Transcript: Tavlin Distillery - The Taste of Israeli Gin Terroir

The Kosher Terroir Podcast

Host: Simon Jacob

Guests: Eli Kamionski & Amir (Tavlin Distillery)

Intro

Simon: Welcome to the Kosher Terroir. I'm Simon Jacob, your host for this episode, from Jerusalem. Before we get started, no matter where you are, please take a moment to pray for the safe return home of all our soldiers. If you're driving in your car, please focus on the road ahead. If you're home relaxing, please sit back and enjoy this special episode during the three weeks.

Interview

Simon: Welcome to the Kosher Terroir.

Amir: Toda raba. (Thank you very much)

Simon: The website says it in six words: "Two friends, one goal, exceptional gin." So let's start there. Who are the two friends? And how does the friendship turn into a distillery in the Judean Hills?

Eli: So, my name's Eli Kamionski.

Simon: Yes.

Eli: And I'm originally from Los Angeles. I made aliyah about eight years ago with my family—I have four kids. We originally started in Jerusalem, not too far from this studio, and then we ended up pretty quickly soon after in Tzur Hadassa, which is a neighborhood that's about 25 minutes away from Jerusalem. We chose that neighborhood because of the location, the land, the weather, the forests, the trees, the plants—everything about it was just beautiful. We also really appreciated the community, and that's kind of a high-level overview of me. I'll go back to community later, but I'll let, I guess, Amir introduce himself as well.

Amir: To be authentic, I will speak Hebrew. (Laughter)

Simon: No, no, please. Speak in English.

Amir: I was born in Jerusalem, not far from here, 66 years ago. Most of the time, I was growing up here in Jerusalem, and we decided to leave because we have quite a big family. It was better to try to live not in Jerusalem, but in a green place, in a nice community, because Jerusalem is a city and we tried to find a community where we could raise our children in the best conditions we could find here in Israel.

So we moved to Tzur Hadassa, to a little community in those days—meaning something like 30 years ago. There were only 200 families, and very few religious families. We didn't even have a minyan. It was quite a challenge, and by chance, I met Rabbi Levy Cooper. Together, we built a nice community that acted as a magnet to bring more religious families to Tzur Hadassa.

For many years, I was in education. I started as a teacher, but after a few years, I was already a headmaster, and after that, I was a supervisor in the Ministry of Education. It was wonderful, but one day I decided that I wanted to try something new—something totally different than what I did before. So, I opened a wine cellar in Tzur Hadassa. After a few years, it became a very interesting cellar where you could find wine specifically from the Judean wineries.

I think at this moment, Eli will take the lead and continue to tell our story, because I think that was the right moment for me, and I think it was also the right moment for Eli.

Simon: Okay.

Eli: Yeah, so my background is not in the alcohol world. Before I made aliyah, I actually rose up in the ranks in corporate America. I worked first at Pricewaterhouse and became a CPA. If you ask me today if I enjoyed that, I didn't really enjoy accounting, but it taught me a lot on the finance side. Then I worked at a bunch of other media companies like Warner Brothers, and another company called Estrella Media.

Once I decided to make the switch to move to Israel, a creative boost sort of hit me. I said, "You know, there's no time like the present to change what I'm doing and try something different." So I took a six-month sabbatical, and that really opened my eyes when I moved here. It allowed me the opportunity to explore and think about what I enjoy and what I love.

What I discovered is that I've always had this affinity towards alcohol. The reason that Amir and I got together was because every time I would travel to Israel, I kept seeing these agave plants all over the country. You see them everywhere.

Simon: Yep.

Eli: And they grow wild. Coming from Los Angeles where tequila is popular, thriving, and growing tremendously, I was like, "We've got to make this in Israel. It just makes sense." That was sticking in my head a lot.

What Amir mentioned about the community and Rabbi Cooper was fortunate for me. I have the flexibility that I don't have to wake up at 6:00 AM to go to minyan; I can go a little bit later. I joined this other, later minyan at 8:00 AM where Amir is also one of the attendees. We ended up living pretty close to each other. I started building a relationship with him, we walked back and forth to the synagogue, I was learning about wine, and I started coming to his cellar a lot.

Then one day, I started introducing this idea to Amir that I really wanted to make alcohol in Israel. Unbeknownst to me, it was also an interest of Amir's. I just kept pressuring this notion: "Hey, we've got to do something here, it'll be amazing, I have a big passion for it, you're in the wine industry—let's go and make something together." After a lot of convincing on my part—Amir originally didn't want to because it's hard to work and do business with someone you live near—we decided, "Okay, we're going to do it. We're going to make a batch of something." And we decided we had to try to make tequila.

So, we ended up looking around, and Amir was like, "Listen, I have a beautiful garden at my house and I happen to have two agave plants right in my garden." He said, "Let's start with one of these, I'm happy to get rid of it." Unbeknownst to us, cutting agave is the worst experience you could ever have in your entire life. (Laughter) It is terrible. First of all, the roots are so deep and so strong. Secondly, the plant is an allergen. If you even touch it, you get a rash on your skin.

What ended up happening is we first tried to cut the thing out of the ground, but we weren't successful. The second thing we did was wrap a fireman's hose around the plant and attached it to—I don't remember whose car—one of our cars.

Amir: One of the cars.

Eli: One of the cars. I think the rope broke, and it almost broke the car! Eventually, we were successful and able to rip it out of the ground, which was great. We cut the plant up, but then we didn't really know what to do with it. From our research, we knew you have to put it in a pressure cooker. So we had this little pressure cooker, cut up some pieces, put it inside, and hoped for the best.

A few hours later, I was covered in a rash. My whole body was red. I didn't tell Amir because I didn't know what was going on. Then I saw him the next day at 8:00 AM, and he was also covered in this rash! We looked at each other like, "Oh god, what did we sign up for?"

So that was the first terrible thing. The second thing was that the pressure cooker didn't work. We weren't able to extract the sugar from the starch—we didn't do it right. We were depressed; we didn't even have anything to ferment.

We took a pause, but I said, "No, we'll find more plants, we've got to figure this out." Then Amir said, "Listen, Eli. I have been studying distilling and I have actually mastered certain techniques. I've flown to a few countries and learned the process." I didn't know any of that at the time. He told me, "What I mastered was how to make schnapps and clear liquid alcohols, like eau de vie."

He said, "Listen, there's something out there in the market that everyone knows about, it's really popular today, and I think we should start with that. Let's make it as good as we can. It's an easy spirit to work with, but a hard one to master. Everyone can make it, but nobody can make it amazing—and I can make it amazing." That was his confidence, and that spirit was gin.

Gin is an interesting spirit. There are so many regulations in the world of alcohol—you have to call it Champagne only if it comes from Champagne, or Scotch only if it is made in Scotland. Gin doesn't have any of that. Right away, the market knows what gin is, so we can make gin anywhere we want.

Secondly, it's an easy spirit to make: sugar, yeast, and water. It's not agave, it's not a rash, it's none of that. (Laughter) For us, we were like, "Okay." I was disappointed, to be honest with you, but I was like, "You know what, let's do it. We're here to make spirits, that's our goal."

Amir: It's not only easy, it's very fast. You can do it in three weeks.

Simon: Yeah.

Amir: And for someone who is impatient, I think it's the best remedy. In three weeks, we had our own beverage.

Simon: Yeah.

Amir: It was a good proposition because, in three weeks, we had three different kinds of gin.

Eli: Yeah, it was really impressive. What's cool about gin is you're able to make any flavor concept you have—it's like cooking in the kitchen. You can come up with any flavor, test it, and taste it.

With a lot of other spirits—and this is where my finance brain and Amir's analytical mind align—every other spirit has aging. They have to sit in a barrel, and you have to hope for the best. That means a ton of upfront capital, a ton of time, and you're just waiting.

Simon: How people make Scotch, I can't tell you. (Laughter) I don't understand it at all. And the other one is wine—wine is so time-consuming for good wine. Then you have people who make beer. Beer is like a breeze, you know? You just have to make sure it's refrigerated. Now they're making it fancy, aging it, and doing all sorts of stuff, but you can make beer in a bathtub and have something drinkable where people go, "Oh, this is good." So yes, you're 100% right. It's a lot easier. I was going to say, there are a lot of easier things than agave, but... (Laughter)

Eli: Yeah, we didn't know that at the time.

Simon: No, but it's okay.

Eli: And we still have that goal in our head to get back to agave.

Simon: There is some amazing agave being made in Israel now. Negave is a company, and I happen to know one of the guys who is very involved, Yechiel.

Eli: Yeah, we're also very close with Yechiel.

Simon: He's a really good guy. If he is listening to this, we definitely say hi.

Eli: Yeah. So, the next thing regarding—that was the artistry of the alcohol.

Simon: Okay.

Eli: But equally as important, as a kid, I was an artist. Instead of continuing in that path, I went into finance and focused on areas that made it hard for me not to be part of the arts. When I moved to Israel and started to flourish in that creative mindset—especially when we were making this alcohol and bringing in my influences from California—I said to Amir, "Great, the alcohol is awesome, you're the master distiller, you're focused on it, you're trained. I want to take it upon myself to ensure that, equally as important as the alcohol being good, the appearance and the branding has to be amazing. I don't want it to just be like a side hustle project, or something where people are like, 'Oh, that's cute.' This is a brand that we want to be a legacy brand with a strong presence."

For me, one of the things that I loved so much about the tequilas was the unique proposition they offered with the bottling. A lot of them come in these beautiful ceramic bottles made in Mexico—they're handcrafted and they're gorgeous. Everyone talks about it; it's the first thing you see before you even taste it. That is branding.

Simon: And the prices that they charge for those things are astronomical. I'm not a tequila drinker—sorry, Yechiel—but the prices on those bottles are crazy. For wine, you have a 750ml bottle, and if you mention something like $200 or $300, people look at you like you're out of your mind. These bottles of tequila go for like $4,200! They're astronomical. I mean, they also make cheaper ones, but at the beginning, when I first saw these bottles, I said, "Is that the case price?" (Laughter) It's not.

Eli: Yeah, we were just at Shilo winery, and we were taking a tour of the place. One thing they mentioned, which we noticed, was they have these magnum and super-magnum bottles that they sell.

Simon: Mhm.

Eli: The winemaker was joking with us, "This is a 12-liter bottle that we sell." It's a massive bottle.

Simon: I know, you can barely pick it up.

Eli: You can barely pick it up. He said, "We sell this for 4,500 shekels." He said the same 12 liters of the same wine, if you were buying regular bottles of it, would cost you 2,000 shekels. He's like, "So that means these people are paying 2,500 shekels just for the bottle."

Simon: Just because of the bottle.

Eli: Just because of this big bottle. So there is definitely that element to it.

To circle back to our bottle: another thing that I was also doing here—and mind you, we started this about six months before October 7th—is that I'm a finance person. I believe in business. That is how it works, no matter who you're working with. I've worked with a lot of countries, and everyone speaks money, profits, and business.

One thing that really fascinated me was when I would go right across the street from where we are right now, into the Old City, and see these beautiful ceramics made in the Armenian/Arabic art style. I was like, "We have to have that. That is the look that I want for our gin."

I started trying to source bottles, and mind you, Amir was like, "You are out of your mind."

Simon: "You're absolutely out of your mind." (Laughter)

Eli: "You're out of your mind." And then it got even worse because I eventually found a supplier in the city of Hebron, and I started to drive there frequently. I became a regular customer, built a relationship, and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Today, they personally tell me, "Eli, we've got to meet somewhere else, it's getting to be that kind of situation." (Laughter) But there was something beautiful about it—just business cohesiveness. No politics. When we talk, there is none of that. We are on the ground. Everything you read in the news, everything you see—it was none of that. It was just clean, unadulterated, pure joy. We were making this product, designing it together, and we still continue to do that.

Amir and a lot of other people thought I was crazy, obviously.

Amir: My life was very difficult. We have to say that this bottle is handmade. And if it's handmade, it means that we have a little variation between all the bottles.

Simon: Every single one.

Amir: So we have to use different corks because it's not always the same fit. It's quite a difficult life for someone who has to work with this kind of handmade bottle. But I think we can say that Eli worked very strictly to make the best bottle for our gin, and the bottles today are much better than the ones we started with.

Simon: Okay.

Eli: Yeah, we actually got to the point where we were almost going to open a separate factory in Hebron just for our bottle with them, as a way to focus on developing this. But yeah, that was the big picture from my side: we have a beautiful product on the outside, an amazing product on the inside, and now let's go sell it.

We did that, and within a month, we did our first test batch where we worked with one of the local distilleries in our region. We connected with them, did our first batch, and within a month, we sold 150 bottles of gin. It went instantly. We were like, "Oh wow, this is actually a business."

Right when we had that epiphany, we then went into October 7th. As hard as it is, it was a blessing and a curse. What ended up happening to a lot of breweries, distilleries, and wineries was they got hit very heavily because no one was buying their product, no one was coming for tourism, and the industry was shot. When you're running a business and you have debt, rent, salaries, and deliverables, but you have no product to sell, your business is shot.

We actually, in a weird way, benefited from this freeze to be able to hold. It was a long hold. During part of it, Amir wasn't even in the country, and there was so much going on. Then we got to a point where things felt a little bit more calm, and we decided to get back into this, but bigger and better. That's where we are today.

Simon: Okay.

Amir: Yes, it was not only a question of how we do it, but what we do. We decided we had time to try different things, which pushed us to do experimental work to create new products, which is a big pleasure.

Simon: I want to talk to you about that a little bit, because Tavlin means spice in Hebrew. Every gin maker on earth leads with juniper, but you named the whole house after spice. Are you a spice house that happens to distill, or a distillery that happens to focus on spice? That's the question.

Amir: I think we can start by saying that Tavlin is a nice word in Hebrew and has a nice pronunciation in different languages.

Simon: Yeah.

Amir: For someone who works with plants, there is a wonderful joy in the different aromas and different smells. Yes, it's wonderful. So, I love the name and the name suits our product. Most of our spirits relate to those essences.

Some of them do not, because we decided that we belong to Mateh Yehuda, the Judean region. We want to be a part of the wine revolution that happened in Mateh Yehuda, so we said, "Maybe we will start to distill wine." So we made our wine brandy.

Simon: Okay.

Amir: That was something new for most of the wineries here. They asked, "What do you mean, brandy?" We said, "You have the possibility to offer a new product. You have your wine, but you can offer something new." We started with a brandy, and we are constantly thinking about how to make the right grappa—the marc, in French—that presents the quality of our region.

Eli: We definitely think that flavor plays a massive role in the alcohol that we drink. I think gins have historically always been associated with, "Oh, it's a gin and tonic," "Oh, it's a London Dry," "It's a Gordon's," "It's basic, but it's classic," and "It's something that I have to mix into a cocktail."

There's a revolution that has been taking place for quite some time in Europe and around the world showing that, no, gin can be a sipping drink also, because you can make it sippable if you actually know what you're doing and you're making good flavored alcohol.

Amir and I have a great relationship—not only a working relationship, but just a really good bond. I always am so grateful, and I thank him all the time, that he kind of took me under his wing. Listen, for somebody whose Hebrew is terrible and who is new to learning all the ropes, to work with someone who is an educator, eloquent, has such a high vocabulary, and has spent his whole life in the arts of Hebrew—he's written books—to be with me...

Simon: Yeah.

Eli: It's humbling. He took me under his wing to do this, and...

Amir: He is a bit dramatic. (Laughter) I think for someone who is trying to find adventure, mhm, it was the right adventure for me.

Simon: Cool. I want to ask you a question. Are you, or used to be, in Hartuv?

Eli: Yeah.

Simon: Okay. So, you're in Hartuv, which is the mouth of the Sorek Valley, Shimshon country—where Samson was.

Eli: Yep. We can see his Kever (tomb) from our building.

Simon: Oh, wow. And you're minutes from the Judean Hills vineyards that our listeners know so much about because I'm a big fan of the Judean Hills wineries—especially the smaller ones, like Agur, which is off the charts. Some amazing stuff goes on there.

Eli: You said the right name for Amir.

Simon: Yeah, they're the best. I love them.

Amir: The story of Agur is very interesting. For me, something like 12 years ago, I got to know Shuki Yashuv. He told me, "You know, when I made my first wine, it was not kosher. And as a proud Israeli, I decided to make a kosher wine so that all components of Israeli society can drink and enjoy this wine." His story is very interesting.

We have a lot of post-trauma soldiers who decided that they found their future life between the vines and the vineyard, and this is one of the examples. I present his wine in my cellar, and a few times I've received a phone call, "Amir, maybe you have a few bottles of this year's vintage kept in your cellar? We finished ours and we need it."

Simon: "If you have any of the LOP left, I want it." Yes, I'm in the same boat. (Laughter)

My podcast is called "The Kosher Terroir." Is there a gin terroir that you're trying to accomplish? Does the land actually give you something special?

Amir: Yes. I want to start by saying that our terroir is not only the land; it's also the kitchen.

Simon: Yeah.

Amir: In our spicy gin, we try to find what makes the Israeli cuisine unique. We took a few ingredients from the Israeli kitchen—meaning, pepper, cinnamon, and things like that—and we made our gin based on those products. At one festival, someone drank our gin and said, "You make me remember my mother's dishes." It warmed our hearts. It was a pleasure to hear something like that. That is one part of our product.

We also try to bring plants that we can find in our region, like the za'atar, the marva (sage), and anise, to represent our hills.

Eli: Yeah, that's also another reason why we call the brand Tavlin (Spice). Where we live in Tzur Hadassa, there is a road that David HaMelech and all the Jews took to get to the Beit HaMikdash. Today it's called the 375, but back then, it was referred to as the Shvil HaTavlinim—the Spice Trail.

Simon: Cool.

Eli: And that Spice Trail is where we live off of. It's a big part of why we called it Tavlin. You see all the local spices there. Obviously, when you make wine or alcohol, you talk about the land and the earth, and the plants are all part of that terroir, as Amir said. We believe very strongly in natural herbs; we don't try to bring things that are not from Israel. We want it to represent what we have, and we learn to blend them in ways that really speak to each individual flavor that we're trying to make.

As a side note—because I know this is a wine podcast—we are extremely fascinated by the wine industry, and we are actually trying in R&D to figure out what we can do with our gin to incorporate wine into the process. We have a bunch of ideas, and we've seen things in the industry at large that people are testing. I think it's worth a follow-up once we get there.

Simon: No, I'm happy to even talk to you about it, because it's one of the things that I've been really thinking about. But, okay, so my next question, apropos, was: let's get to the bottles. (Laughter) Let's talk a little bit about what you have.

Eli: So, what you're tasting right now—we brought an array of gins today. I believed it's always easier to start at the top of the ladder and walk down, even though everything is amazing. But what separates us now—and again, talking about this small little project that was a dream and really amounted to nothing initially, and even to this day we have so much more to go—what you're tasting right now is our spicy gin.

At this point, it's actually not just a local Israeli spirit that people know about, it's a world-renowned spirit. About four months ago, we received a bronze medal in the Gin Guide Awards, which is the top gin competition in the world. There were 36 countries that entered, with about 500 or 600 different bottles. We entered our spicy gin in the "Spiced Gin" category, and we received a bronze medal—third place in the world.

It's like a "Miracle on Ice" story because, first of all, the competition takes place in London. Just to get the bottle to London was a story in itself. We had to smuggle it in with someone to help us get it there and deliver the samples. We thought, "We're a nobody. Why are we even entering in this competition?" That was Amir's take. For me, I shoot for the stars and I'm like, "We're going to do it. And if we lose, at least we entered and we'll do it again."

We got word back from them that we ended up winning, and it took us completely by surprise that we won the award. It just goes to show that we actually know what we're doing here, and it definitely showcases the craftsmanship and abilities that Amir has in terms of the product. So, I think it was worth starting with the spicy gin. It's got so much complexity on the nose. It has something you would not expect from a gin, which is garlic, right off the bat. It's so pleasing to smell; it's not overwhelming.

Simon: I was going to ask you, am am I smelling garlic? So, yes, it is.

Eli: Yeah, and I think that's the first thing you smell when you enter our home—garlic cooking in the kitchen.

Amir: Yes, it's fresh garlic. It makes a big difference. If the garlic is fresh, its aroma is wonderful.

Eli: Yeah, and as it caramelized with the other ingredients during cooking, when you drink it, you get a completely different taste of the garlic. That is something that is amazing to us. You also have a balance in there because we added cinnamon. You would never put cinnamon and garlic together in a dish, but for some reason, in this alcohol, it works perfectly. Amir can definitely speak more about the ingredients if you want to get into it, but we're really pleased with the result.

Simon: So, my question for you then is: are these products—walk through the distillation itself—do the botanicals macerate in the spirit, or do you hang them in vapor baskets, or both? How do you put these into the spirit itself?

Amir: We have three different methods we use to make our gin.

Simon: Okay.

Amir: First is to boil it with the alcohol. Second is the basket. But for some aromatics, we take the alcohol at the end, and we leave them in this alcohol, and it extracts the aroma at this stage.

Simon: So it's macerated in the alcohol?

Amir: Yes, but in a very—I will not say secret way, but only a few distilleries know this method—where you can capture the aroma without cooking.

Simon: Without cooking it?

Amir: Yes, because the cooking will change the flavor totally.

Simon: Interesting. Very cool. How do you decide where your cuts are, so that the gin isn't too aggressive?

Eli: Well, you don't want to die, so that's the first cut. (Laughter)

Simon: I got you. That's the reason my whole life I have stayed away from distillation. Because I watch those shows about the hillbillies up in the mountains distilling stuff, and it scared the daylights out of me. I don't want to go blind because I did something wrong.

Eli: Methanol is interesting because it definitely has a distinct smell, so you can identify it, but Amir is the one who masters the cuts.

Amir: I have to say that the smell of methanol is so different that you can smell it very easily when you're distilling. So, you can feel when it's finished. In the beginning, you have to be close to a master distiller, and he explains to you when the smell changes.

There is another way to do it, which is a kind of mathematics. But this is too complicated because you have to deal with the temperature, you have to deal with the quantity—it's quite difficult. The best thing to do is by smelling. I think my brain can smell methanol from a distance. Smelling is the best thing to do, and the mathematics we do just to be sure we did the right thing. We can be generous and say we will lose a few...

Simon: People? (Laughter)

Amir: No, no, a few liters, to be sure that our product is 100% okay.

Simon: So you use a pot still?

Amir: Yes.

Eli: I would actually add, regarding the ability to smell and identify—because I think it's important, especially with Amir being the master distiller—I mentioned that he certified in distilling. But what I didn't mention, which is more pertaining to this podcast, is that he's also a sommelier.

What is fascinating about how he became a sommelier is he took the course without drinking a single sip of wine, and passed all the exams just by smell, because the wines he was testing weren't kosher, and he drinks strictly kosher. He passed his sommelier exam just by smell. His ability to smell, obviously, there's proof of that.

Simon: Off the charts. Very cool.

Eli: So, what we're tasting now, this is our floral gin. This is back to the representation of Israel, the Spice Trail, and all the herbs that are out there, including the floral and green elements. We came up with this type of gin.

Simon: It's definitely a gin, but it's got botanicals that make it much more floral.

Eli: Yeah, and one thing that we strive for—we're a boutique company, and we believe in sipping gins—is that while we love cocktails, the design, and the color, you can also drink it plain. That is what's really amazing about what we're trying to do.

So yeah, that's the next one that we've got. We can then segue into some of these more exploratory flavors that showcase the mastery of distilling. We have three things that we brought in addition to that, and they all are very different.

One is wine, so we made a wine brandy in collaboration with Raviv winery—speaking of small wineries in Israel. They make excellent wines, and the owner is so talented.

The next thing we have is a play on this concept where we want to make a million different types of gins. The first thing we thought of to make was an arak gin, so we brought a gin arak here, which has this balance of anise and juniper.

And the third thing is more of a homage to something that Amir brought to the table that no one ever heard of in Israel, and that's called Aquavit.

Amir: Yeah.

Simon: Interesting.

Amir: The Israeli taste in alcohol is in its infancy, and we want to open this world of different spirits from all over the world. So we decided to make something that no one is making here in Israel: Aquavit. Nobody in Israel made Aquavit. The caraway is very important for that.

Eli: What you're tasting and smelling now is the brandy we made with Raviv winery. Brandy has to sit with some form of aging, but there are newer forms of aging today that move it faster. One of them is, instead of having the alcohol sitting in a barrel, you can put wood chips in the alcohol.

Simon: Wood chips.

Eli: Wood chips, yeah. You get more surface area and are able to age faster. So within six months, we were able to age it.

Amir: And you get a wonderful, wonderful pink color.

Eli: Turning to the direction of Israel, and back to what Amir was saying with the brandy: just like the wine industry is having its mark in Israel and has its world presence, we're also going through that in the alcohol world. A big project on Amir's side is to build a community around everyone else who's distilling and making products here, because it only helps us to increase the awareness of what Israel's doing on the distilling side. We have the ability to also have that reputation of making great distillations—great wine, great whiskey, great gin, and araks. It benefits everybody.

Amir: We are proud that this brandy was the first brandy to represent Mateh Yehuda. It was not easy to convince the organizer of the Mateh Yehuda Wine Festival to present a brandy, but we insisted, saying we have a very good product that can be a part of this festival. In the end, it was one of the highlights of this festival, and we hope that in the next festival, we will not be the only ones—others will join our way to present Mateh Yehuda from a different perspective.

Simon: Can I talk to you a little bit about the bottle again? I know these bottles are all different, but the bottles for the spicy gin...

Amir: The ornament that we have on the bottle is also an Armenian ornament. There is a big debate between the Palestinian and the Armenian Arab communities here in Israel to say to whom it belongs, because each one says, "This is ours." If you are in Jerusalem, it is presented as Armenian, but if you are in Hebron, it's Arab. (Laughter)

Simon: So is the inside of that bottle glazed, too? So you have to glaze the inside and the outside of the bottle?

Eli: Yes. Everything is food-grade glazed, conforming to the standards of the Ministry of Health. Even though when we think about working with our brethren on the Judean Hills side, we might think of it as a little bit backyard-style, it's quite the opposite. This company has been around for 300 years. They send about 40 to 50 containers a month to America and around the world. They are a massive company that has built a great reputation. Most of the art that you see in the Old City comes from this place. So they have high standards.

Simon: So all the Armenian pottery that you think is Armenian is actually coming out of Hebron?

Eli: Yeah, so it's comical, but yes, it's all food-grade for sure.

So, this is our first attempt at combining two worlds and merging them into one. We took arak, which has its really definitive anise taste, and we wanted to see if we could add some gin elements to it. Let's add the dryness from the juniper and the coriander and see how it comes out. For me, it's very pleasing.

Simon: I think this is one of my favorite araks. It's kind of crazy, kind of interesting. It's like all the good things about arak without the bad things.

Eli: Yeah, and that's kind of what our approach was. Mind you, this is first pass, right? But it opened our eyes to the potential of doing as many things as possible with this gin. One of our projects that we're working on already involves tea. There is an entire world of teas out there—we're talking in the millions. We're like, why are we not making gin with tea? We actually got introduced to this idea because of the workshops we offer.

Simon: Let's talk about that.

Eli: We offer this workshop where you come to us, and within two hours, you become a master distiller. It's a quick taste of what's out there, but we do it very efficiently. We give you a pot still, we give you ingredients, we guide you along the process from beginning to end, and you actually make your own alcohol.

Amir: And you can taste different gins from Israel and other countries, and you can develop your preference and be very proud to explain your own gin.

Eli: Yeah.

Simon: I heard about this incredible whiskey hack. You can take the worst Scotch—let's say Johnnie Walker Red Label—and you can take tea. If you infuse tea in that whiskey—for example, if you took something like Lapsang Souchong, which is a very smoky tea, and you infuse it into that whiskey—that whiskey suddenly tastes absolutely extraordinary. It takes a pedestrian whiskey and makes it amazing. So yes, you can do teas and do crazy stuff that I'm surprised nobody else does.

Eli: Yeah, it's a small world. I was just in Budapest and I took an intensive tea class. The one tea that I walked away with to make our first test batch was Lapsang Souchong.

Simon: Lapsang Souchong, yeah. It's the best, smokiest, craziest tea. This was my favorite tea as a kid growing up.

Eli: Yeah. So I brought back a big sack of this from Budapest, from a super authentic tea house.

Simon: I don't even know where you get it in Israel, but...

Eli: I'll bring you some, I have plenty.

Simon: No, but I'm telling you, all you need to do is take that and put it in—but you've got to be careful, you can't infuse it for too long. It's got to be infused for a very short period of time, and it will make a huge difference.

Eli: Yeah, we have about 30 different botanicals that you can choose from now. You go there, choose whatever flavors you want, smell them, touch them, watch them in the distillation process, and you go home with what you made. You even taste it as it's dripping out of the still; it's a cool experience.

What happened was, some friends of ours in the industry came to visit us and made a tea-infused gin. Amir and I tasted it, looked at each other, and said, "We've got to do this." It was crazy. You can do some amazing things with teas, but the trick is that it's very intense, so you have to really control it.

Eli: You can only do so much on your own, but having that collaboration opens your eyes. We've tasted so many unique gins and we're just like, "Oh, we should try that." We wouldn't have that if we didn't host this class. So for us, it's just as rewarding as it is for the people who attend.

So, what we're tasting now, this is...

Amir: Aquavit.

Eli: Aquavit.

Simon: Aquavit.

Eli: That's why I call it rye, because it tastes like rye bread. But we learned that it's not.

Amir: So...

Eli: That's our Aquavit.

Simon: Two questions left. One is, there's a lot of distillation going on in Israel right now—Milk and Honey, Golani, a whole bunch. How have you found them? Is it like a brotherhood, or is it competition? Do you feel like you're in competition with them, or do you feel a sense of camaraderie?

Amir: First of all, I think we have plenty of room for new distilleries to come and present their products. For example, here in Israel we have something like 15 or 20 distilleries; in Switzerland, they have 3,000! (Laughter) It's a little different.

But I think because we are so few, the relationships are very good. We are always speaking about collaboration because we have a lot to learn and share. For example, we have Arava Distillery. They make their spirits from dates, which is totally new for us. What is the possibility of making a good gin from dates?

Simon: Where do you want to be 10 years from now? Where are you trying to get to? Is there going to be a barrel-aged gin coming along? Are there different botanicals?

Amir: I think my wish is that every year we have something new and different than what we did before. Success will be having something new to offer to the alcohol drinker. Whether we are big or small is not the question. The question is: are we relevant for the drinker? That is my wish, that is my philosophy.

Simon: Truly the last question: where can listeners find your stuff? Where can they buy it?

Eli: Right now, we sell direct to consumer on our website, which is drinktavlin.com (t-a-v-l-i-n). It's also the name of our social media handles: @drinktavlin. That's where we sit right now. With the hope of growing, we're also opening channels of distribution in some stores, restaurants, and bars.

Simon: So everything is in Israel right now?

Eli: Everything is in Israel. We've been approached by a bunch of distributors around the world who would like to sell our product, but we're just not there yet. We're trying to just master what we're doing here first. It's a whole other world to export it out of Israel, so our focus is just to make sure we're doing what we need to do here.

Simon: And the labeling is much easier if you stay here. Just the labeling alone is much easier.

Eli: Yeah, there are those elements. And like Amir said, we're not Coca-Cola. Our goal is not global expansion and world domination. We're the anti-AI company. (Laughter) You mentioned before about Gen Z not drinking anymore; I think at most it's a fad because, at the end of the day, we're humans and we've been drinking alcohol for a long time.

Simon: We've been drinking alcohol for a long time.

Eli: We've been drinking alcohol forever! The wine industry is not decades old; we're talking about millennia. It's a completely different conversation. So, the context of those trends doesn't quite apply to us. For us, we're just going to continue doing what we do. As long as we are relevant, people are aware of what we're doing, and we are excited about it, those are the main things we care about.

We're fortunate to be doing it here in Israel. To be able to actually do what we do and be in Israel is already the win—the rest is just icing. We thank God every day that we're doing what we do and that we're here.

Amir: We are especially inviting anyone who is hearing this podcast and says, "On my next visit to Israel, I want to visit this distillery."

Simon: Yeah, especially to be able to make something—that would be crazy awesome.

Amir: Yes, and...

Eli: Yeah, we would love to host anybody.

Simon: Thank you, really a pleasure. Toda, toda, thank you for being on the Kosher Terroir.

Amir: Toda raba. (Thank you very much)

Outro

Simon: This is Simon Jacob again, your host of today's episode of the Kosher Terroir. Please subscribe via your podcast provider to be informed of our new episodes as they are released. If you're new to the Kosher Terroir, please check out our many past episodes.