The Kosher Terroir

Season 5, Episode 4 — “Your Next Favorite Wine Lives Next Door”

Host: Simon Jacob · Recorded in Jerusalem · Runtime ≈ 36:00

[00:08] 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 relaxing at home, please pour yourself a glass of wonderful kosher wine. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

[00:39] This morning an email landed in my inbox. The subject line said, “Your next favorite wine is waiting.” I like that sentence. It’s a kind sentence. It sounds like a friend leaning across the table and saying, “I know something you don’t.” So I opened it, and inside, more or less, it said, “Refresh your lineup. Here are some new arrivals.” And that was all.

[01:10] I don’t hold it against anybody. It’s a lovely sentence, but it’s a sentence without a map. My next favorite wine is waiting. Fine. Waiting where?

[01:24] On the desk in front of me, there were four glasses. I’m not going to tell you what’s in them yet. One is pale, like straw in the sun. One is a red that you can see through, like stained glass, and two are dark red, enough that you can’t see your fingers through them. And next to the glasses, there is one more thing: a key.

[01:57] There’s also a question I want to leave with you, and I’ll answer it before we’re done. In the Shulchan Aruch, there’s a blessing — a real one, with God’s name in it — that you say over a wine, but you’re not allowed to say it alone. If you’re drinking by yourself, you can’t say it. Why would a blessing over a glass of wine need a second person in the room? Hold on to that.

[02:28] This is The Kosher Terroir, and this is the episode about the bottle you already love, and why it was never the end of the road. It was just an address.

Introduction — One Bottle

[02:40] I want to start with a confession, because I think most of you share it. For years there was one bottle in my house, a good Israeli Cabernet, dark and dependable. I could spot the label across a crowded store, the way you can spot your own child in a schoolyard. Friday afternoon, I bought it. Guests coming, I bought two. Somebody asked me for a recommendation, and you know what I said.

[03:10] It never let me down. That was the problem. It never let me down, so I never went looking.

[03:19] That’s not a failure. Every one of us has a bottle. The one you reach for without thinking. The one you bring to your in-laws because you know it works. And every shop, every promotion, every well-meaning friend tells us the same thing: try something new. Wonderful. Thank you. How?

[03:44] “Try something new” is directions with no street names. It’s like telling someone lost in the Old City, “Just go somewhere else.” Which alley? Which gate?

[03:57] So let me tell you where we’re going, because I want you to know I won’t waste your hour. The question is, why do we fall in love with one bottle in the first place? It isn’t only the wine. Some of it is you, some of it is the label, and there’s research on both that I find humbling.

[04:21] Second, a map. Four doors. Every bottle you love has an address, and if you change one line of that address, you’re standing at the house next door.

[04:33] Third, we walk through the doors. Four doors, four pairs. For each one, I’ll give you a home bottle, the kind that’s already on a lot of tables, and its neighbor. Three reds and a white: the big reds, a light one, and a crisp white for people who never drink red at all. And at the end, the blessing you can’t say alone.

Chapter 1 — Why You Love the Wine You Love

[05:04] Let’s start with a question that sounds silly. Why do you like the wine you like? Most of us would say, because it tastes good. And that’s true. But it isn’t the whole truth.

[05:20] In 1968, a psychologist at the University of Michigan named Robert Zajonc published a paper with a very unromantic title: “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure.” He showed people things they’d never seen before — made-up words, characters that look like Chinese writing, faces from a college yearbook — some of them once, some of them many times. And then he asked, how much do you like this one? The ones they’d seen more often, they liked more. Not because they were better, because they’d simply met them before.

[06:06] Now pour that into a glass. The first time you tasted your favorite bottle, it was probably just nice. The fifth time, it was, “Oh, I know this one.” By the twentieth time, it’s home. And home is wonderful, but I want you to keep one sentence from this chapter: familiar isn’t better. It’s just home.

[06:31] There’s a second force, and it’s sneakier. In 2008, a team at Caltech and Stanford — the lead author was Hilke Plassmann — published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They put people in a brain scanner, gave them sips of Cabernet, and told them the price of each one.

[06:55] And here’s the trick. Some of the different wines were the same wine. One of them was served once with a $5 price tag and once with a $45 one. Exactly the same liquid. At $45, people liked it more. And not just in what they said — the part of the brain that tracks pleasure actually responded more strongly. The price wasn’t just changing their opinion, it was changing their experience. Same wine, different story, different wine.

[07:35] And there’s older research that I love, from Bordeaux. In 2001, three researchers — Gil Morrot, Frédéric Brochet, and Denis Dubourdieu — published a paper in the journal Brain and Language called “The Color of Odors.” They took 54 students of oenology, people training to do this for a living, and gave them a white wine. Then they gave them the same white wine, dyed red with a coloring that has no smell or taste. The students described the “red” wine with red-wine words — red fruit, dark fruit — things that weren’t in the glass. These weren’t beginners. They were the people we send to wine school.

[08:31] I’ve felt this myself. I’ve been handed a glass from a famous bottle and caught myself nodding before it reached my lips. And I’ve had a plain carafe of something modest stop a conversation cold. The glass doesn’t lie. We lie to ourselves about the glass. Your eyes, your memory, your wallet, all take a sip before your tongue does.

[09:00] So what does that mean for finding your next favorite? Two things. First, when you try something new, you’re competing with home. Your old bottle is family. Your new one is a stranger. That isn’t a fair fight, so don’t judge a new wine on one meeting. Give it a second date.

[09:23] Second, and this is the important one: if you go too far all at once, you learn nothing. Go from your favorite Israeli Cabernet straight to an amber wine from Georgia aged in clay, and everything has changed at the same time — the grape, the place, the method, the color, the texture. If you love it, you don’t know why. If you hate it, you don’t know why either. The way out of a favorite isn’t a leap. It’s one change at a time. Which brings me to the map.

Chapter 2 — Four Doors

[10:03] Picture your favorite bottle as a house. Every house has an address, and every bottle of wine has an address too. Four lines on the envelope: the grape that it’s made from, the place where it grew, the maker whose hands it went through, and the structure — how it feels in your mouth: light or full, crisp or soft, grippy or smooth.

[10:33] Change one line of that address and you’re standing at the house next door. Same street, different family, but a neighborhood you already know you like. So let’s go over that.

[10:47] Door one: same grape, new place. Keep the grape, change the ground. A Cabernet from a warm valley and a Cabernet from a cool, high plateau are cousins, not twins. This is the gentlest door, and if you only open one this year, open this one. It’s how you learn what place tastes like. And the show is called The Kosher Terroir, so you knew I was going to say that.

[11:18] Door two: same place, new grape. Now flip it. Stay on the same hill and change the grape. Same air, same soil, same nights, different voice. This door teaches you something lovely: sometimes the thing you loved wasn’t the grape at all. It was the hill.

[11:43] Door three: same maker, new wine. The door people forget. If you trust a winery — if you like how they think — their style shows up in everything they make. I’ve spent enough time around winemakers to know that a cellar has a handwriting. If you love a cook’s brisket, you’ll probably trust their soup.

[12:15] Door four: same structure, new everything. This is the one nobody explains — not the promotions, not the shelf cards. Forget the grape, forget the country. Ask how your favorite wine feels. Can you see through it, or is it dark? Does it make your mouth water like a squeeze of lemon, or is it soft and round? Does it grip your gums a little, like strong tea — that’s tannin — or is it smooth? If you know those answers, you can find a wine from a different grape, a different country, a different maker, that your mouth will greet like an old friend.

[13:03] There’s one basic rule running through all of these. I want you to say it out loud with me, because it’s the whole method in four words: keep three, change one. Keep three lines of the address. Change only one. That way, when you love the new wine — or even when you don’t — you’ll know exactly why.

[13:30] One small side door before we pour, because some of you always ask. Some of the wines today are mevushal, and some aren’t. Mevushal is about how a wine is handled under kosher law — who can open it and pour it and have it keep its status. It isn’t a quality grade, and it isn’t a style. If the neighbor isn’t mevushal, that’s not a reason to stay home. It’s a reason to think about who’s pouring. We did a whole episode on it, “Mevushal: Boiled, Not Spoiled?” — Season 4, Episode 29. It’s in the feed.

Chapter 3 — Four Doors, Four Pairs

[14:19] And now the doors. Four doors, four pairs. Here’s how this works. For each door, I’ll give you a home bottle, something that’s already on a lot of tables, and then its neighbor. If you have the bottles, pour with me. If you’re driving, keep your eyes on the road and let your nose do the imagining.

[14:46] One honesty note. When I tell you what a grape or a region tends to do, that’s the classic style. When I tell you what’s in my glass, that’s me, today, in this glass. Your glass may say something else. That’s allowed.

[15:05] And one practical note. If you buy a pair, taste them the same night, side by side, with the same food, and if you can, have someone else pour them, so you don’t know which one is which. Remember the students in Bordeaux? Let your tongue go first, for once.

Door One — Same grape, new place

[15:29] Door one: same grape, new place. Home: Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon, from the Golan Heights Winery. For a lot of serious Cabernet lovers, this is the bottle, the one that comes out when the table matters — and for many of us, the wine that taught us that Israel could make Cabernet that stands up anywhere.

[15:58] It grows on the Golan: a volcanic plateau, black basalt, the remains of old lava flows, high vineyards with cold air coming down off Mount Hermon at night.

[16:14] In the glass, deep ruby, dark at the core. On the nose, blackberry, ripe cherry, plum, then a little tobacco, a little herb, spice, and chocolate from the oak. In the mouth, it’s full and firm, with a straight line through the middle and a long finish. A wine with good posture.

[16:41] Now, before you move, name the one thing you love about it. No — not that it’s good. One thing. The dark fruit, the structure, that long finish. That one thing is your key. Hold it.

[17:03] Next door: Shiloh Secret Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Same grape, same serious tier, similar altitude — the vineyards are high too, somewhere between 650 and 900 meters. But one line of the address changes: the place. And the place, this time, is the stone itself. We leave the basalt of the Golan for the limestone of the central mountains, the hills of the Shomron around Shiloh.

[17:41] And I can’t say that name without saying the rest of it. Shiloh is where the Mishkan stood for centuries, before there was a Temple in Jerusalem. And the prophet Yirmiyahu, looking at those same hills, promised: “Od tit’i cheramim b’harei Shomron.” Again, you will plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. I guess somebody did.

[18:13] You’ll meet the same family, but listen for what’s different. Black plum and violet on the nose, a little roasted pepper. In the mouth, it’s bigger and riper: dark berries, coffee, mocha, a touch of anise, 18 months in new French oak behind it, and tannins with real muscle. The finish turns to spice and dark chocolate. Where the Yarden stood up straight, this one rolls up its sleeves.

[18:50] Same grape, same height, different rock. That’s what place tastes like. And now, here’s something nobody tells you. Once you’ve walked through a door, the neighbor becomes your new home. And every new home has a door of its own.

Door Two — Same place, new grape

[19:11] Moving on to door two: same place, new grape. Home is the Dalton Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Now let’s go north, to the Upper Galilee, near Meron. There’s a family winery there that has been making wine on these hills for over 25 years. Their Estate Cabernet is a lot of people’s step up from everyday: dark fruit, real structure, the grip of a serious Cabernet.

[19:46] Now, keep the hill, keep the hands, change one thing. The next door is Dalton’s Zinfandel. Same hills, same cellar, a different grape — and what a grape! Zinfandel has a passport full of stamps. It started on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. It’s the same vine the Italians call Primitivo, in Puglia. It became famous in California, and here it is on a hillside in the Galilee.

[20:22] Where the Cabernet was blackcurrant and structure, Zinfandel is brambles: blackberry jam, raspberry, and a little black pepper, something like a warm spice cupboard. The tannin is softer. It doesn’t grab, it hugs. It’s more exuberant than a Cabernet, but less formal.

[20:47] So here’s what you’re testing: did you love your Cabernet for the grape, or for this hill? If the Zinfandel feels like home, it was the hill. And now you know something about yourself no label could have ever told you.

Door Three — Same maker, new wine

[21:07] On to door three: the same maker, new wine. Home is the Vitkin Grenache Noir. Vitkin is a small family winery in Kfar Vitkin, in Emek Hefer, on the coastal plain near Netanya. And if you’ve followed this show, you know what they set out to do: give Israeli wine a Mediterranean accent. They grow grapes most Israeli wineries walked away from — Carignan, Grenache, Colombard — and they’ll tell you they were the first in Israel to grow Grenache well.

[21:50] If this is your house red, you love a red you can see through. Hold it up to the window: a red like stained glass. On the nose, ripe red cherry, raspberry, a little dried herb, the kind of thing you smell walking past wild rosemary in the hills. In the mouth, tart cherry, spice, warmth, and a softness in the middle. Grenache is a Mediterranean grape. It grew up on this sea, and it tastes like it’s at home.

[22:27] Next door is Vitkin’s Pinot Noir. Same maker, same hands, mostly the same feel — light, red fruit, a red you can see through — but change the grape to one that is very much not from here. Pinot Noir comes from the cool north of France, from Burgundy, and it’s famously fussy about heat. In Israel, it’s a guest. Growing it well in this climate takes real care, which is exactly why it’s worth tasting from the hands you already trust.

[23:08] Red cherry again, but cooler, finer. Raspberry, a little earth, something like forest floor after rain. In the mouth, lighter on its feet than the Grenache, a brighter line of acid, and tannins like silk. Where Grenache is warm, Pinot is silk.

[23:33] If you love Grenache for its lightness and its red fruit, Pinot keeps both. What it trades is the sun for a little more lift. Grenache is at home here. Pinot is a guest — a well-hosted one. And because the hands didn’t change, you can tell exactly what the grape did.

Door Four — Same structure, new everything

[23:56] And finally, door four: same structure, new everything. Home: Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, from Marlborough, New Zealand. If your house white is a Marlborough Sauvignon, you already know what you love, even if you’ve never said it. It’s electric: grapefruit, passion fruit, a snap of fresh-cut grass, and acid that makes your mouth water before you’ve swallowed. It wakes you up.

[24:32] Now, here’s what I want you to notice. The thing you love about this wine isn’t really Sauvignon Blanc. It isn’t really New Zealand. It’s crisp, light on its feet, it’s fresh. So keep that — the feel — and change everything else.

[24:54] Next door: Viña Memorias Alenar Blanco. Longtime listeners know this name. Armando from Viña Memorias was with us last season, in Episode 30, for “An Intimate Spanish Wine Tasting.” So this is a small reunion.

[25:18] Different grape: mostly Macabeo, the same grape they call Viura in Rioja, with a little Xarel·lo. From Spain’s Valencia, the Utiel-Requena appellation. So we’re halfway around the world from the Sauvignon Blanc, with a different maker, and a vineyard that sits up around 800 meters. Armando calls it “the Jerusalem of Valencia.” I’m recording this in Jerusalem, so you’ll forgive me for liking that.

[25:53] In the glass, pale straw with a green-gold flash at the edge. On the nose, white flowers and citrus — lemon peel, a little grapefruit — with a quiet note of ripe pear underneath. And in the mouth: dry, clean, light, the acid arriving right away, fresh and stony, like the pale soil it grew in. It’s less loud than the Sauvignon Blanc — no grass and no fireworks — but your mouth recognizes it immediately. The same structure, but new everything.

[26:36] This is the most powerful door of the four, because it’s the one that sets you free from names. Once you know you love crisp, the whole world opens. You’re no longer looking for a grape. You’re looking for a feeling, and the feeling has neighbors on every continent.

[27:00] Look at the four glasses together now. Two dark reds, a light red like stained glass, and a pale white. Every one of them was a single step from a bottle that’s already on somebody’s table. Nobody jumped. We kept three lines of the address and changed one. And at the end of each step, the neighbor was waiting.

Chapter 4 — A Blessing for the Neighbor

[27:33] At the top of the episode, I asked you a question: a blessing over a wine that you’re not allowed to say alone. Why? Here it is. In the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, siman 175, there’s a blessing called HaTov VeHaMeitiv: “Who is good, and who does good.” And one of the places it appears is at the table over wine — specifically, when a different wine is brought out.

[28:06] If you’ve made Borei Pri HaGafen over the first wine, you’re drinking together, then somebody brings out a second, different wine. You don’t say HaGafen again; the first blessing still covers it. But the Shulchan Aruch says you say HaTov VeHaMeitiv — a thank-you not just for the wine, but for more. For variety. Our tradition has a blessing for the moment the neighbor arrives at the table.

[28:38] Now the details, because they’re lovely. First — and here’s the answer to the question — you only say it if someone else is drinking with you. The Gemara in tractate Berachot explains the words: tov is the good that comes to you. Meitiv is the good that’s done for someone else. If you’re alone, there’s nobody else for the good to be done to, so you can’t say it. The blessing for a new wine requires a friend.

[29:14] Second, the new wine doesn’t have to be better. The Shulchan Aruch says you bless as long as you don’t know that it’s worse. And the Rema, right there, brings a wonderful opinion: if you started with a red and they brought you white, some say you bless even if the white is a little worse, because white wine is healthier for the body. I’m not taking a side in the red-versus-white health debate. I’m just telling you it’s in the Rema.

[29:51] Third — and here I have to be honest — in practice it’s narrower than it sounds. If the second bottle only comes out because the first one ran dry, that’s not a new wine. That’s more wine, and the poskim say no blessing. And there’s a real discussion about a second bottle that was already in the house when you made Kiddush and that you planned to drink anyway. The Mishnah Berurah is cautious about that case, and the poskim go back and forth. That’s a big part of why, in a lot of homes, you rarely hear it.

[30:34] So, ask your rav. I’m here to tell you that the blessing exists and why it’s beautiful. Your rav will tell you when to say it.

[30:44] But picture it. Friday night. Kiddush is done, the meal is going, and halfway through, a friend reaches under the table and brings out a bottle nobody’s seen. The neighbor. Everyone leans in, and someone at the table says the words: HaTov VeHaMeitiv. Good for me and good for you. That’s the whole episode in two words. Your next favorite — and you didn’t find it alone.

Closing

[31:13] Three things I’m taking to the table this Shabbat. Quickly — you’ve earned quick.

[31:18] One: familiar isn’t better. It’s just home. Your favorite bottle has years of your life on its side, and your eyes, your memory, and your wallet all taste before your tongue does. Give a new wine a second date.

[31:35] Two: every bottle has an address — grape, place, maker, structure. Keep three, change one. That’s not a rule for being careful. That’s a rule for learning. When you change one thing, the wine tells you something about yourself.

[31:56] Three: the best door is the one you didn’t know was there — the way a wine feels. Once you know what you love in your mouth, names stop being walls.

[32:10] Two things I’d like you to actually do. Before you buy anything this week, take a bottle you always buy and finish this sentence out loud: “What I love about this wine is…” Just one thing. Not “it’s good.” That one thing is your key. And then walk into a wine store, or call, or send a WhatsApp, and don’t ask “What’s good?” Ask: “I love this. What’s its neighbor?” A good wine person will light up. That’s a question they can answer.

[32:49] So, back to where we started. An email told me my next favorite wine was waiting, and now I can tell you where. It’s not across the world. It’s not in a bottle you can’t pronounce, at a price you can’t explain to your spouse. It’s next door, to the bottle you already love. That bottle was never a rut. It was always the key.

[33:18] There’s a passage near the end of Devarim that I’ve been thinking about all week. Moshe is speaking to the people about the Torah, and he says, “Lo bashamayim hi” — it is not in heaven, that you should say, who will go up for us and bring it down? “V’lo me’ever layam hi” — and it isn’t across the sea, that you should say, who will bring it over for us and bring it back? The thing is very near to you. “B’ficha uvilvavcha” — in your mouth and in your heart.

[33:57] I want to be careful. Moshe was talking about the Torah, not about a bottle of wine, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But I’ve always loved what that verse teaches about how people find things. We assume what we’re looking for is far away — up a mountain, across an ocean, in somebody else’s hands. And the verse says, look closer. It’s already within your reach.

[34:29] If that’s true of the greatest things we’ve been given, it’s true of the smallest pleasures too. Your next favorite wine isn’t across the sea. It’s near you. It’s in your mouth already. It’s the bottle you love. You just haven’t knocked on the next door yet.

[34:52] And when you find the neighbor, bring a friend. Our tradition gave us a blessing for that — for that specific moment — and it won’t let you say it alone.

[35:05] May every bottle you love introduce you to its neighbor. May your table always have one more chair than is needed. And may the next favorite be something you open together. Shabbat shalom, my friends, and as always, l’chaim.

Outro

[35:35] 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.

End of transcript — The Kosher Terroir, Season 5, Episode 4: “Your Next Favorite Wine Lives Next Door.”