Solomon Simon Jacob 0:09

Welcome T he 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. Today we have an extraordinary guest, a true pioneer of Israeli winemaking, Avi Feldstein. Avi's name is synonymous with innovation, bold experimentation and a deep respect for the land and its native grape varieties. From his transformative work at Seagal Winery to founding his own boutique Feldstein Winery, Avi has shaped the way the world perceives Israeli wine. In this episode, we'll delve into his journey, explore the unique terroirs of Israel and uncover the fascinating stories behind wines like his Grenache, Debouki and Sauvignon Blanc.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:10

Whether you're a wine connoisseur or simply curious about the evolving Israeli wine landscape, you won't want to miss this. 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 and enjoy this episode with Avi Feldstein. Avi Feldstein, I'd like to say thank you very much for inviting me to come up to the winery. I'm happy to be here.

Avi Feldstein 1:40

I'm happy you're here.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:42

I'm very happy to be here. It took us a long time. It took some time, but it's okay. We went through. You know, the Lebanese kept us apart for a while, hezbollah kept us apart for a while. So, yeah, it's okay, but we're here. I was afraid. This morning, last night actually, I was listening to the radio and they're talking about how the whole peace thing is breaking down and I'm saying, just leave it for a little bit longer, please. You know we don't need missiles. The last time I came up to see Effie not the last time, the time before the missiles were flying everywhere. I mean there was as you're driving down from, as you're driving from, sfat, the sides of the roads were on fire and everything right. It was crazy.

Solomon Simon Jacob 2:30

But thank you for being on The Kosher Terroir. Okay, it's really a pleasure. I need to tell you that you've impacted my life for so many years. It's a pleasure to meet you in person. One of my favorite wines that actually made a believer of wine out of me was the Seagal Unfiltered. It was so special, it was just amazing, awesome wine. I have some questions for you. Tell me a little bit about your journey into winemaking and what originally inspired you on this path.

Avi Feldstein 3:16

Wow so long.

Solomon Simon Jacob 3:19

It's not so long, come on, come on. Come on, you're younger than me.

Avi Feldstein 3:25

I started, I wouldn't say by accident, but it was quite an unusual path, Because I started working, started my adult life as a earning While I was studying. I was studying literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Where Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv yeah.

Avi Feldstein 3:51

And I was an active writer literature, and I was publishing, not for the door. I was publishing considered to be a great promise, a great promise, a great promise, and while doing that I need to sustain myself, because I'm not coming from a wealthy family. I started work. My work life started at restaurants and bars. Quickly I became an instructor, because I have a nature To teach, to study, okay, maybe also to teach, teach and delight. It's a Renaissance idea. So I started to teach. Then I started to write, to write on the subjects in the newspapers, etc. About drinks, about wines, about food, and on one hand I became quite famous in that realm. I was writing for Hadashot. Hadashot was then a new thing and it was a newspaper that invented the modern Hebrew of newspaper writing, and the new style of writing about food was something half intellectual food and wine.

Solomon Simon Jacob 5:24

You were living. Where then? Tel Aviv okay that's your origin. You were born in Tel Aviv.

Avi Feldstein 5:35

Wow, people from all Israel are coming to Tel Aviv. Right, there's very little Tel Aviv that was born there. I was used to say that I'm Tel Aviv-ic because from habits, so from any choice or Right, this is what I know. I'm living in a street next to the street. I used to roam with my mother next to the streets. I used to roam with my mother buying food, buying fish, buying herring in newspaper. They used to roll it in newspaper. Yeah, I can close my eyes and imagine that while I'm there, this is the last part of Tel Aviv still resembling what, what?

Solomon Simon Jacob 6:23

was in the past.

Avi Feldstein 6:26

So I was in Tel Aviv doing that, started to write, starting to work also as a consultant to importers in the field of alcohol, because I was educated there in Neuropsychiatry and before I knew it I opened the first Israeli bartender school, which was a financial disaster because it was like I don't know 60 meetings, there was no way to earn one shekel out of them, only to lose. But it was a terrific thing because it was also about cocktails, which is now very popular.

Solomon Simon Jacob 7:17

It's only a few years early.

Avi Feldstein 7:19

Yeah, a few years but also had that chapter long and and and very elaborated chapters about beer, about wine, about the the making of liquor, balkonia, brandy, whiskey, actually going into distilling details and stuff like that. So quite a few of the wine and alcohol trade people went under me through that school, wow. Then came my good friend till this very day, alex Segal, which was the son of Tzvi Segal, which was the CEO of Segal Wine, and he decided that I should leave everything and come work for Segal. It took him like one year of working on me but finally I did that, stopped writing for anybody, started to work with him, first in marketing.

Avi Feldstein 8:22

The import of Segal was unbelievably large Because Israel drank actually so little of imported wines. You could have everybody, all the wineries and agencies, under the same roof. I mean Galo and Mondavi were both I just say the word the only place in the world, because they are rivals and they used to go to different. So I was exposed then to a huge quantity of quality wine from all over the world, from France, from the United States, from Australia, from the United States, from Australia, and this started to form my education. In those years I advanced, I ended my management life at Segal as vice president for business development. This was my last job there, my last job, my last job before I switched and crossed the lines to winemaking. It was progressive. As a manager, as a development manager, I did something very unique Not all people have this opportunity and it was to rebuild the winery. It was a winery with a great past but with an uncertain future.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 9:56

Okay.

Avi Feldstein 9:57

Because there was revolutions in the country, Golan winery came.

Solomon Simon Jacob 10:02

Changed the whole world.

Avi Feldstein 10:03

Yeah, came to the center of The center of the world. Segal was still under the old paradigm that wine growers are producing grapes and the wineries are producing wine and you should not mix. Let everybody do his job, which, of course, is so unrelevant to quality, good wine.

Solomon Simon Jacob 10:31

Today yeah, for sure.

Avi Feldstein 10:32

So I came to change that and during that project I decided that the winery is rebuilt from the ground, from the vineyards, and we should have our own vineyards, and embarked on a journey of planting quite an acreage for historical independent Segal winery. And the unique thing about that was that I decided that the region to do that is this one is the gallery. You may be surprised to know, because it's so not relevant to what I hear today, that the Dalil was empty from grapevine Empty.

Solomon Simon Jacob 11:12

Everything was empty? No, but the Galilee was definitely empty.

Avi Feldstein 11:15

Yeah, because the Judean hills had vineyards.

Solomon Simon Jacob 11:20

What year are we talking about?

Avi Feldstein 11:21

We're talking about mid-'90s, mid-'90s, mid-'90s, mid-90s Golan. All the buses with tourists went to the Golan Heights, the planes with the news reported because we used to fly them To Amnur, yeah, and the private cars with visitors all go went to the Golan and the Lille was empty. To me, this was outrageous. I tell you why, because of two things. First of all, it looked to me as a classical wildlife, which it is, which it is proven to be, it has. It is high elevation, it is cold, it is fertile. It is high elevation, it is cold, it is fertile, it is diverse and you get sunshine in fact the Golan is a terrific place to grow grapes, don't get me wrong but it's quite monotonic.

Avi Feldstein 12:24

Well, you have these little differences, but it's not like in the Galilee. In the Galilee you can go with 10 minutes drive 450 meters elevation in Dishon Valley to 900 meters at Manara Cliff.

Solomon Simon Jacob 12:39

Right.

Avi Feldstein 12:41

In a few minutes' vibe you go through, let's say I call it the entry, the port, the gate, the gate to the upper valley at Tzomet Golani. You see, on your left, the Tu'an quarries and you see the mountain cut open because they they hang, and you see the white uh limestone chalk, chalk of the of the lime uh rock.

Avi Feldstein 13:15

On your left, on your right, you see basilic boulders, volcanic boulders, so you see the mixture, a centering, and in the Galilee you have a mixture of those in every different, in any possible way. You have vineyards facing the north, facing south, facing east, high elevations, valleys, mountain ridge within valleys, mountain ridge within these straight heights.

Solomon Simon Jacob 13:47

Incredible terroir. Incredible terroir yeah.

Avi Feldstein 13:51

So if you were interested in that, in multitude of possibilities, and in the concept of terroir, which I was very interested in because I then wore more Bordeaux train than any other Terroir and Longevity was the two helmets of the good, while for me it changed with years. It changed. I'm suspicious about the concept of Terroir. I know that this is like pissing on everybody's parade, but you know it is what it is. I can elaborate later. It's an important concept, it is a working concept, but it's not the one and only concept, in fact, being the one and only concept to many, this is a religious side of secular people. So the gallery was empty in this sense, and it was vacant. It burned with emptiness. The other thing was that one culture, one environment are connected. The wall is a triangle, the angles of which being a variety, a place, a place of climate and soil, and a man in Europe. It's a community, the community of Santa Milion, which formed the ways in so many hundred years In the New World. It's an artist, a winemaker, a winemaker, one person with his vision. It's not a community, it's a person, it's a creator, the creator of wines as images. But the man is there, the culture is there. The background is there. The background is there, the history is there. The history is there, and the Golan Heights, being as good as it was for Greb Govan, is empty of Jewish history. It has some. So if they excavate a temple or what they take the stone, they bring it to the winery to prove oh okay, we're Jewish as well. But there's no comparison between the Golanites and what happened in the Judean years or what happened in the. Galilee is the capital of the Mishnah and Galilee is filled with Jewish history, religious, secular, in fact.

Avi Feldstein 16:32

I can take you with the car 10 minutes drive from here to Jish, the Gush Halav. Go on to the valley of Gush Halav of the river Gush Halav. 200 meters downstream we find the remains of a synagogue, very well preserved, with the stone big stone that used to be on the pork, with lions carved into the, and this was the synagogue of a Jewish settlement in the Vadi, not of Gush Halab. Gush Halab was a Jewish settlement and then there was another one. The other one was a completely agricultural settlement, making a living out of olive oil and wine production. This was at the time of the Romans, which means 1,000 years ago. The place is just full of wine ancient… 2,000 years ago. Yeah, yeah, 2,000.

Solomon Simon Jacob 17:26

2,000 years. We do strike, but it's yes, I agree with you 100%.

Avi Feldstein 17:32

So it being empty from wildletting was outrageous too. So I decided that I'm going to the gallery. It was as a manager, and I planted some 750 dunams, including vineyards that became unicorns or became icons as Dishon, rignard and Dover. During that I met. I made a transition because during that I became, I started to make wine here, because I was here all the day with the Riyads. I started to make wine together with Jeff Marks Ziffonon, yivracha in Kibbutz Amiyad, a small operation named Dalili Heights Wine, and then some time later I became the winemaker, the chief winemaker.

Avi Feldstein 18:28

Self-taught, I taught myself. I used the connection of Segal with the wineries all over the world to go there and see, not what people teach, they do, what they actually do at the best wineries of the world. I could be with us from close range because I was a distinguished guest. We'd open the doors too and study myself from books. I was already a university trained man, but I also felt that, you know, in the western culture the basic intellectual institution is not university, it is the library. It was always the library. It's the library of Alexandria.

Exploring Galilean Winemaking Tradition

Avi Feldstein 19:21

For the secular it's the way Judaism was learned in rooms full of books, people studying and the concept of somebody that reads a book, stands on the podium and tells you what's written in it, then testing your understanding of what he taught you. This is a modern concept. I went classical on that and taught myself, and so when those vineyards new vineyards gave fruit first time, I was in the winery waiting for them to make the first pies. It was a closure of a circle, so this is like the way I went in. Come here, by the way, come here Half-exit donkey to this specific location. I found the diffill at the two of these ponds and spanks. If you stand up, you see, above those two black, there is a hill.

Solomon Simon Jacob 20:30

Yes, yes, that's it.

Avi Feldstein 20:31

This is the grave of Abiyo Seagiri At the top of that hill.

Avi Feldstein 20:39

Yes, wow, abiyo Seagiri, a side of the Inverness, a fellow in the Pesach camp, is a very interesting figure. First of all, he's called Brilik, so this was close to start with from the name. He was very original in Mery. He used to eat chicken in butter until they forced him to comply with the general rule. But another verdict of him which is relevant is that he said that you don't bring Bikurim from Ever Ayerden. Don't bring Bikurim from Ever Ayerden, which means that he drew the lines of what is cultural Israel, what it really is, and it doesn't contain the Gara lights. The line crosses down in the valley, leaving the Naftali mountains as the northern part of classical Israel, growing, agricultural growing region. Why is this important? Because it came together with my vision. Look, here is Vili, his grave. Down there is a vineyard of mine, the Rosan. Between and over that is Emek Achula and on the other side you can see the.

Avi Feldstein 22:12

The geographic map is very clear from here and it includes what I've done in Zagallani, because after I there was a few vineyards here, very few. There was the Sochnut plantings of the beginning of the 80s in Ramad, alton, okay, which was in. They had to put something in marginal soils, so the vineyards were the only thing possible, but it was the majority white and the majority sovereign. Nobody knew what to do with it. And also one vineyard at Dishon Valley, the vineyards of Ramot Daftali, which was a vineyard that Kamel planted, then abandoned to Ramat HaGolan. Ramat HaGolan started in Mechatzor HaGlilith before they went to the Golan, when he was here, and they took the vineyard with them and it was the heart of Kabar, nei Arden and Ktzerin. They had the fact that their best wine, best grapes are coming from.

Avi Feldstein 23:26

Galilee. But this was it and it was between the moment I started to plant in the mid-90s. There have been 20 years that passed without any grape planting in the Galilee. So I was starting a new thing. I put not alone because also some other people was starting to vision the idea, but because I planted 750 dunams and because I brought everybody that was willing here and because I brought everybody that was willing here newspapers and news writers about food, about tourism, well-being Everybody stood in line to get grapes at 99 when it first yielded and everybody got because it was my mission. I had more and everybody planted after here so it became everybody who got grapes from me planted a vineyard near to me in the next few years. So the Galilee went on.

Solomon Simon Jacob 24:41

Griltsburg. Yeah, was there a particular moment or vintage early on that solidified your passion for winemaking?

Avi Feldstein 24:52

It was something that caught all my being, so I cannot figure out one vintage. That was the proof.

Solomon Simon Jacob 25:07

Okay.

Avi Feldstein 25:09

Maybe the proof. Yes, it wasn't the motivation, but it caused the proof that something very good is. I think the 1999 vintage was the new vineyards in the gallery yielding which one 19? 1999. 1999., Okay, I had a few vineyards until then, of course, but the new vineyards in the first year which is not expected gave such magnificent fruit that the walls of the winery were shaking. Wow was a trial. Shaking Wow. And to prove that some of those wines are still alive in the bottles.

Solomon Simon Jacob 25:54

Mechus. What do you think are Israel's biggest strengths and unique challenges as a winemaking region?

Avi Feldstein 26:01

For speaking about the strengths, the unique strengths, I'm compliant to speak about the local nature.

Solomon Simon Jacob 26:12

Are you talking about the grape varieties, the local grape varieties?

Embracing Indigenous Grapes for Identity

Avi Feldstein 26:15

What the style is what the history is, how they can all combine to one story. Because I think making wine is story making. It's not a 100% and there is an obligation to the winemaker to write that story and to make the wine tell it. But if you want only the advantages, something that came to me in America was speaking with people representing myself, people that didn't know me but were interested in new, innovative ways. It's a changing world. It's a changing world. It is changing climatically and wine world should adapt. It is changing culturally.

Avi Feldstein 27:06

I think that the concept of terroir is related to the in a deep sense to the former century, not exactly, not so basically connected to what's happening now. It has influence. So because it's a changing world, because Israel is in the midst of a changing world, because it's a changing climate, because Israel is a hot climate, in a way, winemakers that try to accommodate to hot climates first for others, they are like the pioneers of the future. The whole world will look like the hot climates of today. So in fact, we are pioneering the wilds of the future.

Solomon Simon Jacob 28:05

I strongly believe that I was so. In fact, we are pioneering the wines of the future. I strongly believe that I was privileged to be one of the wine pourers at the president's house a couple of years ago.

Avi Feldstein 28:18

Ah, it was a wonderful thing. Who organized?

Solomon Simon Jacob 28:21

it. I can't remember her name.

Avi Feldstein 28:26

Yeah.

Solomon Simon Jacob 28:27

No, I am already.

Solomon Simon Jacob 28:29

Yes, yes, she's the one who organized it, but I was there the first year that it happened. There's been two years that they did it. I was with Iakovoria and at that time they were just bringing out Pinto wine and because we said Pinto, everybody said oh, it's a desert winery. There wasn't an ambassador from everywhere in the world who didn't stop by our booth to speak to Yakov about making wine. It was like we were the canary in the coal mine, where you know we're the ones who are impacted now, but they all knew what was coming in the future and it was an amazing interaction. Everybody wanted to know how were you doing it? What were you doing? How can I connect you to some of the winemakers and large wine people within our own country and back and forth. It was very. There was an enormous amount of interest about Israel because of that, because of the desert. Enormous amount of interest. By the way, I was also mixed up with that Because of the desert. Enormous amount of interest.

Avi Feldstein 29:46

By the way, I was also mixed up with that Because Segal Winery was the independent Segal even before Bakan purchased. It was in connection with all the little wineries, little vineyards, coming in the Negev Right. Yeah, I forgot the name of that project Netioti Chidim or something like this. People got a land Right, the state gave them a land, they gave them some loans to start their own vineyards, to start their own wineries in the desert, and those days if you wanted to plant a vineyard you had to get a letter from a winery that said that it is willing to use the Greeks. So we gave some quite a few contacts with those people. We had also some wines from them. This went to.

Avi Feldstein 30:55

Bakan. But Bakan took over that also. So we were even producing them their wines, without telling everybody it was behind the scenes, but we were buying the grapes for ourselves, a portion of it. We would transform the wine and leave them back to sell. And Bakan was quite innovative those years. I mean, I think the vineyard, the Chardonnay Pinot Noir vineyard at Zperamon, was the first really big industrial vineyards in the Faus. And I remember the pictures from helicopters. There was no drones those days, so it was an expensive picture. You know from helicopters, there was no drones those days, so it was an expensive picture. You charter a helicopter and send it up to picture your vineyard and there's a run and then a bright green vineyard sitting in the middle of it. It was all over the world, in the Balkans.

Solomon Simon Jacob 32:01

Wow. So you've been working recently highlighting indigenous grapes, special indigenous varieties. What draws you to these varieties and which ones do you think have the most potential?

Avi Feldstein 32:16

What drives me to them is the wish, the need to establish my local identity as a winemaker, because this is what people do. They produce things and they want to know what is unique, what is related to the area, and this is a question that came to my mind a long time ago. It started with the 90s. In the 90s, becoming the chief winemaker of Segal, working a lot with Alderman as a variety for entry-level wines and doing huge quantities, hundreds of thousands of liters for it. I felt that there's something hiding in the variety. It was something that took me a long time to understand what was hiding there, but I was sure that something was hiding there, and also the fact that it was a local cross. The sons of those white people hiding there. Also the fact that it was a local cross, spoke to me, because a local cross is something that involves the environment. There's always the question about a young man, a young person. Which is more important? The genetics or the education? This could be the same question could be transformed into the grape world. What is more important? The genetics of the parents, because it's a cross, it has parents. It's not a vegetative propagation like industrial vineyards that you bring one grape from France, you put it in a nursery and you start to cut things which are 100% identical DNA to the mother. So when you do a cross, you deliberately mix up the genetic charge of those parents of the cross and encourage it to make all as much as possible combination of it. Then you plant these seeds because this is not vegetative propagation, this is like in children. That's what real seeds not only the mother, the mother and the father and start to look at what you planted and to check it, to check it by values of growth, of health, of yield, of quality, of yield of time, of harvest, of anything. So as you advance, you pick, you pick some and then you take the sum and you multiply the quantity and you replant them and you still are all over the vineyard looking and learning and choosing. Where are you doing that? You're doing it in a special soy, where are you doing it In a special climate. So the outcome is completely an outproduct of that climate and that soil.

Avi Feldstein 35:57

So Agamon was completely local to me. I could saw it. Of course it is different for Karinial, it is different for Susarial, it's different for Susar, the two parents but it was local and I felt that as a winemaker, the question is not why should I make a wine from Ardaman? The real question was how can I afford not to draw wine from Agamal? This is the question. It was in front of me. It was a son, a child of this land, the vine, it was representing it.

Avi Feldstein 36:40

It took a while until I did the first commercial one on 2006. The bottle I still get it. I will ask them to be in the city for a year. He realized that on the label it is written 2006,. I mean that it is a moral duty to make wines, to look for local identity in wine. It's written black and white on the bottle. So this was the beginning of the project to move.

Avi Feldstein 37:13

The first commercial product was 2006, but I was playing for 10 years with it and I planted the vineyard in Dovev, in Agamon of Agamon in Dovev. At 2000 or at 1999, I planted it. So this was a completely Liza Durable story because I just felt that I'm taking the DNA of from the roots of the main plains in Israel and took it to a very good university at an elevation of 850 meters in the Galilee and training it and teaching it to speak as a lady and see what was coming out, and it was the historical Agamon, which David Roboff wrote about the test vintage. There are three good scenes in Agamon Color, color and color. So I tell David Thank you very much. They say, david, you are going to eat your hat, and when you are going to eat your hat, I will supply the best salted peppers. So it's more, he was Spider-Man.

Avi Feldstein 38:40

So two years later, when the wine came back from competition all over the world and was decorated, etc. He had a piece written in arts, the headline being I'm eating my. So I still have it somewhere. But this was the very first beginning of trying to work with the concept of local identity. Look for me. Israel has a long, very ancient wine production history. Yes, everything around shows that In the ancient days it was a huge producer. The last wine press that was excavated near Yavne is approximated to produce one million bottles annually, can you?

Solomon Simon Jacob 39:46

imagine. Can you imagine?

Avi Feldstein 39:48

Those days. It's unbelievable numbers and those were exported all over the world, world right and but the modern history and there is, you know, there is the researchers that say that the very basic DNA of grapevine comes from.

Solomon Simon Jacob 40:19

This was very much in parallel, where people have said for years that Georgia was the beginning of the wine industry. That's not true.

Avi Feldstein 40:28

They were parallel to them and they were mixed.

Avi Feldstein 40:31

Yeah, and they mixed Through the ages, through the. I think it was a process, you know, because we sent wild and purple bee vines outside of Israel. Right, they got mixed up with DNA from Georgia and then the Roman soldier brought them Because he wasn't doing it for the wealth of the world, but it was a habit, you know. In the backpack, right, there was the gladiola, the sword of the legionnaire, and grape cuttings and wherever they went they planted vineyards. You can look at the vineyard map of Europe and it is like a historical map of the Roman conquest of Europe, historical map of the Roman conquest of Europe. If you see Spain and you see the Ebo and the Duro, the two valleys, two big, serious wine valleys. This was the roots of the Roman invasion of Spain. So they just planted vines all over. So the Romans brought back into Israel also some of the mixed DNA. So it got more rich. The culture that did the opposite, while the Romans enriched the wine scene in Israel. The Islam, the.

Solomon Simon Jacob 41:59

Islam. Islam did exactly the opposite 700 years ago.

Avi Feldstein 42:04

The last change of the Romans was 1,000 years ago, I think. The vineyard was again changed massively 700 years ago. They plant out everything that seemed to them intended to alcohol production and what seemed to them as table breaks they would leave. It was big and flashy, and this is the real source of the distinction between wine grapes and table breaks, the real source of the distinction between grape, between wine grapes and table grapes. When people asked at the beginning they were annoying me why are you making with the zabuki, why are you making a wine from table grapes? My answer at the first year I'm a polite guy I responded politely. After that I would use to ask the guy that was asking me are you Muslim? So me Muslim, why? Because you were asking me a Muslim question. You are using a Muslim distinction, right? Nobody said that this is a table grape. The Muslims said it was a table grape.

Solomon Simon Jacob 43:21

So, Debuki, you brought it up. What do you think of it?

Avi Feldstein 43:25

The Buki was so Agamar was the first one. Then, when I started my Ilikent wineries, there was the Buki in the middle of the scene, the Buki was everywhere. When I was growing, the Buki was one of the main table grapes in Israel. The vineyards of the Buki were from the Galilee to the south. Do you know Rami Naaman from Naaman Winery.

Solomon Simon Jacob 43:53

I don't know.

Avi Feldstein 43:54

There's a winery in Ramot Astali. A good winery, rami, told me that when he was a kid he got beaten up because he was caught stealing the Buki grapes at Ashkelon shoreline Shoreline yeah, so we understand that the Buki was planted even on the coastline of Ashkelon, ashkelon, ashkelon. So this is where the ancient name of Segal wines came. By the way, it was called Ashkelon winery Before it was called.

Solomon Simon Jacob 44:36

Segal, I remember that, I remember.

Avi Feldstein 44:38

Because Ashkelon was growing yeah, now considered to be the desert. So you see, there's not a lot new when you dig deep enough. Of course, in the legate would tell you that the Labattic culture grew grapes and did wonder. They're just renovating culture, grew grapes and did wine there. They're just renovating or redoing the history.

Avi Feldstein 45:12

But what I want to tell you, that in modern wine making not in the ancient world, in the modern world, in the modern world the history of grape growing in Israel and my life, let's say it's 100, 100 and something years from the bar on the road to plantings, and this looked to me as the infancy years of the industry. It's like the years that a baby is learning how to walk and how to talk, years that a baby is learning how to walk and how to talk. Eventually, he knows. Then he wants to use this new faculty of his and he wants to say something, something that the baby Israeli industry wine world wanted to say while it mastered its language, the language being how to grow grapes in the hot country, how to produce wine more and more elaborated and overcome the difficulties you need to replace.

Avi Feldstein 46:12

What was in the mouths of this baby was a question of local identity more and more and more. Of course, when you're talking about supermarket wines, it's less evident, but as you climb up the pyramid of quality, you find the question more and more so. For me it was very basic. I started to do that at the end of the last century Agamann, and then Dabuki in 2014. And Dab book was everywhere. I said you make a winemaker should make wine from grapes that are in front of his wife. Agamon was and the book is still the book. The book is diminished in the area because people were tend to eat seedless grapes.

Avi Feldstein 47:02

Which I till these very days. I don't understand. The tendency is like eating peeled sunflower seeds All the fun is in spitting the Grapes. That's spitting the seeds, the seeds.

Solomon Simon Jacob 47:17

Yeah, no, I agree. And the taste is so different, I know they mute the taste so much. It's kind of crazy.

Avi Feldstein 47:28

So little bubbles of sugar. I know, If you find a little taste, wow, it's a good table grape because it has a little bit of taste, a little bit of smell.

Solomon Simon Jacob 47:40

What about the other varietals? Have you done anything with the other varietals?

Avi Feldstein 47:45

I've done because I also was a consultant, etc. I started to use Marawi and Jandali as little additives to the Buki a few years ago. Yeah, I made also some wine from Petuli. Yes, why the wait? The wait? Because Agamon was waiting for the world wine to change. In what way? There are two reasons why Agamon didn't succeed. At first, even though it was elegant, I proved it to be an elegant worthy of any respectable dealer or wine tasting. I proved it in 2006. But Agamon will be very unwillingly producing high levels of sugar even in the most hot years and there will always be a very in your eyes, your face acidic side to the wine. These were two features that was against the wine. These were two features that were against the mainstream 25 years ago To make a wine, because the wine should have been very sweet and very alcoholic and the Agamon, in its nature, is the opposite. It's very acidic and very low in alcohol. Today this is one of the varieties all the world is looking for.

Solomon Simon Jacob 49:29

Right.

Avi Feldstein 49:30

The varieties that are making refreshing wines, that are making drinkable wines, that are lower alcohol, drinkability being a hallmark of this winery from its very first day Locality drinkability. Coming back to Derbuki, just to complete my answer Derbuki. Why Derbuki? Because it was here, because I knew the grave. Let me tell you a secret. There were times that we lacked white grapes in Israel For various purposes, let's say for alcohol production. Alcohol for aging would be better coming from grape white than red. Artisanal Arak producers are completely convinced that the base wine that they are distilling should be the bouquet.

Solomon Simon Jacob 50:34

Really.

Avi Feldstein 50:34

Yeah, wow, when I was studying, this was my competition. Wow, people wanted to buy the few vineyards remaining to our. They're making in Kyiv and Dibas, raisins and Dibas from it. But there was time that before, the red was dominant until, let's say, five to ten years, which is quite a scullery back because of global war. Right, there was a red wine domination, but before that there was a white craze. It was what years were that? The beginning of the 2000s. It came together with the Yappie movement in the States, because Yappies established Yippies. They find themselves in very varied cultural features, also by so you're talking about like the Chardonnay movement.

Avi Feldstein 51:43

By the food and by the wine they define themselves. They define themselves, let's say, by colorless beverages.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 51:50

Okay.

Avi Feldstein 51:51

This was connected also to health. If I'm wealthy and I'm enlightened, I take care of my health. If I take care of my health, I don't eat artificial coloring. I will drink transparent sodas and I will drink. You know it's a metaphor and I will drink. Even though it's natural color, I will drink white. So here there wasn't enough white grapes.

Avi Feldstein 52:20

The book was all around Israel, the viastic remains, and the Abuki was the grapes of the East Bank. There's no question whether it is Israeli or Palestinian. It grows also in the West Bank, but it covered all of historical Israel. And when you find seeds in ancient wine presses which are petrified, we cannot take out DNA samples for them, but their morphology is completely identical to Dabuki, so it's a good reason to believe that it was a wine position back in the ancient times. Wow. So all this spoke to me and my story was a story with that grape, outside the loud narratives of the environment, because it's not appropriation, because it's original here it's still ancient.

Avi Feldstein 53:22

You cannot mix in the I'm taking from the White Bank but from the East Bank. But my goal is well, at least one of them is Palestinian. So I'm giving parnassah to a fellow Muslim dweller of this country to a fellow Muslim dweller of this country. You cannot involve me in any one-sided political agenda, and I like that. I don't like to be put in boxes. You know All my wives, by the way. It's something I like to say because it's true, they're made outside of the box. Each and every one of them is done with some features which are unique.

Solomon Simon Jacob 54:12

Talk to me a little bit about your wines today, because you just introduced into America. It's kind of silly to say that, even because I'm telling you my favorite wine in America was the Seagal Unfiltered. And so that was. And actually I said we're going to meet Avi Feldstein and he said to me who's Avi Feldstein? And I said, ok, I'm just going to tell you one thing. I'm not going to tell you the history or any of the rest of that. I'm going to tell you one thing Seagal unfiltered. And he said, wow, that was like real, that was my favorite wine and it was I'm not putting it, but it was certainly mine and there was a lot of people who are drinking wine because of you. So it's amazing.

Avi Feldstein 55:11

You know, first of all thank you. But when Bakan took over, Sergal bought it. After a few years, maybe two, not much the self-force people of Tempo were coming to me and telling me you know, you are hurting us to sell beer. I said how come? Because if a restaurant wants your wine and wants the unfiltered, they will say, okay, you must take the beer and then you get the unfiltered. And it ended up that they made the Gold Star unfiltered, which was a new influence of the wine. It was coming into life of all my efforts and my visions. It was eventually done from the Louvignans in the Galilee. It was made by mixing terroirs.

Avi Feldstein 56:09

From the very first beginning I don't believe Terroir is a value. It's a defending light of the wild world because if not terroir, there will be no stoppage to the McDonaldization of the wild world, the copper colonization of the world. So it's a defending right. It should be respected for that. But it's not only value, it's not in any cause, it is even the leading value.

Avi Feldstein 56:40

When you are doing a wine with your interpretation of the variety, your search for its pure inner core, you might use the same variety from different terroirs to give a full picture of the variety Because the classical terroirs of the world were made historically where they are. Bordeaux became iconic to Camernet. It doesn't mean that in another country there should be existing an area resembling in its nature to Bordeaux. If it has other qualities of places, other places' qualities, then you might need to mix two to get to the same outcome of an iconic wine. So what is considered to be already iconic taste of a variety which, of course, is a cultural construct, Terroir, then becomes one of his unspoken and unnoticed functions, the commercial one, what's mutual to all the big terroirs of the world.

Solomon Simon Jacob 57:46

Temperature change.

Avi Feldstein 57:48

There are different patterns of temperature change in the Rhone Valley and into the Rhein Valley Soil. Nothing to do from the chalky stones of champagne To the ter.

Solomon Simon Jacob 58:04

Champagne To the Terra Rosa.

Avi Feldstein 58:05

To the Alville Marine dried mud of Bordeaux, which a Dutch engineer gave to France by drying the swamps near the sea. Climate again, the climate of the south of the Rhône is sunny, burgundy and champagne. You know, it's gloomy and champagne, even at summer, is not now, but in the past it was even too harsh to ripen grapes in certain vintages. I think if you look into it you will see that what is neutral to all the big terroirs of the world is that it is an industrial, it is an agricultural area, not very far or adjacent to a big and wealthy city, the rivers being the commercial roads, the transport of the Middle Ages. This is what transformed Tewa to be paradigmatic and by sending agricultural products to the city, getting back good money fluently and close range, making the agricultural area able to develop itself, to enhance itself, to look for its core.

Avi Feldstein 59:43

People that don't have what we eat are not asking what is the terroir of our land. They should be with a full belly and the money from the big city gets the opportunity. There is nothing to say. Well, it's not intrinsic, it's not as if it's in the build of the world that this ter, this war is, but in this way I mean. It's a cultural construct. It still has its full meaning and this is what was established as iconic. The concept of the tower in its beginning was the way of the people living.

Avi Feldstein 1:00:29

You know, they say in Bordeaux that the best vineyards are the vineyards that see water, that sees the rivers. A part of this answer is that the vineyards that saw water could block the way to the water from the vineyards that didn't see it by drawing a terroir border. We say this vein of life, of money, of wealth, of interchange, is mine, it's mine and my friend, and this friend and this friend, you are not included. You are not included. You are not included, you are not included.

Avi Feldstein 1:01:07

It was a tool Because it's connected to a certain time, a certain culture. It's still active. We enjoy it. We should go on and enjoy it. But we should understand that when France is saying to me ah, you can make a distilled cabernet only for mixing two terroirs. I'm doing it from one terroir, so I'm better. This is the continuation of what they did back then. When they say you are not allowed to go to Biro Water, it's violent. This is a terroir. You are outside the neighbor of Bordeaux, it's outside the war of Bordeaux and I'm outside the war of Bordeaux by the same tool. If I'm accepting the playing goals that they set Right and I do not want to do that I want to break those rules.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:02:01

So let me ask you a question, a primary question, because it's actually. You're talking on both sides of it. The question I have is where is the wine made? Is the wine made in the vineyard or is the wine made in the winery? Both Both.

Innovative Winemaking and Local Identity

Avi Feldstein 1:02:25

I think. When the making of the wine in the winery is more basic or it is more formulated, it's automated, it's a way people are doing, then it has less meaning what you do, and then the vineyard is shining out. It's a matter of focus. It's a matter of focus, it's a matter of value. Choosing Again, you can choose whatever the value could be the artisanal work of a man, this could be the value. And then terroir is becoming even more marginal. Listen, terroir is truth. When you take a certain variety X variety and you put in this terroir or in that terroir, the wine will be different.

Avi Feldstein 1:03:11

This is objective. That's the way it is. This is completely objective. To say this is very good and this is awful is not objective. It's completely subjective. But the fact, the scientific fact, this is awful is not objective. It's completely subjective. But the fact, the scientific fact, this is objective. But because it's objective, you can use it as a material. When people say, okay, terroir is the main thing, and I am mixing Merlot and Cabernet to reveal this terroir in its most glorious way, okay, I can say okay, cabernet is the subject and I'm using two vineyards, two terroirs, as material. As I used varieties in the first, I'm using now two terroirs to show the glory of the variety.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:04:11

Just because they set the rules doesn't mean you need to play by them.

Avi Feldstein 1:04:14

This is very evident. You cannot, you cannot, you are not allowed to add acid in France and want to make it Right? This is very bad. Everybody said is this original acid? Is this natural acid? Everybody, you know there's people that go to one of me and treat it in their mouth and say, oh, we can taste condition of acid. I'm putting $10,000 that you cannot. I will make you a tasting and you will not know which is a. This is bullshit. But what is the origin of this? Is this something some purity thing connected to wine?

Avi Feldstein 1:05:04

No, the reason you are not allowed to add acids to wines in France because the only situation that you could be in that you want to do that is if you want to forge wine. If you want to add water to wine, you have enough acid by all standards. If you want to add water to the wine and enlarge the quantity, then you have to add acid. So this is why it's not allowed originally in France. But then they made it a two-lap outfit. Ok, we don't need hot countries, need. Let's obliterate the hot countries, say they're second best because they add. They add acid it's. I don't know why they're adding acid, but they're adding sugar. This is okay. This is alright. The reason we are not adding sugar probably the only circumstances you want Israel to add sugar is if you're adding water. We are not adding sugar. We're in a hot country. The only circumstances you want Israel to add sugar is if you're adding water. Again, if you're forging wine.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:06:10

Okay, what wines now? Are you proudest of that you're manufacturing, what wines really make you feel special?

Avi Feldstein 1:06:25

Listen, I'll tell you all of them, Because you know it's like.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:06:30

Children.

Avi Feldstein 1:06:31

Exactly, and it's a smaller family than it used to be. Because I was independent. I used to make about 16 to 18 wines, different wines every vintage, partnering up with Barkan Temple. It couldn't go on, because you cannot take a huge sales force and train them to sell 16 different wines every vintage and just sell Sémillon and Sauvignon and Sémillon Sauvignon. It cannot. If you are transforming your surgical cell to a cell man, then you can go and sell it, but no other one can.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:07:23

Yeah, nobody else can sell it.

Avi Feldstein 1:07:24

So I had to narrow it down. I narrowed it down to four. Now I'm back to eight. I'm not finished with that. I want to do some more because I continue to develop, looking for local identity by selection of graves, indigenous graves, local crosses like Agamon, southern graves like Gernaschen and Ossan, which comes from areas that are serious to Israel.

Avi Feldstein 1:07:58

This is a good place to start with and also it is a good tool to compete. Israel is making lies all the time, but there's only a few people that would say that you can take an Israeli shadow and put it on the same table with their leading wide-ranging building the local hot, the local hot. But you can take an Israeli rossan and put it on the same table with the best Rossan coming from the south of France, even the iconic, or the unicorns like Gage De Pere or Shator Rias White, and they will stand on the same table. You might say that the French is better, but they are comparable. It's the same entity. So if you want to compete, why compete with one hand tied behind your back?

Avi Feldstein 1:08:50

So this was all about variety selection, but in French time there was a lot of. There was the trying to speak about what the style of local Israel wine should be. This was unique. I did it in my last years in Segal, but not all the way, like he's looking with the varietal. So the wines today are the outcome of that search for a local style which, for me, is quiet, contained, meditative. Because it's a hot country, people might think, because it's a hot country we should drink a white wine which is like a foot nectar, like a mango nectar. No, your body, your mind wants something more pure, more living, and it was easy for me in the States now to explain to people. But I said listen, the style in Israel was like it was in Napa Valley before 50, 20 years. You wanted fruit bombs, you wanted fruit bombs, you wanted wood bombs and actually in Israel we have, as it is, too much bombs. At least the wine should be bombless. Yes, so the style is meditative, is more Burgundy affiliated than Godot Lighter lighter, yes, Summer warm weather.

Avi Feldstein 1:10:24

Yes, lighter. Lighter and summer warm weather. Yes, you know, lighter in a word sometimes seems like a pejorative term, but it should be more drinkable. Drinkable is a good word I was coming into. Plum is the name.

Avi Feldstein 1:10:41

It's a supermarket, but it's a gourmet supermarket and it has a huge wine department. Some of it is not kosher. It has very extensive kosher shelves and he was in the middle of his day and we bothered him with bottles. That's what you're tasting. He was on the counter and tasting at the beginning. Then his eyes lightened up and this is a guy trained with world from all over the world. You pick them. You can see the good selection that he's selling. You know that.

Avi Feldstein 1:11:21

I tell the truth. I have no shame If I say it's a cheat. I say it in the face. He said this is world-class wise. These are completely a different style. These are refreshing and drinkable, wise and drinkable wines.

Avi Feldstein 1:11:40

You know, when I was speaking about Israel, I used to think about something with a plant taste reds plus. It's something with plant taste and very sweet. This wine doesn't have anything reminiscent of that. So all the reds are under the same umbrella, even though they are very different. They are different for each other. They are done outside the box, so they are different for what is done by others, but still they speak in the same way. I'll give you an example. Let's speak about Shemesh. Shemesh is a new wine of mine. It's the second vintage that's coming on the market. Shemesh is a new wine of mine. It's the second, rich, that is coming on the market. Shemesh is a blend. It's a GSA Grenache Syrah, but instead of Mouverde, instead of an M, it's A Argaman, argaman, argaman. This is the blend. All the parts are fermented apart, they are fermented in all clusters and then they are aged, not in wood, they are aged in concrete.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:12:51

In concrete.

Avi Feldstein 1:12:51

And in clay amphora.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:12:53

Amphora.

Avi Feldstein 1:12:55

And this gives water. Shemesh is because Shemesh is the sun, two senses. It's Shemesh is the sun, two senses. It's Shemesh.

Avi Feldstein 1:13:04

The wine, first it comes from vineyards bore under the sun which are not ashamed. They're not trying to be in a forceful way little, they're not too early picked to resemble European. So this is on one hand, and on the other hand they can be drank under the sun. In the Israeli summer you could drink a red wine and you can drink it chilled without ruining it. Of course it would be very nice to see it evolving Cold, less cold, a little bit warmish, but it would be nice even when served chilled. And this is a new concept. This is a new concept. This is a concept coming from modern needs, from a global warming world that is following whole hot countries like Israel.

Avi Feldstein 1:14:02

All over the world you see the raise of white wines and the diminish of reds. If they plunk out Syrah, vinnyaz, the north of the Rhone, and they're putting Rosan, something is happening. You cannot ignore that. And if red wine wants to live, you should adapt. You should adapt, you should fight white wine. You need tools and Shemesh is doing that. It is more acidic, it is. It's not clean, but it's more, it's more sculptured. So this is Shemesh, for instance, and it shows you my new style, my what I'm trying to to to give to the Israeli. I'm trying to give to the Israeli wine world and to generate to the wine world, because these kinds of wines are new all over the world. They won't be there forever.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:14:53

How do you accomplish that, though? Because the three varietals you're telling me about especially. How do you make a lighter wine with a varietal Argumand?

Avi Feldstein 1:15:06

You start with a fermentation. We take the light side, which we prefer, the light side and Argumand. Don't let it fool you Even when it's very dark, it's not healthy.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:15:21

No, I know it's not healthy. No, I know it's not healthy, you're right the body is minimum is at max medium do you even like what does.

Avi Feldstein 1:15:35

What confuses people, it's the color the deep color you expect. Coming back to what Rogoff said to me, the three worst qualities of, yeah, the deep color you expect. Coming back to what Rogoff said to me, the three worst qualities of a man are color and color, because I don't like color.

Avi Feldstein 1:15:50

I do long masturbation and techniques that you lose color with People. Tell me it's not a pity, you don't mind. No, I don't mind, I'm not a color worker. Yeah, I'm not a pity you don't mind. No, I don't mind, I'm not a color worker.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:16:06

Yeah.

Avi Feldstein 1:16:07

I'm not a painter.

Avi Feldstein 1:16:08

Painter I'm not a painter. I'm not a painter, I'm a winemaker. By the way, those full of color wines of the past look to me. Genuinely Volkov. This is the the word I cannot. When God thought the first time of the word wine, it didn't mean something. You cannot see the food through, I'm sure of that. So I gave you one example. Let's speak Cabaner. Cabaner is the opposite. Cabaner is supposed to be as healthy as possible. You won a jumper for one song. Let's speak Kabane. Kabane is the opposite. Kabane is supposed to be as healthy as possible, and I'm at least one of the fathers of the heavy style of Kabane Is there?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:16:58

Yes, interesting this is this is that's the from here. Very nice, very light, that's the Roussanne from here.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:17:25

Wow, very nice, very light.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:17:29

It's light, but it's.

Avi Feldstein 1:17:31

As with floral.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:17:33

Yeah, but it's also.

Avi Feldstein 1:17:34

It's medium.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:17:35

It's medium acid. It's not low acid, but it's great, I love it. It's really nice, very nice. It's nicely made. It's great, I love it. It's really nice. It's nicely made. It's balanced. I like the finish on it as well.

Avi Feldstein 1:17:52

And it's still a baby. There's a critic that wrote about the Rossan 22 which is in the markets. He dissected it, the scope, everything, but he generalized it that to drink this Rosan is like floating in an infinity pool a few days before autumn. It's a beautiful description.

Avi Feldstein 1:18:14

You might understand what I mean by doing a more meditative one. The summary is even more than the Dora Sam, because it's not a while that jumps on me. It's not like Chardonnay or the Fou. It causes you to look inside X. It is not. It doesn't want to show its concentration, it looks for your concentration. You see the variety, you see the honey-like nose, the white flowers nose, even stonish mineral side of Rosanne. And then you see the winery because you see the reductive side. It is all the style of the winery because I'm trying to do more and more reductive each year. One of the main instrument vehicles for that is keeping the wine on the full leaves.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:19:21

On full leaves yes, On the leaves on the full leaves. On full leaves yes.

Avi Feldstein 1:19:27

On the leaves, on the yeast and on all the. It was fermented in open. They are just in front of you. It was fermented inside and that's the wheels.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:19:35

That's why the wheels are there. Yes, okay.

Avi Feldstein 1:19:39

And it will stay for 12 couple of months on full leaves. The majority of winemakers will take out the wine after fermentation, even if it's bare fermented. Let the leaves settle, take out the wine, clean the leaves, put back the wine. But this is kept on full leaves without batonnage, Without batonnage in order to Without batonnage. Without batonnage In order to In vintage. With batonnage to help the yeast metabolism, also to extract from the yeast. When you leave it without batonnage you are letting the yeast to be the sediment of the reductive nose of the water. So you see the style of the whites. I'm trying to be very specific in this style. They are all except the Bupi. They are bare, fermented and aged for 12 months. That's a lot. Usually in Israel you bare a wife for five to six months, but I'm bare for a year.

Avi Feldstein 1:21:02

Part of me is consciously trying to do things differently, outside the box, going against the mainstream. So my reds are seeking to be less and less oaky and the whites well, not oaky, but all influenced. I pick barrels. That in the nature leaves a very light stamp on the wine. They asked Paylot, who was a researcher, philosopher and a very good winemaker in France, Bordeaux Wine. Lately he's the founder of Bordeaux Wine Lately in France Asked him what is the right quantity of oak in wine. He said if you taste the wine and you can say for sure it was in oak, that's the one.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:22:00

Too much Zero Essentially.

Changing Winemaking Styles and Techniques

Avi Feldstein 1:22:03

Oh, you should hesitate, at least hesitate. Hesitation is horrible. It means it's in the background, lurking in the background. We were thinking about the style. You were asking me about my voice. I replied about the styles and that they are all Chilean, the same style. We spoke about Cheles and I said it didn't really work for them when I started the winery.

Avi Feldstein 1:22:36

Well, first of all, if you want to be a very up-to-date, cutting-edge winery Italy by winery you see the wines, they were different, they were extremelyery. You see the wines, they were different. They were extremely modern, extremely on the notch, not Parker style wines, the opposite. People. That doesn't know me.

Avi Feldstein 1:23:00

I assure you this a winemaker of 30, 35, 40 years. I'm very happy with that Because I'm getting old, but my wives are not getting old, so this is a comfort. Still, I'm making Cabernet, which is not popular Because young, popular high winemakers like to bend Cabernet. I will not bend Cabernet because I think it's a noble variety. I think it is very successful in the Israeli climate, not everywhere. Judean mountains are not making good cabernet, but the Galilee is, and you know, on the Galilee Hasid. So everybody was doing a Kavane, not Veselos.

Avi Feldstein 1:23:53

Venevich people were expecting of me to do that Twitter again and I said well, I'm not well, I'm not a cow, I'm not going to regurgitate, I'm not going to live in the past achievements, because this is a prescription of death in life. If you continue to do what you did, it means you don't believe in your present, only in your present, only in your past. And because my style changed, I'm not the same way I was, I'm more a kind of beggar. Longevity is important, but it is less important than it was to me when I did WISE 30 years ago, and I did WISE the truth ago. And I did WISE the truth drum jersey that's still alive, and Drake, and make people happy. Coming to Cabernet the Cabernet should not be a version of the unfiltered, which I love. It's a son of mine, it's a born-up son.

Avi Feldstein 1:25:07

He lives outside of our house. It has all the old family, not so mad. The Cabernets in first time should be 100 related degrees from it, not another succession. They are different. The succession they are different. The way that they are different is that if the Alfredo was an example of parding, of muscular cabaner, of cabaner steroids, even though it was element, the difference between it and its successors or imitators were that they were not delicate. And it still was a delicate one, very full. But you cannot hide that it wanted to be big, it wanted to be overwhelming, in a way Delicate and overwhelming. Watch, if this is, if I can generalize, that by Cabanel steroid by Cabanel is now Cabanel is after a scalping diet.

Avi Feldstein 1:26:17

I'm in the Lesser Morcalos. I operate in the Lesser Morcalos. I think my job is not to lower the head, lower the head more and more nuances. My main work is to clean, to clean from the grave what seems to be less important, less central, less pure, clean, clean, clean. The main way to do that in cabernet is by non-macerations. My cabernet is macerated post-fermentation of cereal. It stays with the skin a lot of time, a lot of days. The least I will make is 45 days, but it goes to 65 days. It would be 100 days of skill high-code maceration which the skills transform. The function like this huge filter within the wine, taking off elements, color also. But 34, I don't care.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:27:29

That's interesting. Okay, so I'm learning something new Hypermaceration actually lowers and filters and also takes off color. Yeah, because I always thought this you can measure. No, no, I believe you. It's new for me to learn.

Avi Feldstein 1:27:49

At a certain time the skin starts To withdraw the color, to take away from Wow Stuff. And if you are on the wine you taste it constantly. You see the development. You imagine the point that you want to cut it down, stop it. But until then it's a selection process. The few days of fermentation, first days of fermentation, is building up process and then the rest is selection and it has to be building up process and then the rest is selection.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:28:24

So the tannins reduce. Yes, if you leave it inside, if you leave it in macerating longer.

Avi Feldstein 1:28:30

Wow, they become, I don't know. They don't reduce. They also reduce quantitatively, I think. But the infusion of tannins is going down for sure, because the wine is becoming much more rounded, much more ready to drink.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:28:44

Wow, wow, you have opened my eyes.

Avi Feldstein 1:28:50

In fact in certain regions of the world, like in Piedmont, they do that for centuries. Because the viola is especially well fermented with olive seeds. It's a very tannic grape. Especially when fermented with olive seeds is a very tannic grape.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:29:07

Right.

Avi Feldstein 1:29:07

They macerate it for a long time.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:29:11

I always thought the maceration for a long time is what caused that very tannic.

Avi Feldstein 1:29:16

Up until the time. Up until the point. Up until the point Wow, all seeds. So then you see how, two sides, where Shemesh and Cabernet are both wines outside the box, each one in its own way, they are very different. This is a Mediterranean variety, this is a Cab, but you see how they come into the same family because the less is more.

Avi Feldstein 1:29:48

Philosophy is evident in with different means, but is evident in both as a general way of thinking, and so this is the philosophy of the rest trying to be more drinkable, have intricate noses, complex noses, ability to age, but first and foremost, they should be drinkable, they should be suitable for hot climates and should be able to compete with whites, the whites, vice versa. If whites are getting the center of the scene, then they should have not only the fresh stainless steel version, they should have also the aging version, and the aging version is in oak. So I'd like to take Ah, trying to take oak is sometimes investing in oak, because my cabaret, let's say the 19th cabaret, the 2019th cabaret cabinet, which is on the market, nobody that tasted would say it was in a hundred percent new. But it was. But it was in the hundred percent new that the the most expensive oat. You can imagine which the main feature of this huge money expense being that the bird just refused to leave imprint on the wine. It builds the wine while staying at the back.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:31:33

Wow, so they give you the micro-acidization without giving it the flavors of oak.

Avi Feldstein 1:31:39

Yes, and also they cause the taste of the wine to be more intricate, but not in an evident way. And you taste oak because, well, after all, it's 100% new oak, right, but it seems as a very delicate second or third use of oak. Okay, wow, want to taste another one. Yeah, sure, taste the silver one.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:32:02

This is sitting in what now Steel, or in what you call it.

Avi Feldstein 1:32:07

This is in barrel.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:32:08

It's in barrels. This is the same tropical.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:32:10

Yeah, very, the finish is a little different than the other one. Very Nice, nice light.

Avi Feldstein 1:32:20

This is a souvenir that will age. It's not a fresh fruity. It's not a fresh fruity. It's very fresh and fruity. It's not fruity.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:32:30

You know, this has got body to it. This has got body. It's got a lot of acid. But this has got I think it's got a lot of acid. You're right, but I don't swing up to say no but it's got. I don't know enough to say no, but it's got real body to it, it's full.

Avi Feldstein 1:32:49

That's comfortable Use the oak. It's very, very Tasty oak. I think it's very, very incurable.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:33:00

I'm tasting almost mint Mint. There's a mint Mint. Yeah, there's a mint to it, and that's a nice thing. I like it.

Avi Feldstein 1:33:10

After this there's some grapefruit.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:33:14

Mm-hmm, yeah, but that's grapefruit. You smell the grapefruit?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:33:17

I'm a person who likes the pith from Grapefruit From the grapefruit, not grapefruit, but from the pamela. This is like the pith of a pamela. It's delicious, it's great. So this is 24. So this is going to be available when.

Avi Feldstein 1:33:37

I would take it out of the barrel. In the first week of 25 vintage cap, let's say billion of August, it will write a diesel inter G's done because it cannot bought you in the little of Ryder a red house. So if you people to the next chapter, okay.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:03

And what's it going to be called?

Avi Feldstein 1:34:05

Sauvignon.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:06

Blanc, sauvignon Blanc, okay, okay. So I see the last one is a red.

Avi Feldstein 1:34:10

It's a red.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:11

yes, which red is this?

Avi Feldstein 1:34:14

This is Grenache.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:15

Okay, grenache, wow, these are all my favorites.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:34:22

Do you like this?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:24

I like it too, but this is look. This isn't a wine you can go out on a hot afternoon and drink again.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:34:32

I bet you didn't know we were there no Shabbos brunch no it's nice this isn't a picnic.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:40

Southern fried chicken the southern fried chicken I wouldn't have with this, that's okay. Maybe you would.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:34:47

Southern fried chicken that's not too greasy. Yes, that is light. Yes, as opposed to heavy, oily southern fried chicken. There's no good southern fried chicken in Egypt.

Avi Feldstein 1:34:57

I hope you noticed the width.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:34:59

Width of the nose.

Avi Feldstein 1:35:00

Of the nose.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:35:02

It is. That's what notice the width of the nose it is. I was just smiling.

Avi Feldstein 1:35:06

Like an overwhelming wave of red peat. Yes, and this is in a hot country, from a hot vineyard. And to consumption in those days also. I tell you what it tastes like. Maybe you should look at it this way. To consumption, you know there is also. I tell you what it is. Maybe you should look at it this way. You're entitled to your opinion. They're offering you perspective. Okay, imagine we Israeli like we sell dawn. Is that fun, kim?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:35:42

Manga Kim Kim manga. I'll give it to you on. It's a fun manga.

Avi Feldstein 1:35:44

Yes, yes, manga, I like manga. Imagine you having a big, nice steak in the middle of the day in a Yom HaTorah with a barbecue grill. Now imagine yourself with a classic red glass of wine, too heavy. You will not be able to bring more than two seats, I assure you. Then I, when we return, there are no other kind of wine. You will resort at the end for beer, and I hate to lose ground for beer.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:36:17

You spend too much time working to lose ground for beer, which they make in 10 minutes.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:36:22

I love beer, much time working to lose grams of beer which they make in 10 minutes.

Avi Feldstein 1:36:28

By the way, I love beer. I'm not doing it anymore, not because I With age. I know I earn a lot of gifts. One of them is gout Nice.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:36:37

Smell it's nice everything no, but it is the smell. But you don't get that with the light wine. That's nice everything no, but it is the smell. But you don't get that with a light wine. That's the difference.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:36:47

It's a Grenache, it's a beautiful Grenache.

Avi Feldstein 1:36:49

The smell is beautiful. I want to leave the nose, but make the body one thing.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:36:56

No, you can't rest it easily.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:36:59

I like it a lot.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:37:01

But all your wines have a unique or a very pronounced smell Floral acid, whatever but all your wines are made intentionally to have that smell. I'm thinking about how do you do that? I'm keeping it light. That's my question.

Avi Feldstein 1:37:21

I had the general idea Picking the grape in a certain regime of growth because, you know, grenache is very versatile. We can do black, intense, priorat style wise yeah and or you can make this style which is like do it, like do in in, but not in Brewery. Sometimes it's not only a matter of tools, it's a matter of instinct. When you know what you want and you taste the wine, your gut is telling you where you're going and you know if you continue that path or you want to change it.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:38:03

How often do you change middle fermentation or towards the end? What are you going to do because you taste it not yet or it's ready? How often do you change the mind?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:38:18

Do you ever taste a wine in the middle of what you're doing and decide, whoa, that's not going where I want it to go? That's what you mean, and change your method, yeah.

Reuben Ruvie Taub 1:38:31

And what is that change?

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:38:33

What do you do? It depends on what you sell.

Avi Feldstein 1:38:36

What's in that total? You'll be deciding on your own method. It could be shortening it on your old rubber side it could be shortening it. It could be changing the regime of the fermentation, making it more oxidizing or less oxidizing.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:38:58

Is it a normal thing not to get what you're expecting?

Avi Feldstein 1:39:02

Yes.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:39:03

Yeah, it's not a particular surprise. It's like this is natural, it's a natural process.

Microbial Life in Winemaking

Avi Feldstein 1:39:11

It's like, it's a natural process and you can take this perspective. In every milliliter, in every milliliter of fermenting wine, there is 10 to the 8th living cells. This is your kindergarten and we are the gardener of ten thousands of liters. You imagine the quantity of living creatures. You are managing billions, of billions and you are responsible for the well-being, the health the feeding the feeding, yeah, and they also have to follow your instructions.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:40:04

Their health the feeding, yeah, and they also have to follow your instructions.

Avi Feldstein 1:40:09

Yeah, At the end of the soup payback.

Solomon Simon Jacob 1:40:12

Yes, todah, thank you very much for being on the Kosher Terwa. Thank you very much for spending so much time with me. You woke me up in a lot of ways. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of today's episode of the Kosher Cherwa. I have a personal request, no matter where you are or where you live 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.