The Kosher Terroir

Yaakov Ben Moshe's Passionate Pursuit of Winemaking

Solomon Simon Jacob Season 3 Episode 9

Send a Text Message to The Kosher Terroir

What happens when you combine resilience, passion, and a love for winemaking? You get the incredible journey of Yaakov Ben Moshe, the heart and soul of Gat Basela Winery in Eish Kodesh. Raised in Massachusetts and now thriving in Israel, Yaakov has faced numerous challenges, from living in caves as part of the Hilltop Youth to losing all his possessions in a fire. Yet, his dedication to winemaking never wavered. Our conversation with Yaakov offers an inspiring narrative of perseverance that will leave you in awe of his commitment and creativity.

The episode also delves into the unique techniques and innovations that set Gat Basela Winery apart. From nighttime grape picking to the art of distillation, Yaakov’s approach is as meticulous as it is communal. His stories of crafting extraordinary wines, engaging with critics, and the significance of terroir authenticity are not just about wine—they’re about life, growth, and the essence of community. Join us as we celebrate the timeless craft of winemaking where tradition, creativity, and a sense of belonging come together in every bottle.

For more information:
Gat Basela Winery
Contact Yaakov Ben Moshe
Phone: +972-54-586-1234
Website: https://gatbaselawinery.my.canva.site/

Wine Tour & Tasting Experience
The tour lasts approximately 45 minutes.  
Cost: 50 NIS per participant  
Please reserve in advance.

Invite friends and family to join our quiet updates group and stay up to date with our exciting content!  L'Chaim!
To Join our WhatsApp group:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/FHmJiHNoqXJExlzuna1148

Follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxanEyMKf1L/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

And on Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551528183527

Support the show

www.TheKosherTerroir.com
+972-58-731-1567
+1212-999-4444
TheKosherTerroir@gmail.com
Link to Join “The Kosher Terroir” WhatsApp Chat
https://chat.whatsapp.com/EHmgm2u5lQW9VMzhnoM7C9
Thursdays 6:30pm Eastern Time on the NSN Network and the NSN App

S. Simon Jacob:

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. Our conversation today is with Yaakov Ben Moshe. Homeschooled with years of experience garnered while interning since his youth in winemaking, the boutique winemaker at Gat Basela Winery in Eish Kodesh has created a unique establishment that he personally carved out of the bedrock beneath his home.

S. Simon Jacob:

Located in the Binyamin region, this area is known for its vineyards and wine production, with several well-known boutique wineries operating in the vicinity. Gat Basela Winery produces a number of wines, including a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Merlot and several blends, all with grapes harvested in vineyards surrounding Esh Kodesh. Yakov also distills some of his wines, producing alcohol which he uses to fortify a simply delicious 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 of kosher wine. Sit back, relax and enjoy listening in on this remarkable self-made winemaker and his incredible journey. Awesome, Yaakov Ben-Moshe. Yaakov Ben-Moshe, welcome to The Kosher Terroir. We're here.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Thank you very much.

S. Simon Jacob:

You're giving me a little tour of the.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, I want to explain to you first what you're seeing, what's going on over here, Usually what I explain also to people that come by to the winery. I'll explain to you what you're seeing, what's going on. So usually I stand people over here first and I explain to them a little bit of history of how I actually got to live in Ishkodish, how I got to be here. So I grew up in the States until age 10.

S. Simon Jacob:

Where In Massachusetts, in Boston.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Suburb when? In Massachusetts, in Boston, a suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts.

S. Simon Jacob:

In Sharon.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Cool, yeah, and then. So I came to live in Israel with my parents and I. Very interesting teenage period, but at some point we can get into it. Later I joined what's called the Hilltop Youth, nara Gvot. Yep, I lived in a cave for a while in Chavat Ma'on. Okay, I lived under an oak tree near Hebron, in the big oak tree, Givat Monayesre.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was there, for I was one of the founders, if you could say. And then at some point I went to prison for some of my political activity. Of course, okay, and it's just another story, if you're interested we could talk about it. And then I was looking for actually to begin my own hill, like my own giva, my own hilltop. I met my friend-to-be we're still friends still today who had just got married with his wife, a newlywed couple, and they were living on a hill three kilometers east of here of Yishkodesh. I had actually met them at their own Sheva Brachot. Funny story I came to the Sheva Brachot. Some friends had set up an encampment for the Sheva Brachot in the middle of the Judean desert.

S. Simon Jacob:

Wow.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Uja Manaka, if you know where it is.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Buy a goat.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Well convinced them that it's a good idea to donate one so they don't get a visit here from all these drunk guys. And that's what the Jeep. And now we had meat. So this is how I met this guy and I told him I was looking to found my own, givai. He told me, listen, you can come by where we are, where I just built this house for my wife, we have another couple of single guys. You can come by, but you can't live too close. Of course. The whole idea is to take up as much space as possible right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 was living there. Um, at some point I went with him to a like to learn how to raise olive trees yeah, okay, which is a raising without irrigation I go to. I went to learn how to do this with him and we left his little younger brother, who was then 15, to babysit the sheep and the whole hill. Whatever Arabs from the closest near town, kutsa, they came, they attacked this little kid, this teenager, and basically he protected the sheep. He was able to protect the sheep but he sort of had to back off to where the sheep were and my tent. The Arabs burned it down With everything I ever owned, all of my possessions I have ever owned, which wasn't very much. This was right after I got out of prison. It wasn't very much, basically the only things that had survived.

S. Simon Jacob:

Thank God he stayed alive.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Well, he, yeah. So he stayed alive and the sheep were okay. But everything got burned down and everything was destroyed, except two of my possessions, which was my cast-iron tea kettle, which couldn't get burned from the fire, and my parashiyah shiriyat of my tefillin, which survived because of the explosion of a gas balloon. It went flying and the outside got burnt, but the inside was safe. So I didn't leave the area. I brought a mattress and I found myself sleeping on this mattress there in the middle of this mountain, again three kilometers from here, about Wow, and I brought out, like a tarp, you know, to cover myself from the rain.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

And the Arabs didn't stop, you know, there they used to try to continue and attacking us. Every friday they would get out of, uh, you know, shul or the mosque and try to attack us, and they would come and uh and and start a fight. The men here from mishkodish would come and try to help defend us. It was a very good arrangement because the, the men, would come and help and then, with, you know, all friday they would be in this fight and then in the evening they would come back and shabbos would be ready, the kids would be showered. It was a good arrangement.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I get it, but but at some point a what happened was an arab uh was killed during one of these fights, and the army decided that enough is enough. They got sick and tired of it and they declared our little mountain over there a closed military zone. And now I found myself running away, basically, from the army during the day and guarding from the Arabs at night, and it became a little bit too intense at some point. So we decided to dismount, to come down from the mountain for a little while and let things calm down a bit. Until, you know, until things calm down, then we would go back up. Now the end of the story is is that today there's a jewish settlement there? There's vineyards there that are planted? Um, yeah, they, they have vineyards over there and there's also people living there. Even further out than where we were, there were people over there. It's completely in Jewish hands. So that's okay, it's good. And what's ironic is that during one of these fights, I met my wife, which is a whole story in itself. But now we decided to get married and to live in Eshkodish. Now, when you want to live in Eshkodish, you have to build something.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Back then there was about 17 families living here. And I turned to the community. I was a single guy. They told me listen, if you want to build, we're working on the plan here, the architectural plan for the whole settlement, so you can build, but we don't know where. And I told them listen, I'm going to build over here. At the edge of the issue.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

The head of security told me I can only build at the edge of the settlement, which is right over there. That's where that tall tree is. That was my front yard. Now, that was the edge, that was the edge of Ishkodish, that was the end and everything here wasn't here back then and they told me this is public property over there. You can build over there, but you're going to have to move your house.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So I built the house, okay, like this front cube of the house. I built it over there. Yeah, okay, and this was about 12 and a half years ago, almost 13 years ago. I built it over there and I lived there for about a year and a half and then at some point we 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 and digging this winery, okay. Then I uh poured a bit of cement around the hole, picked up the house with a crane and put it on top of the hole, oh right, okay. And then afterwards I built the extension of the house which is there, and then the porch and the yard, and it's an ongoing project. You can see, a lot of things here aren't really finished, because when I say that I did it and I made it, it means I say that.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I did it and I made it. Yeah, it means only with my own two hands. My friend helped me pick up the main beam of the house, but besides that, everything I'm doing myself. And then at first I had like this, like trap door, that, like you know, like in the Holocaust, like to get it. It wasn't practical at all to make wine like that I'm talking about back when I was making like 50 bottles or something like that.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, so this part, I just leave it covered. This other part, it has a tin cover, but I take off the tin cover before Sukkot and I take off the tin cover before Sukkot and close it off. We have lights, whatever, and this is our Sukkot. So now, I take people to see the winery. So I have this 30 pound jackhammer that I like to work with, which I dug out the steps over here to the winery. Watch your step, it's a bit steep. I'm sure you can make it.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Still. This is my new Charenti still wow, love it.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So then I bring people down here. We see the still. I'm going to hang that right there. Yeah, no problem. So then I bring people down here. 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 on a slant.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So two winters ago, basically what I did also. These walls over here were also in the same situation Two winters ago. I straightened them out with my 30-pound jackhammer.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

fermenting still no. No, no, no, I think it's fermenting 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's different things going on here.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I explained to you about, but just this past summer what happened was I reached a decision to really grow, to try to grow as much as possible. So we excavated here much more. You can see this. We did also with a tractor much a step over here, and then I dug out these steps, also with the jackhammer, poured the floor over here. You can see it's an ongoing project. It's great.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, and we have to support the porch during the, you know, the excavation, and then I'm building this wall over here to close it. This whole thing is going to be closed down. It's going to be a closed room, okay.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So this is going to be open. You can always open this up. You get enough air? Yeah, of course you don't want to get. You need ventilation, and so this was just ready in time for this year's production. Wow, so these are this year's wine. Different things going on over here, also this press the hydraulic press I bought this year Also, and it was a whole thing because it was in the middle of I bought it, but it was three phase electricity.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

And I don't have three phase over here, we don't have the electricity here and so stable or whatever. So I have one phase. I basically turned myself into a technician. And then to a technician over here. I changed it to one phase. Wow, it was like a whole thing and I had to do the press. I was like every day like working on it, going to get a piece and come back Just to get it to work. And finally we got it to work. It was like a holiday. It was like amazing yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

And so there's a lot, a lot of investment here. Like I said, this isn't my main what I do for my living, so this is like.

S. Simon Jacob:

What do you do for a living?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 I have. I have a bunch of stuff that I that I do. I'm also a shokhet in a care by the haggim, more people that want to slaughter. This year was a little shvach because of the Because of the war, because of the war, yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, you can see here when I placed the house. You can just understand what has happened here. I told the guy he was in the tractor. He was standing right here where the porch is right.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So we were digging, digging, digging. This whole thing was filled with dirt, stone, right, and what happens is what we discovered. This is where the mountain starts. Yes, I placed the house right on the edge Okay. Wow, imagine like if it was another meter.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

No, but there that's so smooth.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So that the house is right on the edge of where the mountain actually begins. And like. I said everything I do by myself. Things are moving like a little slowly, but yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Amazing, that's basically it and then after I explain to people that I explain to them about the process, what fermentation you know, we go, we pick the grapes in the cool night, you know, in the summer, when it's nice and cool and why it needs to be cool, and the whole thing with keeping the yeast from reproducing for the grapes reach so you get a hot day and you get very cool nights. Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So what I tell people first of all is that the legend, and I don't even remember where I got this from but the legend basically is that after the Six-Day War, you know, people came to this area to volunteer for the archaeological dig in Shiloh where the Mishkan was. And then they wanted to, you know, they wanted to, uh, they wanted to volunteer on the, you know, in the excavation and that was how they were allowed to stay here in the area and then they slowly, you know, brought they had to build some tents to live in, and then they brought their wives and then they pulled some electricity from somewhere and that's how you have modern day Shiloh today. But there were some guys over there that were very, very interested in making wine. Yeah, planted some vineyards. Didn't think very much of it, but they planted you know, whatever they could.

S. Simon Jacob:

One of the first ones.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

This is a legend.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

They loved it.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

And then they were like, wow, this is amazing potential, where did these wines come 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 was discovered to be an amazing, amazing, you know, amazing you know, potential over here and uh, and that's how this area became to be.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

There's so many wineries, you know, here, and so many uh vineyards, and the way these people plant a vineyard here and you can, you know, make a lot. You know you buy the grapes here for twice as much as what grapes cost in, let's say, bechemish area for four and a half five shekels a kilo the cheapest the winery here pays is ten shekels a kilo or about something like that it's amazing.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

so, and the reason they're willing to pay so much is because the wine from the grapes here win national and international prizes every year. So I'm living in this gold mine of making wine, prize-winning wine, so how can I not make wine? I've been making wine since I was a teenager, even before I was a kid. I remember myself going and picking grapes and, you know, playing around with fermentation and so on, so I so.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I do so I have my wife and my kids. They come, you know, to the grape picking even in the middle of the night. We go with flashlights and we pick, 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 this whole thing over here with kids, child labor.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So here it's like the kids, here they get rich, my kids, all of a sudden children are willing to get up at 6 in the morning. 5 in the morning and go out and pick 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, seven hours, they end up with 70 shekels, whatever it is.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

But for them it's money, it's spending money yeah, but more important is the ethics that they're getting here from the work, so you used the press this year. Yeah, yeah, we used the press this year and I had bought the second hand also this pump. I also changed it to one phase and also I got it working. This crusher, I also bought second hand. This stuff is very expensive, right? I wasn't able to get it to work this year, so I used this one.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

But it's okay.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, so.

S. Simon Jacob:

But this one isn't.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

It's not tough enough to take these amounts.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Right. So the Moscato grapes they don't grow here in the area and they grow up north and they're a bit cheaper than that. So I went out and I bought about a ton and a half of two different types of Moscato the red one and the Hamburg-y one and the Alexandroni.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

So how many bottles does that turn into approximately?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

0.75.

S. Simon Jacob:

0.75.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Approximately 0.75. So it's about 10,000, but not all of it's going to turn into wine that goes into a bottle Some of it's brandy, Some of it's distilled alcohol that I use afterwards for fortifying my muscat, which is something that I started telling you about, something that I like to experiment and do things. I'll tell you wine. What I tell people is wine is a combination between art and science. Okay, and people need to understand that. You need to stay inside the lines of the science.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Otherwise your wine is not going to be good wine. But on the other hand, the what's the word. I'm looking for the expression. The self-expression of the winemaker comes inside the box of the science. So you express yourself within those lines and sometimes I like to go out of the box.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

But that's something that I do. So I make traditional Cabernet Merlot. 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, and this year I actually added a little bit of Merlot to it to see what happens with that. So those are like the more traditional types and the wine comes out amazing, not just because of me I'm not, you know but because of the grapes here, okay, I'm talking about. And then there's things that I like to play around with, like my Muscat, that I fortify it with alcohol that I distill here myself, and that's something that's more like out of the box. I don't know, I haven't seen many people that actually do this, that take a Muscat and fortify the wine with alcohol.

S. Simon Jacob:

You can taste it Cool, yeah, come Wow.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So that's basically what I. You know what I tell people. Another wine that I, that I that I love making, is my um, uh, like port, yeah, so it's also fortified, it's all yeah, yeah, it's fortified and uh, I would say the say port is like a port, right, yeah, you're not supposed to call it port. Some people say style, port style.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So, after a little research that I did, there was a wine that was a dessert wine that was drunk back in the time of the I don't know the time of the Tanakh, but in the time of Chazal they would drink this type of very concentrated sweet wine.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

This is the only one of the only sweet wines that they had, and the way that they would make it was they actually, I think, they imported this tradition from Cyprus, I think. Okay, the only factory that was found in the archaeological digs in Israel was near the Shuv Nevet Suf, and they found these huge circles Well, not huge, but these three-meter diameter circles of stone that they didn't know what it was, and they figured out that this is a factory for making this wine that's called Al-Yustan. Okay, professors Z, for making this wine that's called Al-Yustan. Okay, professor.

S. Simon Jacob:

Zohar Amar and.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 they would take the grapes, dry them out in the sun and flip them, turn them, you know, every three times a day for three days and it would come out sweet.

S. Simon Jacob:

Very concentrated.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Concentrated wine. So I do something sort of like that. I do fortify it a little bit, I dry them out in the sun, it's this whole thing and I do fortify it with a little bit of alcohol as a preservative, so it doesn't rise the alcohol level a little bit, but it's not too strong.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, yeah, slowly and surely, slowly and surely, and it's reaching the lower side, which is fruitier and more concentrated on taste but lower in alcohol. This is a charanté. You know how it works. No, can I explain to you A regular. Still, you know how it works, right? Yes, yeah. So basically what's going on here? I see it has a little leak over here. Don't worry about it. Don't worry. Here it is Okay.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

You can open it up, you pour wine in it and you have the faucet here, which is closed, and it heats the wine here in the meantime. Okay, so at first it's using the wine to cool the steam and then, as it heats up, now it's getting 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 and open it up, and now you have already hot wine.

S. Simon Jacob:

Wine to coming back in.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

no, no. The question I have is it's it's because it's already taken the um alcohol off it, so isn't it more concentrated then? No, it's more liquid. It's more water. Yeah, there's nothing in there. Okay, there's no alcohol left.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

A hundred percent.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay, right, that's the idea.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Okay, I see.

S. Simon Jacob:

I was wondering where the water cooling was coming from.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

It's coming from there.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Somewhere it cools the steam down.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

very well, but yeah.

S. Simon Jacob:

So what temperature do you need to run this at?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, science.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

What is it?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

12 Fahrenheit. So the same thing with alcohol, alcohol steam. So we'll only reach a certain point, and then it'll evaporate like an evaporator and comes out. So what happens is that you start the distilling process will start basically at. It depends what type of alcohol. Right, there's many types. There's, you know, methanol, and then there's acetone and ethanol.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So, first of all, temperature, yeah, okay. So the first when you're distilling 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, from 68.4 and onward until 82.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

You're okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

No, but some of them can kill you.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

I would love to taste some of your wines.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah, I want to taste that.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Tell you what. I'll introduce you to it. Go ahead From the. We're talking about 2023. Yeah, so I have a Cabernet funny story about it. So I'll tell you.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

What happened is I was at. I was at this wine fair in Yafo, yep, and I was, I, I it was. It was actually a little bit strange that I actually showed up on time Yep, actually before before the time. I showed up before, and I showed up on time Yep, actually before the time. I showed up before and I was already on time and I had my. You know, I had my wine set up and I had my little roll-up, you know, that has my story on it and whatever. And who comes early to these things? You know journalists, you know people that want to, you know photographers, I don't know. So I had everything set up and this guy short guy, bald, short guy walks up to me. He has a notebook in his hand, like who goes around today with a notebook. This guy has a notebook and he looks at me and he looks at the wine and he looks at the roll-up and all of a sudden he screams like I don't believe in god. I told him what, what are you talking about?

S. Simon Jacob:

what does that?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

have to do with anything. So he says to me and then he looks at me and he looks at the roll-up. He's like and you're a settler too. I said dude, you want to taste my wine? Like, what's the story, what's up with you? He's like oh, what do you have to offer? I'm like okay, taste whatever. And all of a sudden he screams at me. I was more religious than you were. This guy obviously has something an issue.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I don't know. I was polite to him. I told him listen, you want a taste. Okay, fine, Give me a taste. So he gave me a glass. I poured some of my cabernet over here. No, first I poured him the mouskat. He tastes it and he rolls it around his mouth a bit. Give me another one, Taste this, taste this, taste this. And he tells me you know who I am? I'm like no, who are you? What's your story? He's like I'm Yonatan Livni.

S. Simon Jacob:

I know Yonatan Livni, wow, wow.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 to understand. I was Haredi, I was religious, I went to Harvard, I have a degree in law and I learned this and I did that and I'm a successful person. I'm like, ok, fine, and I make wine. He's like no, you don't understand, I write for Echol V'Shato. Ok, I didn't mean very much to him. 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't understand. You don't understand. The problem here is that I like your wine. Your wine is amazing, your wine is exceptional. I'm like no, so very good, so buy a bottle. He's like no, you don't understand. He's like now I have to write about you. Now I have to write about you. I said no, so write about me. He was like no, but you're a settler.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

You're a settler and you're religious, and this I said to him dude, what does it matter, like you know. So he's like okay, fine, give me your phone number. So he gave me a phone number and the next day was Friday, I sat down with a coffee and we picked up the phone. We were on the phone for at least an hour and telling him about this wine and this wine and so on and so forth, and he wrote. So the whole thing I was telling him about this is that you know, it went into the article or whatever. Is that what he wrote about the Cabernet Sauvignon? He's like listen, what can you already say about Cabernet Sauvignon? Like everybody makes Cabernet Sauvignon and like what can you already do something interesting and new about Cabernet Sauvignon? What is there to you know? What can we make new about it?

S. Simon Jacob:

What's new?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So he's like. But this Cabernet Sauvignon is very special, so, if you want, we can open a bottle of Cabernet. You can taste the Cabernet. I'll introduce you to the other three red wines that I have from 2023.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

There's the Merlot, which I hadn't opened a bottle for at least two months. I had no reason to open one because I don't also, when people come by, I usually don't refer them to the Merlot because I thought that it needed more time but I did open one, actually last week, and it was actually a second wine that I opened. At first we were drinking something else and, um, it was actually a second wine that I opened. At first we were drinking something else, uh, and then, and it was, it was amazing, it was really amazing, uh. So maybe it is ready to to drink. The other two red wines I have are blends. So there's my flag wine that I would say my, the flagship wine of the winery, which I call Yoshfe. It's a blend of Cabernet, syrah and Petit Verdot, and I perfect. Every year that goes by, I perfect it a little bit more, do something a little bit different, until I finally reach the final, you know.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Each variety, each variety, and so that's what's so good about this, and I'm trying to bring that to its peak, to its potential, because when you drink Cabernet, so you could taste it's a Cabernet, and Cabernet represents its terroir very, very authentically. Wherever you raise the Cabernet, it's going to present that specific terroir. You raise four or five Cabernets in different parts of Israel. You're going to get same, exactly same yeast, same brick, same vase, same barrel, same everything. You're going to end up with four different wines.

S. Simon Jacob:

Yeah.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

So these are new barrels or old barrels.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I do different things with the barrel Also. I work with old barrels and I also work a little bit with chips I'm not ashamed of it no, no no. Okay, I think it's a great thing. Bit with chips. I'm not ashamed of it. I think it's a great thing oak chips, and what's so good about it is that you can really control what you're doing.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

You can know much better and I know big wineries. I won't go into names, but there are big wineries that use a lot of chips and the whole barrel thing is more of like a play.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So it's a question. What I've seen over the years and I don't have so much experience like big winemakers, but what I do see is that in certain types of vats, the valve is not. It's not. The valve is not, it's not completely sealed, right, okay, so the oxidation that goes on, it may be, you know. So you get, the part of the wine that's near the valve is getting more and less, but in the end it does get mixed.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Maybe what I'm saying is not true, yeah, but I'll tell you something about this before. I is that in the time that's gone by and I'm trying to look into these things more and more, what happens is that I that sometimes I go to professionals, that I really think of them as professionals, people from Ya'aqib Shiloh or Yeshividuri, for instance and I go to them and I tell them listen, what's going to happen if I do this and this and this? Right, and in the end I get answers like, really we don't know, because nobody actually does that, because we don't check, because we don't believe in doing things like that, because it's not….

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Yes.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So we don't do that and I don't know to give you a correct answer, because we don't do that. So they don't know. So these are some gray areas here where the professionals don't research because nothing's going to come out of it for them. So I don't know I'm getting good results with what I do. So I don't know I'm getting good. I'm getting good, good results with what I do. So why? You know why not?

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 you about one more wine, and then I'll change topics.

S. Simon Jacob:

Good, no problem.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

I don't know. I'm sorry.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

No, I was introduced. I was introduced to this variety of grape, argaman, oh sure, so a lot of people have never heard of Argaman, which is a shame, and I figured out that this is a….

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

It has an amazing color, but it's and I said to myself, why aren't people raising this grape more? You know, using this grape, people use it for color but and so I sort of developed this wine that I was able to produce in a large portion in 2023. It's a little hard also to get your hands on this Argaman, because it's a little hard also to get your hands on this Arigaman because it's a little, so not a lot of people raise it.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So I was able to get my hands on some and I made a wine that I call Khoshen A whole explanation on the bottle, you can read it if you want and it's a blend based on Arigaman, but I bring some Cabernet Merlot and this year I also added a bit of Shiraz, also for the more you know, for flavor and for body, and so that's my other one, and I do add a little bit more oak in this one for people that like that aspect of the wine.

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay, let's try the reds.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

That's good.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Go, let's try.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

No, I know, I'm just saying every time I think they're buried there in the bottom for some reason. But you know this whole thing with the who designed the label.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 like terrible at first and like stickers. I was sticking stickers on my hand and so what happened is I, you know, I developed a logo for the wine, a name and a logo. And then I went to a graphic artist 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 not that type of person.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

I'm an auto-deduct. We do things here ourselves. I was homeschooled ever since I was a kid. People ask me how do you have time to learn to do all this stuff? How do you listen? I didn't go to school. I didn't waste my time in school. I had plenty of time to learn, right? If you want to tell you more about my history, ask me about my history where. I was working in wineriesery as a kid instead of going to school. And so I said to myself listen, 2,500 shekels, I can.

S. Simon Jacob:

That's a lot of money.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 more expensive one, but I bought her one for 2,500 shekels and I told her what I want and she worked, you know, on Canva, and this is what we did. This is the first time that we did it with the machine. You know you turn it by hand.

S. Simon Jacob:

Right.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Not typical.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So it's a bit young but it's. People have this thing with old wines, with aging wine, and what I tell people that come here. You know this is one of the most asked questions that people ask me.

S. Simon Jacob:

How old will it age?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Aging and aging and aging. And I tell them listen. No, I tell them listen, I have this whole thing. Wine is like a human being. It's the same exact thing and everything depends on a lot, a lot of different perimeters. Right Perimeters, not perimeters.

S. Simon Jacob:

Perimeters.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, you're okay. So it depends first of all on genealogy. Just like a human, it depends on the genealogy where the vine came from and then where you planted it, just like a human you take that most amazing human being with the biggest potential. You plant it in a bad neighborhood. You're not going to get a good human Same idea with the grape.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

You have to plant a good soil, good terroir, and it grows and you have to prune it a bit and make sure that it grows in the right direction and you water it, fertilize it, give it, give it a lot of, you know, a good environment and it grows. And then you get grapes. Okay, then you have, you have, like the, you get the actual, the human being develops into something. And then you have these grapes that have a potential to be turned into something and you take the grapes and you crush them a bit, just like a human needs to be a little pressured, you know, a little crushed, a little crushed, and it goes through fermentation and, just like a human, when it's young, like a small child, develops very, very fast. You look at it one week and you come back the next week. It's going to be completely different.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Same thing with a wine when it's young 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 be happening in the fermentation and changing all the time and developing and moving, and moving, and moving. And then you press it and squeeze it and you get out the good part, you get out the juice and you throw out the bad part, and then you end up with the wine and things start coming down and they move a little bit slower, just like a human.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

When it gets a little bit older they move a little bit slower, but it becomes wiser and with more depth. And then, if you behaved correctly you protected it from bacteria, from oxygen, from bad things, bad influences from the outside, from oxygen, from bad things, bad influences from the outside then you end up with a human or a wine that has a potential to age correctly and become a productive good something. When they're older it's the same thing, so it doesn't matter a lot on the potential of what you started with. And then you can talk about aging and some wines are not good, they're not meant to be you know Age, yeah no.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Enjoy it the way it is yeah. And that it's not going to develop, it's not going to go anywhere. And then you have wines that are that that much more of what 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 I make. I put aside a certain amount so that I will. It's a learning process for me to learn how much can you write down what you're tasting and what it tastes like? You have to remember what it?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

was and what it tastes like. You have to remember what it was and what it became. Oxidation open a bottle and then leave it open for another half a day or a day and then come back the next day and taste it and see how it developed. It's an ongoing process. It never ends.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Let's taste it, let's try it. Okay, yeah. Let's move it on it's so beautiful up here the vineyards are asleep, but what's on top of that?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Oh, that's Achia.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Achia.

S. Simon Jacob:

That's Achia, so that's stretching.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

We had a little bit of a fight with the Mu'azzawit about how many people to stuff in the area over here. Right, we wanted you know less people and you know more spread out, but we got over it, we finished the fight and now that's it. So I'm gonna wash out the cup a bit and I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this one, because this is a blend. It's a blend of kabarneh sirah and kativerdor.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

All three of the varieties were raised in Emek Shiloh, like in the Shiloh Valley, which has the whole Tuba story with the maidens over there and yeah, this is sort of bringing Bordeaux to Israel. There's a whole theory with Chez Biduri that maybe the varieties, the top varieties there in France, originated maybe here in Israel.

S. Simon Jacob:

In Choliot.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

And the last one was the Merlot.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, the last one was the Merlot.

S. Simon Jacob:

These are what. These are olive trees.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Really.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, because the electricity situation here is not, because Eshkolish is not completely legal at the moment yet, so we don't have real electricity here.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

There is three phases here, but it's not like they all work. They're not going to all work at the same level.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

You can use three phases here. I just I don't have personally in my house at all, also I don't have. So what happened is that the we pulled the electricity from achia and they pulled their cable from shul and they pulled the cable from, so until it actually gets here and we we get like a little trickle of electricity and when people are actually using the logistics, like on friday, you really do not have enough power. Like you're supposed to have two 220 volts in your in your socket you can have sometimes 160 appliances don't work. People send on the whatsapp group, you know, shut off everybody, shut off one appliance so that we can bake for shabbos and take a shower, and uh, and we have the same size cable that we had back when there was like 40 families and now we're past 100 and something 110 or I think. I don't know something like that. The situation is going to improve, hopefully soon, and we do. You know we deal with what we have.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

This is 2023.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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'll taste it more.

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

If the company is good, it's amazing what the? Straight. No, the wines. The wines taste better with good company Ah, you mean with the people. Yeah, the people make a big difference. Yeah, I like this, this, this. You really need to keep the age. You were right, didn't you need to let it settle a bit more? This is delicious, though. They were there. Yeah, they're all they all are, but this one is really special. So this one sells for $180?.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

No $150.

S. Simon Jacob:

$150, $150, $150.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Right so.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

There's one more wine. Also there's my port. I don't know if you're interested in tasting. I put most of the port into aging for a little bit longer in oak barrels. But there's a few that there's like. I think like 50 bottles of 500 liters, 500 milliliters, that didn't fit in the barrel for the. I think like 50 bottles of 500 liters, 500 milliliters, that I that I that didn't fit in the in the in the barrel for the continuation. I bottled them and we're working on the labels at the moment. But if you want, you can open them up. I could taste it also If you're interested in the port.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Crazy.

S. Simon Jacob:

Do you have any crazy wines? We haven't tasted the port. What the port?

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Okay, I personally think it's very unique.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay, I brought the me now Okay.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 few yoshfes with English labels.

S. Simon Jacob:

Okay, good, which is amazing.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Great.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Wow, wow, these are great.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

I want to know that too.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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 actually showed up at our house and started threatening my mother to enroll us in school. And she told them listen, we basically, you know, we saw the Kotel, we were at the Israel Museum and, if you want, you can deport us, but we're not, you know, we're homeschooling. So they harassed us every, you know, first of September. They would harass us a little bit, whatever, but at the end of the day, I was homeschooled, I had a lot of time on my hands and there was a winery in Takor where I grew up, and there was a French guy there named Dov Levy-Neymond who had made Aliyah from France and he invested his whole life in planting vineyard over there and he dug also a winery under his house and I didn't understand very much about wine back then, but for me it was cool, like working in the winery, people that would taste the wine would say that the wine, you know, a lot of times I would hear them saying that the wine is like, not bitter, like, not bitter, like.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah chamut yeah chamut, but whatever, it wasn't even important to me. Like I was working at this winery and he wanted to have a hashgachal, so he wanted to be kosher. He wasn't Shomer Shabbos. So the mashgiach told him listen, you're not Shom HaShabbos. So I ended up being the worker and the mashgiach. At age 14, and I was working in this one, I found myself sometimes working for like 10-12 hours a day bottling. You know romotaj? I remember him screaming at me in French right romotaj in French. Batan screaming at me in French right T'as fait romotage, romotage in French means mixing the Batanage.

S. Simon Jacob:

They call it batanage, batanage and romotage.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, it's the same thing and mixing it and one time he had me jumping inside 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 I fell into the cap up to my armpit and then I whatever with the carbon dioxide.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

You can actually die.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

Yeah, yeah no. And then there was water in the faucet to wash myself off afterward. There's this whole thing, whatever, this old, crazy french guy. But that's how I fell in love with, 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.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So that's how I. And then, at some point I went, I saw an advertisement. They were looking for workers in 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 to come by and work.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

And they told me, basically, when you show up, we were like 35, 40 people that showed up to work for the summer and they said, if you leave early before we release you, then you're signing here a paper that you give up half of half of your salary, of your salary. And in the end, and and I found myself in zikron on the top of the 12, 12, 12 meter vats okay, high up in the sky, and my job was, instead of a machine doing this, my job was to, every couple of hours, open up the vat huge vats I'm talking about like I don't know how many cubes and the trucks would. I would see the trucks under me pouring the grapes into the pit. You know, the same pit that they used since 18, who knows what.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

They just added a snail into it and they're sucking the grapes in. The trucks would come and pour the grapes in and then do the crush and it would go into the vat. And my job was to, every couple of 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 this vat and open the closet for the next one. Because why don't, why don't they have a machine doing this or a computer or something? Because one time they did have one and and and it didn't work and they had grapes pouring over the pouring all over the all the top.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

They didn't want it to happen, so it was worth it for them to pay me this crazy salary of I don't know what it was six 7,000 shekels, which is like nothing for sitting there for all this time wasting my time doing nothing.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

No, no, I was on a catwalk, oh, okay. And I was sitting there learning Torah, listening to the radio, you know, and I love learning philosophy. I was learning Rambam, which was amazing, but it was like boring, like I want to do something.

S. Simon Jacob:

Super boring.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

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

S. Simon Jacob:

Wow.

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

They have, thank God. He knew what he was doing and they have these emergency showers just for this reason, and he jumped into the emergency shower and he was doing, and they 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 on his leg and broke his leg and I figured I don't want to work in the big industry, I want to do something small. So that's one of the reasons that I'm just living here this potential of goldmine, of making prize-winning wines.

S. Simon Jacob:

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

Yaakov Ben Moshe:

So how can I not make wine?

S. Simon Jacob:

Right, I love it. I love it. This is great. This is beautiful, thank you. Thank you for letting me talk to you and come and visit you here in Eshkodesh. This is an amazing place. Baruch Hashem Pleasure. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terroir. 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're new to the Kosher Terwa, please check out our many past episodes.

People on this episode