Solomon Simon Jacob: 0:09

Welcome to The Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode from Jerusalem. Welcome back to The Kosher Terroir, where we uncover the stories behind the wines shaping today's world of taste and tradition. In this episode, we head to the rugged hills of Montserrat, Spain, where a small cooperative of just five families grew into one of the most dynamic wineries in Europe Capçanes. At the heart of this transformation is winemaker and export director Jürgen Wagner, a German-born visionary who brought precision and passion to Cantalonia's old vines. Together, we'll explore how a request for a kosher wine in 1995 sparked a revolution, how terroir speaks through ancient Granaccia vines, and what it means to balance tradition, innovation and faith in every bottle. If you're driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you're relaxing at home, or if you're near Tesla on FSD, pour a glass of wonderful kosher wine, relax, enjoy and get ready to taste history, culture, character all poured into one glass. Jüergen, welcome to The Kosher Terroir. Thank you very much for agreeing to be on the podcast.

Jürgen Wagner: 1:42

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I feel very honored.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 1:46

My pleasure and it's my honor, thank you. So tell me a little bit about your origin. How did you get into wine? Where are you from and how did you get into wine?

Jürgen Wagner: 2:11

Yeah, originally I'm from Heidelberg, from Germany, so I started winemaking in the early 90s, and I'm not at all from the wine industry, so I'm an outsider. None of my family was ever involved in the wine business, and this was also my. Somehow, it was an advantage for me, because after my studies, I had the chance to do whatever I wanted to do and yeah, so I ended up in Spain.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 2:28

What did you study? What was it? What was your major?

Jürgen Wagner: 2:31

I started actually winemaking at the university in Geisenheim in Germany, so it's the main place for winemakers, for winemakers. And in my third year my fourth year I got the opportunity to go to Spain. So I got a scholarship for Spain and I was for one year. I was halfway Barcelona and half-time Barcelona and half-time Tarragona in Catalonia, in northeast of Spain, at the university. Over there too.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 3:03

So how did you end up in Capçanes?

Jürgen Wagner: 3:06

Once I decided to stay in Spain, you can imagine, I was non-experienced, I was young and I was a foreigner. Nobody, the world was not really looking for me. So I took every opportunity I had and so I did lots of little part-time jobs and I worked also in. I did lots of little part-time jobs and I worked also in. I did lots of a stage, I did lots of training programs at different wineries and at one of those wineries, by the way, a really famous one, clos de Rasmus in Priorat, I met the owner and Daphne. The owner is married to an American importer and this American importer so far only imported French wines and his goal was to build up a Spanish portfolio as well and he looked for a wine scout, for somebody looking for Spanish wines. So this was one of my first serious jobs in Spain and, yeah, in that position I heard about Capçanes, fell in love with our wines and three, four years later they made me an offer to become part of Capsanas.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 4:20

So your role at Capsanas now is what?

Jürgen Wagner: 4:22

It's a small company. We are 18 in the team. When we started there were only five of us, so we did everything. I was also part of the winemaking team. I was the only one with some experience from abroad, also from different winemaking views, so I was pretty much in creating new wines and opening and widening our wine making portfolio. So at the beginning I was pretty much in the cellar and then the more wine we did and the more wine we produced, the more market we needed and the more customers we needed.

Jürgen Wagner: 5:02

And, yeah, languages is not really the strength of our team, so I was more and more, yeah, told also to take over the foreign markets or the export today. Yeah, so today I'm in charge of export. We export to, yeah, to 60 countries around the world and and, yeah, I'm also doing the marketing communication, but also in charge of new wines In the mountain. There's very little input. Whatever is happening out there in the world, it's that easy. By traveling new things and with all this new input, yeah, we are constantly changing and adding our range of output for you.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 5:46

I guess, because, since you're the export manager, you're the one who's dealing with the world at large and receiving feedback and giving feedback to the team there.

Jürgen Wagner: 5:57

Yeah.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 5:57

So that's a pivotal place to be within a seller.

Jürgen Wagner: 6:01

It's very important. For me, this is one of the most important positions, because once you're out on the market, you get the good, but you also get the bad. You have to be very open and you have to accept critic and whatever happens.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 6:18

it is my job to bring this message to the team and to grow together with all these new yeah, new informations tell me a little bit about capsanus as a whole and the cooperative that goes back to I think it's 1933 is the origin?

Jürgen Wagner: 6:38

yes, yes, that's right. From 33, said Capsanus, it's a cooperative. So a cooperative means we don't have just one single owner or several. In our case we have 55 owners. The owners are the viticultures, the vine growers, the grape growers, and so the whole place is owned by the farmers, and in the team we are 18 in the cellar itself in charge of the winemaking. So the farmers, they do what they can do best, which is the vineyard work, but in the cellar itself, and when it comes to the business, we are all professionals.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 7:24

And there's a different team involved. Wow, in that that sounds like it's difficult, because you've got all of these farmers growing whatever they grow. How do you pick between? How do you rate quality and how does everybody end up sharing properly within that?

Jürgen Wagner: 7:43

It must be a difficult task. Let's call it challenging, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, kapsanas, it's the name of the winery, but it's also the name of the village. So in the village itself, we are 400 farmers. Sorry, we are 400 people. We it's a tiny place. There are only 400 people living and most of the families they're shareholders of the company. So we're 55 farmers, 55 families let's put it that way and 400 people. So in israel you have kibbutz, yeah, so a cooperative. It's not exactly the same, but I guess some of the challenges are pretty much the same.

Jürgen Wagner: 8:24

So what happens in in the cooperative is it is very important to guide, to guideline the farmers. You need to have a very clear philosophy, you need a very clear strategy, and so what we do have, we have a vineyard control manager employed by the cooperative, so it's a colleague of mine and he's taking care of looking over all the farmers. So, juan, he's taking care of analysis of the soils, of fertilizing, of pruning, of which products can be used in the vineyard. So we do everything, but the hands-on people are the people who are actually doing the work, are the farmers. So they have to follow our instructions. But of course you can imagine 55.

Jürgen Wagner: 9:15

Not everybody is willing to listen and not everybody is able to listen, and so of course we can't force them, but we can. We can give them some extras. So if they listen, they get with something like a point system. So the more they listen and the more they follow our instructions, the more points they get, and the higher the prices are. We pay their crapes, for example. We do this, we give lessons, we give just like a team building program, etc. So when you follow those, when you participate in those programs, you get some extra scores. You get some extra points. When you, when you, for example, when you take part in the we have an organic program where all the organic farmers, all the organic vineyards are you also get some extra points.

Jürgen Wagner: 10:08

And yeah, to give you an idea, the farmers who don't listen and the quality we like less. And so let's put it the minimum. The lowest price per kilogram of grapes is around 50, 60 euro cents per kilo. At the high end, 100 years old bush wines. For our La Flore old wines we pay up to 5 euros per kilogram. That is a huge deal. So it's 10 times. So that's, I mean, it's that simple, but we are all humans. This is by far, it's the most, it's the strongest motivation system system which exists.

Jürgen Wagner: 11:02

Yep, wow, crystal been together to kindergarten, they went together to school. So all of the families, they know each other. And I like to call our cooperative 55 farmers. It's a bit like two school classes and in a school class you have every kind of person. You have them three, four, five times. You have the clever one, you have the one, you, you have the clever one, you have the one you can trust on and you have the one you should never trust. And we have all of them. We have them whatever six, seven, eight times. So we know each other perfectly. The farmers, they know each other. Who you should be a little bit more, yeah, care, taking care of, and the others you can 100 trust on. So that that's also very helpful very cool, very cool.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 11:50

So tell me a little bit about how capsanus ended up being in the kosher wine business. What motivated that? How did that come about?

Jürgen Wagner: 12:00

vines were grown in our area for 700, 800 years. Everything started in 1933. But the first 50 years of our business, the first 40 years of our business, we only did bulk wine. We only did tank wine Meaning at our property. We never bottled our wine. We sold it off to third parties in bulk, on big trucks, in big tanks. It was sold mainly to Tarragona and to Barcelona and in the cities we had nature bottling facilities and they bottled wine with their own labels and you can imagine all the markup, all the benefit was on their side. So this was our business until the mid-80s, when Spain became part of the European community, of the European Union.

Jürgen Wagner: 12:53

In the beginning of the 80s, the mid of the 80s, Spain changed completely Suddenly. You had lots of new facilities coming to Spain, lots of money, lots of knowledge. First people left the country to study abroad. The whole wine industry was changing pretty much and the first people who introduced mainly from France the new winemaking technique were all the big players around Barcelona, the big players around Barcelona and those big players used to be our bulk wine producers. But in 80, 85, when they introduced stainless steel facilities and nitrogen covered facilities, temperature controlled winemaking, everything what you need to make high end to make much better wines. When they introduced these new facilities to Barcelona, they decided not to buy any more bulk wine from us, so unbottled wine. But they decided to buy our grapes because, in their understanding, they preferred to vinify our grapes in their new facilities under much better conditions.

Jürgen Wagner: 14:02

So from 85 to 92, 93, 94, the worst happened. What can happen to a winery, bulk wine producer? You can imagine bulk wine producer, socially wise, you're already at a very low level. But when you are suddenly declassified to become only a grape supplier, yeah, that's the low level the worst. Yes, it's definitely the worst. So you can imagine, from 85 to 95, the whole facility, our winery, yeah, was run by two person and they only worked six, six weeks a year during the grape harvest, after grape harvest, just to wait the grapes and to put it on the truck and to send the trucks to Barcelona. Wow, so that was our business still until 1902, 1993. And then something happened what really nobody expected.

Jürgen Wagner: 15:06

The area we are located, it's called Priorat Monsant and this area nowadays in Spain it's one of the hippest, one of the top quality of the high-end quality wine growing areas. In the beginning of the 90s, in that area you had lots of young people around and those young people started to make wines in different ways, much more in a northern European way, with less oak, with more fruit, much more concentrated, much more complex, but a completely different identity compared to the old school of Spanish winemaking. In the old days in Spain everything was put for a very long time in old barrels and you had these oxidized raisin fig flavors on top of everything. But this new generation, they wanted to go for fresh fruit. This new generation, they wanted to go for fresh fruit. And those first wineries in Mont-Saint-Priorat, suddenly they put Spain really internationally on the wine map. Those wines, they became stars.

Jürgen Wagner: 16:28

Former bulk wine and grapes buyers saw that in our area something is happening with the business vision. They thought that bulk wine buying is already clever, but grape buying is even more clever. But the best is if you still buy all the land until before the, the prices are going up and to grow your own grapes, your own vineyards. And so in 94, 95, the one and only customer we had for grapes and for bulk wine, suddenly we saw him buying vineyards in our mountains and of course you can imagine our only customer suddenly said decided to farm his own vineyards and then it was just a question of time that he wouldn't need us anymore as a grape supplier. So we were really in a dangerous moment, in a very difficult, very dangerous moment, and we looked desperately in 1995 for an alternative market to become independent from him.

Jürgen Wagner: 17:26

And the most bizarre, the strangest idea, definitely the strangest idea we had was listening to the rabbi in Barcelona, Because in 1995, there was no kosher wine made in Spain. And the rabbi in Barcelona, he was forced to buy the kosher wine from the French. And you can imagine the Spanish rabbi had to buy the wine from the French, from France, which is not really ideal for the Spanish people. He was looking for somebody doing kosher wines in Spain and by chance he met our former president of the cooperative and he convinced Francisco, our farmer, to go for kosher. So in 1995, we did our first Père Habib and the great thing is that the second vintage of our first Père Habib, it was actually the first bottle wine we ever did. Yeah.

Jürgen Wagner: 18:21

So the second vintage, the 96 vintage, got refued by José Penín, who's the most influential wine writer, he's the big wine guide in Spain, Behind Pingus and Lemita, to become the third highest scored wine at all in Spain, being kosher or non-kosher. So from one day to the other, suddenly we were put on the map and our Pere Habib was considered to be the third highest got wine at all in spain. And just to give an idea, the the pingus. Nowadays pingus costs you whatever a thousand or thousand, two hundred euros a bottle. A limiter should be around anything whatever six, six, seven hundred, eight hundred euros a bottle. And then on the third place you had our Perich Habib.

Jürgen Wagner: 19:12

Wow, and this was just a year when I started to work for this American importer. I explained to you earlier, looking for Spanish wines, and I heard about, I read about this kosher wine in the press. I didn't know Capsanus and I've never had in my life kosher before. Definitely it awoke my own curiosity. So I came to Capsanus taste the Peresh Aviv, the first kosher wine, fall in love with the kosher wine and, based on this kosher bottled wine, we decided to build up a non-kosher wine range. The story of Capsanus is a bulk wine producer became a grape supplier, then a kosher bottled wine producer and finally a non-kosher bottled wine producer. In Capsanus there's not one single Jew living. There's not one single Jewish dollar invested in the company. So the Catholic, narrow-minded mountain farmers invested their own money in the kosher winemaking to become independent from the grape and the bulk wine sales. And then a German winemaker comes, tastes the kosher wine and based on the kosher wine, we decided to make non-kosher bottled wines. So it's a really bizarre story, Really bizarre.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 20:50

Yeah, I don't know how you get there from here. It's really amazing. It's an amazing story.

Jürgen Wagner: 20:58

You can't make it up these kind of stories. Only life itself can write.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 21:05

So, tell me kosher winemaking. What's different about the process with non-kosher winemaking?

Jürgen Wagner: 21:16

Yeah, maybe. First of all there's something very curious. I'm not Jewish, I'm not involved in, I'm not familiar. Nowadays I am, but I was not familiar with kosher at all.

Jürgen Wagner: 21:26

But from the very first moment there's a big difference the way we focused kosher and the way you look at kosher. When you look at the first pereshavib from 95, 96, 97, on the first labels, you would be scared, you would laugh about us, because on that first kosher labels, on very big letter, on the front label, we wrote for Pesach, kosher wine, in very big letters and whenever Jews see those old labels it looks ridiculous in your eyes because it even looks cheap that in my world, in our world, in the non-Jewish world, all those Hebrew letters, they evoke a lot of curiosity, just the other way it happens. So everybody wanted to know oh, what's the story? What's about kosher? Tell me what it's, yeah, the history and why they do it, whatever. So we you, in my experience you always hide the fact that it's kosher and we do just the opposite we shout out to the world that it's kosher and in the non-kosher world this really opened. It was for us, it was even like PR, like public relations For me and maybe I'm not. I'm very sorry there might be some things which are not going to be 100% correct, but the way I learned it and the way I was taught by rabbis. For me in the cultural world, I like to explain that there are two lines you have to follow. One line is the religious purity, the religious part, the religious aspect, and on the other side you have the food and beverage aspect.

Jürgen Wagner: 23:15

When it comes to the religious part, everything has to be done under the supervision of the rabbi. So whenever the rabbi is not there, I like to call it, it's like a winery in the winery, because the difference in Kapsan is in most other places around the world, 100% of the winery is kosher. In our place, 20% of the winery is kosher and 80% of the winery is non-kosher, which makes it much more complicated. So in our case, the kosher part it's sealed. It's not only the rabbi has the key to this facility, so it's like a winery in the winery. It's completely hermetically closed, got it To guarantee that only serving Jews get access to, only the rabbi and his team get access to the wine.

Jürgen Wagner: 23:59

We keep this. We keep it with a lot of respect, and then this is for me. This is, for me very important. We should be respectful with everybody. Religious believings. For me there's this religious part, but of course this does not change anything. On the wine, there's no difference if the rabbi is doing it or if we do it, if they do the hands-on work or if we do it. As long as the rabbi is trained in the winemaking, yeah.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 24:26

Yeah, the process is not any different between him carrying out your instructions, and what? You're doing.

Jürgen Wagner: 24:33

Exactly. Frankly, I like to say there's no reason why kosher has to be bad. There are many reasons why kosher can be bad, but there's no reason why kosher has to be bad. Okay, so that's the religious part. For me, as a winemaking, the other part is the interesting one because the kosher lore, it's thousands of years old and nowadays, in the non-kosher world, we are much more into natural and sustainable and we are going back to the roots. Yeah, we are more and more into minimalism. We are more and more thinking thatism, we are more and more doing, thinking that the less you do, the more you get out of the grapes. Yeah, okay, so when it comes to the kosher, for example, we don't use fertilizer in the vineyard, you know, because the fertilizer in the old days, the older fertilizer which existed in the old days, used to be the extra mints, the extra mints of animals. And, of course, when you bring them out to the vineyard and you walk and you work the vineyard, you run the risk to bring back home the fecal bacterias and this is something which you can become ill and, worst case, you can even die of those bacterias. Not to use the fertilizer, you reduce the yield, but the little fruit you obtain is much more concentrated. So this is for us one of the first major goals we try to work with the lowest yield at all possible in the vine. Just to give an idea, when you fertilize and when you irrigate the vineyards and you do intense viticulture, you can do anything up to 15, 18 000 kilos per hectare, theoretically, yeah, yeah, in capsanes, in our old vines, we do roughly 1800 to 3000 kilograms per hectare. We do very little, but that's the start of everything. So the low yield.

Jürgen Wagner: 26:34

And then, second, whenever I talk about those laws, we talk about the origin. There have been some changes in the last decades. For example, in the old days, whenever you do winemaking, you need yeast to ferment sugar into alcohol yeah, and then you need bacterias to convert certain acidities in other acidities to make the wine smoother, and then you need enzymes to extract the color out of the skins. And all of those, the yeast, the bacterias, the enzymes you can find them naturally. They're out there in the vineyard, on the berry skins. They're out there. But the problem of those ones, of those natural ones, they do whatever they want to do. Sometimes they are very high-end, but sometimes they can also mess it up, you move much more in the extremes, okay, but the good thing of those natural ones. At kapsanas we only have ours. Yeah, so we don't you have your own identity, nobody else, even your neighbors. They have other yeasts. Yeah, so this gives nature proper identity to your wines.

Jürgen Wagner: 27:52

In the non-kosher world nowadays, in winemaking generally, you can get all those bacterias and all those enzymes and yeast. You can also find industrial ones. If you use those, they do a very good job. They make very clean wines, but by the end what happens? Everything tastes like the same. So that's another major aspect we follow. And then another one, and this might be a little bit, maybe even a bit scary for you.

Jürgen Wagner: 28:22

In winemaking, there are certain methods we can use to clean wines from certain flavors and tastes and colors which we don't like. In this method we use them fining, so it's called. What we do is we try to make something nice. What was ugly by these fining methods? By these fining methods, the way it happens is you take a product, you put it in the wine and this product acts like a spunk and absorbs all the flavors and the tastes and the particles, and it even takes out certain colors which you don't like. The problem is and then you filter it in the wine, so you take these materials out.

Jürgen Wagner: 29:15

The problem is all those fining materials which are used in winemaking. Unfortunately they're based on milk, fish and meat derivatives and of course, in the kosher world, as the wine has to be kosher, you're not allowed to use any of those fine materials in kosher winemaking. It's completely forbidden because otherwise the wine wouldn't be kosher anymore. Gelatine, which you get out of meat and bones, or fishtail or casein from milk, you can't use of that in in the kosher winemaking process. If you don't use those products, a law which is thousands of years old nowadays becomes very trendy because once you avoid all those findings on on animal origins, these wines are called vegan. So whenever a wine becomes vegan, it's by the end kosher, it's almost vegan if you also avoid egg white in the winemaking, which we don't do at all.

Jürgen Wagner: 30:25

At Capsaicin, none of our wines and none of our wines. And to make a long story short, the kosher, the fining. The problem of fining whenever you fine a wine is you always take out the bad, but you always you also take out part of the good. So you always you also lose part of the flavor and of the taste. Our wines are not fined. Yeah, they're only slightly filtered, but wines are not fine. Yeah, they're only slightly filtered, but they are not fine. Very long skin contact, only natural yeast, citric, citric, no, no fertilizer, very low yield. So somehow we try to make our wines like in the old days, yeah, but, but with the hygiene and with the winemaking skills, with the knowledge from today. You know, and that's definitely part of the quality of Capsalis.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 31:18

Is there something that you need to do to avoid those negative tastes and what have you? So it's not requiring you to find it. Are there things that you can do that get you into a better position with the actual juice that's coming out?

Jürgen Wagner: 31:36

Yeah, there are lots of things you can do, lots of things. First of all, a big difference between us and many other wineries, I mean in the US and also in Israel. We own our own vineyards and we work our own vineyards. We don't buy any grapes at all, so we only work our own land, meaning we are very on top of the yield. We work with very low yield and everything we do it's 100% handpicked. It's 100% handpicked in small volume, percent hand-picked, it's a hundred percent hand-picked in in small volume, and when the fruit itself is all it's already high end.

Jürgen Wagner: 32:15

You don't lots of the problems you bring it in when the fruit is not a hundred percent at a good level. Okay, so that's, that's the first. Then the second is most of the fining materials you use it to to take out tannins, to take out this bitterness. Yeah, and the bitterness usually you get it when you either work with too much skin contact, which I think is one of major problem generally in the wine industry. People try to make wines the bolder the better. Yeah, the bigger, the bolder, the darker the better. Bigger, the bolder, the darker the better. But when you work with too much skin contact, you have the problem that you not only extract color, you also extract a lot of tannins and a lot of bitterness out of the skins and this needs to be fined afterwards to smooth it again. So this is something you should very much keep in mind. And then the major reason and this is actually something we were obliged to do because there was no alternative After maceration of the skins for red wine making, after whatever week, two weeks, three weeks, four, four weeks, usually you take first the free run shoes and then there's there's still a lot of wine left in the berries and this is put on the press and then you press it and at that moment you can still get a lot of wine out of those about, of those residual grapes. Yeah, the problem is in this you have a major content of tannins.

Jürgen Wagner: 33:57

At our property we only have one press. A press is a tank unit and inside in this tank unit you have a plastic sack. You have a plastic and under pressure you inflate this plastic unit and that's the way how you get out of the skins. We are not allowed to use this press for kosher and for non-kosher. Yeah, because this plastic sack can't be sterilized, it can't be cleaned, 100% Meaning we never use at Capsanus, press wine for any of our wines.

Jürgen Wagner: 34:36

So at capsanus we only use 100 of free run shoes and that's, by the end, a major issue, because all the all the rough part, we don't put it into kosher. So what we do is, once we take the free run shoes, the first quality, out of the tank for the kosher wine, the remaining part of course we put it on the press, but then of course it's not kosher anymore. And this one we use it for. I mean, it might sound a bit strange, but then we use it for our local farmers, for our local consumption, and we put it on the press and we press it very hard because this one it's rustic, it's robust, it's black, it's tannic, it's yeah, but this is exactly the style of wine our farmers, particularly the older, is used to drink from the old days. This was the way how wines used to be made in the old days. So for kosher we only take the high-end free-run chews and of the same grapes. What's remaining, we declassify and it's not kosher anymore.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 35:48

Wow, so that's so funny. You really educated me as well, because I always thought that fining was just simply a means of filtration. I didn't realize. I thought it was trying to get particulates out, but I didn't realize that was also removing taste and other things that you didn't want to color.

Jürgen Wagner: 36:10

Yeah, there's one major difference. The difference between filtration and fining is by filtration you take out some major particles and by fining you can reach the next level you can take out by absorbing much smaller particles, much more into taste, flavors and colors. So finding is much more. There's a much bigger impact on finding than on filtration wow, amazing.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 36:42

Okay, so that that you educated me with that one nick. I have another question. Let's talk a little bit about the vineyards, and especially the old vines, which Capsanus is famous for its old Granaccia vines. Can you tell me a little bit?

Jürgen Wagner: 36:59

This little insect which destroyed all the vineyards 100 years ago. And after Phylloxera the vines were replanted and we are in the privileged situation that at Capsanus nowadays we still have 110, 115 years old bush vines. It's incredible, but this is simply given to the fact that the southern part of Catalonia, where we are in the mountains, this was always considered to be one of the poorest areas in Spain. So those mountain farmers, they could never afford to take the vines out and to replant it, because when you replant it, a vineyard needs three, four years, yeah, to reestablish. So it was really sad for the farmers during decades because they saw the yield going down year by year. But nowadays, for us this is like paradise on earth.

Jürgen Wagner: 38:15

We have lots of old vines and when you talk about old vines they look like bonsai trees, those old vines, and you have very little yield. You have just a couple or three berry grapes and the berries are much smaller, they're much thicker skinned, they're much more concentrated, the yield is lower. And also, what happened in those old vineyards over the decades? Only the best vines survived. Only the best vines survived. So when you have little plots, a vineyard is never the same all over the same parcel. So sometimes you have some parcels, they are better. You have something in the soil, there might be some rocks or whatever, and so over the years only the best vines survived. So you have the best vines and you have the lowest yield. This combination makes it Wow.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 39:16

Okay, so tell me a little bit about the kosher wines that you make. Pierre Habib, it was your kosher flagship at one time. Now it's not, but tell me a little bit about the different varieties that you make.

Jürgen Wagner: 39:34

Yeah, Perach Habib was the first kosher and for many years, the only kosher wine. We did. Okay, and you can imagine, in 1995, telling the kosher story, we made a lot of noise and the people, they wanted to taste something, they expected to taste something different, they wanted to be wow. They tell a lot, so the wine must be amazing and for that reason we decided to make it in the loudest possible way, to make a noisy wine. In Perachabib we have Cabernet Sauvignon, we have Carignana, so those two they're more at the black fruits, a lot of backbone, a bit higher in tannins, a bit higher in acidity, but definitely more at the small black fruit side. And then we add one third of ganache, which is the beauty, which I like to call her the queen. So she's civilizing somehow the two masculine parts. So this was the way we started in 1995. But we talk about 30 years. Actually, this year is our 30th year of kosher winemaking. Wow, we are not Jewish, we are not in the Jewish community, but we might be one of the oldest kosher winemakers.

Jürgen Wagner: 40:56

I mean, it's definitely one of the oldest quality wine makers, of course, wine makers bottle kosher wine makers. Yeah, yeah, at the first years of the parish it's not terribly expensive, but it has a certain price point, yeah, and not everybody can afford that price point. So in 2004, 5, 6, we decided to make a baby Perash we call it Perash Petita Also to make wine in between the week, for all days and also for everybody. The cost price of Perash Petita, it's definitely a different level and Perash Petita, it has shorter skin contact, younger, younger vines. It's partly aged in barrel but it's also partly aged in tank, so it's a bit more fresh, fruity and a bit more this more easy wine drinking.

Jürgen Wagner: 41:48

Yeah it's the same varietals and no, not, there's no cap, there's also little syrah merlot, so it's a bit. It's a bit more red fruit. Forward looking, it's a. So it's a bit more red fruit, forward-looking, it's a bit more peeling.

Jürgen Wagner: 42:03

Okay, and then in 1995, the kosher wine world, I mean the kosher quality wine world did not exist. There was very little demand for high-end kosher wines. But this changed a lot in the last, I would say in the last 15, 20 years. Now you have nerds in the Jewish world. They go mad for high-end wines. Nowadays, I think, the kosher and the non-kosher wine world is getting closer and closer.

Jürgen Wagner: 42:38

In 2010, 2011, 2012, we decided to put something on top of Perash Habib to show what we are able to do in the non-kosher wines, to bring this also to the kosher world. And then we did 100 years years old bourgeois Grenache, la Flor de Flor. And we also did one small plot of a hundred years old bourgeois Carignana, which we in Spain we call Carignana Samso. Yeah, and so Samso and Carignana is exactly the same. By the way, maybe you already knew this, but in Catalonia cariniena is samson and in Hebrew samson is shimshon. Yes, yeah. And when you look at cariniena, at the varietal, it's black, masculine rustic. It's the big masculine muscular guy, the actually the varietal samso carinina. It's a bit like chimpshon, wow. So it's very curious that there are certain yeah where's it?

Solomon Simon Jacob: 43:55

wow, yeah.

Jürgen Wagner: 43:57

Yeah, and then a few years ago we made also. This was very tricky because red wine making with certain skin contact it's a bit more easy when it comes to kosher, because we have one big challenging factor. We have one big challenge Harvest. Grape harvest in our area usually is during the whole month of September, and the whole month of September you have lots of holidays. You have lots of Jewish religious holidays.

Jürgen Wagner: 44:33

When it comes to red wine, if the wine is a day less or a day more on the skins, it doesn't really make a very big difference. But in 2020, more or less, we decided to make first also a rosé and then second also a white wine. Here you have to be very precise, you have to be on top on the day. Here you have to be very precise, you have to be on top on the day. And so since 2020, we also have a white Parasch Petita and a rose Parasch Petita. And since this year and this is brand new it's not even on the market. It's already bottled, but it's not yet, not on the American market, but also not on the Israel market, but it will be released soon.

Jürgen Wagner: 45:20

We make Flor de Primavera, we make an old wines, white Grenache Wow, I'm looking forward to that. I love it. It's amazing. It tastes like a high-end northern French. You have a beautiful freshness. It's amazing. It's like a sauceur. It's like a sauceur, crisp, fresh, with a little hint of oak, and so that's a new addition which is coming up soon.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 45:51

Looking forward to that Very much. Looking forward to that. Wow, very cool. Tell me a little bit. I got interested and I know it really has nothing to do with the kosher market, but I love the idea of your Knights of Granaccia. It's just such an interesting idea. And could you tell me a little bit more about it? I just thought it was so special more about it.

Jürgen Wagner: 46:18

I just thought it was so special. Yeah, you can imagine, in 1995, when I came to Capsanus the first time and in the cellar we were all young, we were all unexperienced, by the way, we had no idea, we were starters, yeah, and what we did is we constantly met other winemakers from the area and there was a very big yeah, like a bit like a trainee program. We learned from them, that they learned from us. We exchanged all our experiences. So in in around 2000 we started to establish at the very first beginning was just for winemakers a little come together. And after a few years this come together was converted into a party. So we started with five, six. After two years we were 20. Then we were suddenly 200. And after five years we were 1,000.

Jürgen Wagner: 47:14

And we opened the party also to wine lovers, to trade, to sommeliers, but also to wine lovers. And we opened the cellar on the Friday night before the 1st of May, which is a holiday in Spain. So on that Friday night we opened the cellar at 11 pm and we made party until 3 am and we had live music and we always invited some other wineries and on that night we always showed four ganachas, so four different vinifications of the varietal of ganachas. And the only difference of those four ganachas is that each of it came from a different soil. So the vineyard, the vines, were planted on a different soil. So one ganacha was planted on sand. The other ganacha vineyard was planted on limestone, on clay soil and on slate soil, on clay soil and on slate soil. And the same varietal, the same winemaking, but from four different soils. The wines taste completely different. And during that night of Grenache, during the party, we always had two one-star Michelin restaurants at our property and they made the finger food for those ganachas. This was really, this was a very top event.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 48:47

I love that idea because it makes it. It really exposes people to what the differences of terroir are, what the differences in soil. It's not. It's hard to describe these things. Sometimes wines are extremely minerally and what have you, and they're wonderful. But it really gives you when you're tasting things next to each other. It allows you to really compare even down to very precise little nuances between them. It must be amazing.

Jürgen Wagner: 49:21

Yeah, it is. It's yeah. Who knows, maybe one day we are able to do something like that in the kosher as well. The problem is the lots are tiny. I mean we do 2,000, 2,500 bottles per each lot and with the rabbi and with the additional challenge of the dates during September, but it would be really. It's an eye-opener. It's an eye-opener, yeah.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 49:47

I think it's just incredibly special to be able to compare wines that way. Yeah it's fantastic. Yeah, it is. Tell me a little bit about, since you're in charge of exports, which markets? Have you been surprised by any specific markets? Are you always looking for new markets, or are there certain markets that are just exceptional? And does the kosher help you in export markets?

Jürgen Wagner: 50:17

Yeah, I mean it's a strange time. We live in wherever you look in the world, it's not easy, it's not really a nice time, and so there are challenges and there's also sadness around the world wherever you go. And so in in the wine industry right now, it I would say it's not one of the easiest times we faced. We are, thanks God, we positioned ourselves in over 60 countries, so we have our established network. We have our established distribution system, the kosher distribution. It's still growing and we're still adding new countries in the non-kosher world. It's going a little bit in the wrong direction. In the, for example, a very nice example is as a Spanish wine, we are one of many, but as a Spanish kosher wine at that quality level, we are one of many. Yeah, but as a Spanish kosher wine at that quality level, we are one of very few. Right, and just the fact that I mean you travel a lot.

Jürgen Wagner: 51:30

Jewish people travel a lot. There's a lot of Jewish and kosher tourism. Yeah, I mean, for example, we sell our kosher wine, we sell Parashat to the Maldives Because during Pesach, when certain islands are converted, when they take over the whole kitchen, so we do Argentina, we do Brazil, we do Panama, we do Puerto Rico, we do lots of Caribbean islands, and so this is also very good. Vietnam just opened Thailand. There's lots of small markets still waiting for kosher wines, and so this is also very good. Vietnam just opened Thailand.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 52:06

There's lots of small markets still waiting for kosher wines.

Jürgen Wagner: 52:11

What's your volume that you actually produce? All in all, we do 600,000 bottles and 100,000, roughly 90,000 are kosher. So 15% is kosher and 85% is non-kosher Non-kosher wow.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 52:29

Yeah, I had one. I had just a couple more questions. One is innovation experimentation. Are there things that you're doing now that are new, that you're looking to towards the future? It kept on us.

Jürgen Wagner: 52:51

New varietals or new. No, I think the challenge for the future is not that much in the winemaking. The future is not that much in the winemaking. We might use more and more things from the non-kosher world and move it also to the kosher wines. There might be some additions, but which is not actually that new to us because of the non-kosher world, everything started much earlier. But the major work we have is I mean by far is in the vineyard, because global warming is a big issue and we are facing more and more weather extremes. We are facing heat waves, we are facing heavy rainfalls, we are facing dry periods of four months during summer in israel. You're amazing when it comes to to viticulture and to agriculture in the vineyard itself. You are ahead of the whole world for by decades. But there's no question the irrigation and and fertilization in agriculture and you have so much knowledge out there, and so we have to learn still in the vineyard to face this global warming issue here.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 54:11

Looking ahead, where do you see is the future for Capsanus in five years, 10 years, 20 years? Absanus in five years, ten years, twenty years? Is there a goal to grow it bigger than what you have it, to double its size or improve quality and keep it the same size?

Jürgen Wagner: 54:29

Nowadays. We should be realistic. I'm sure there's. No, there might be some exceptions, yeah, but the overall wine consumption is going back, is going down. I guess most people are not into growing, into planting more and more. It's more about positioning and it's more about taking care of your customers, building up the reputation and to strengthen your position, and that's the major goal and that's, yeah, that's our, that's the job we have to do and we're looking forward to yeah.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 55:06

Thank you very much for all the time. I really loved speaking to you and I really thank you very much for being on the Kosher Terroir. Jürgen, no, thank you.

Jürgen Wagner: 55:17

Thanks a lot, Thanks a lot and please. One last word. Yes, anything Whoever wants to come and visit and live our experience, yeah, please, please, check our website and on the website you find the contact details and just look for my name for Jürgen, and send me, drop me, an email and we'll find a way to, yeah, way to bring Kapsanis to you.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 55:42

So come visit us.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 55:46

I really look forward to coming to visit. I really look forward myself to coming to visit, and I'll make sure that the contact information is on the podcast as well. And that brings us to the end of our journey through Montserrat, with Jürgen Wagner and the remarkable story of Capsanus. From humble beginnings as a small cooperative to producing world-class kosher wines, their story reminds us how tradition, innovation and sheer human dedication can shape what we taste in a glass. If you've enjoyed this episode, don't stop here. There are more vineyards to walk, more voices to hear and more stories waiting to be poured.

Solomon Simon Jacob: 56:36

Be sure to subscribe, revisit past episodes and share the Kosher Terroir with fellow wine lovers. And stay tuned, because next time we'll be opening yet another bottle filled with history, culture and discovery. Until then, keep exploring, keep sipping and remember. Every bottle has a story and every story is worth savoring. This is Simon Jacob, again your host of The 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.