a safe place that you can come over. Come over to Covenant and just sit in the yard and have a great wine and relax, because you can be whatever you, without afraid of what's going outside. That's part of covenant, I think they're really special people yeah jody is like mom to the, yeah to the world.

S. Simon Jacob 54:50

In that instance she's just really special, Unbelievable. This has really become. You know you should take a little more. It's become really lovely. The air has gotten to it and it's coming. It's become a lot more open and the is there and it's really lovely, it's nice.

Neli Sagiv 55:22

And the smell.

S. Simon Jacob 55:23

Yep, oh, yep, wow. So when do you go back? When are you going back to cool? When do you go back? When are you going back to Cool? When do you go back to Berkeley?

Neli Sagiv 55:36

Berkeley In almost two and a half weeks. We're going to go back, okay, as I said, straight into bottling Right, and then we're going to start harvest, because August is just around. Yeah, and it's going to be.

Neli Sagiv 55:55

it was a good winter in California, so A lot of water, a lot of water, so I hope it's going to be a good harvest. I believe it's going to be a good harvest and a fun harvest, and we're going to do much more wine this year. I hope that's the plan and it's going to be much more fun, much more learning also.

S. Simon Jacob 56:22

Thank you very much for taking the time to be here on the kosher terroir thank you for having me yeah, it's a super pleasure and I'm so happy that we met by chance at the tasting at Jules' house in Kfar David, his father-in-law's house in Kfar David, nat Lewin, and when I heard you were from Covenant, I said great, wow, let's get together, let's do a podcast. So thank you, thank you.

Prayers for Soldiers on Kosher Terroir

S. Simon Jacob 56:57

Thank you for having me and I hope this promotes Jeff into coming on to the podcast. We'll see, with God's help. He's such a doll. I love him. So, with God's help, thank you, amen Shalom, thank you. Thank you, baruch Hashem. 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 soldiers' safety and the safe and rapid return of our hostages. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you are new to the Kosher Terwa, please check out our many past episodes and thank you for listening to the Kosher Terroir.