by Channa Fischer

Trends in Israeli Winemaking

From ecological practices and sustainable agriculture to higher tech methods of distribution, “cask futures” and a renewed focus on native Israeli grape varieties, here’s a look at hot 2022 trends in Israeli wine.

By Channa Fischer

The harvest at Israel’s Raziel Winery.

Despite being one of the oldest wine production regions on the globe, the modern Israeli winemaking industry is still on the up and up and partially considered a “New World” winemaking region. Wineries and distributors across Israel are constantly evaluating ways to innovate. In discussions with various winemakers throughout the country, several trends seem to have emerged in recent years—and are here to stay. Here’s what to look out for:

Ecological Winemaking Practices

Israeli native Michal Akerman of Tabor Winery is one of the winemakers who started the “ecological revolution” of Israeli wine production back in 2012; and Tabor hasn’t looked back since.

“The way we were growing vines in Israel was wrong in every aspect,” Akerman explained. “I decided to reach out to the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), and work with them to create an agenda for becoming a 100% sustainable winery.”

Tabor’s sustainability model seeks to increase biodiversity within its vineyards, or, as Akerman aptly described, “We let nature enter the monoculture of our vineyards.” The model has since been adopted by other wineries in Israel, and has made Tabor the regional leader in sustainable winemaking.”

An up-and-coming trend in the global winemaking space is the production of “natural wines,” or wines made organically, without any additives. But according to winemaker Jeff Morgan of Covenant Wines, the term is simply a marketing gimmick—and it’s something that his winery in Israel has been doing for years.

“The greatest wines, in my opinion, are made with minimalist winemaking techniques,” Morgan shared. “These wines are made of native yeast as opposed to commercial

Join us at the Yarden Table!

YARDENWINES.COM

@YARDENWINESISRAEL

yeast … the way it’s been done for the last 3,500 years.”

Morgan explained that the use of native yeast is preferable as it promotes a slower, more complex fermentation. “That’s why we’ve been using native yeast since we began making wine in Israel in 2013.” Additionally, he said that Covenant does not add any commercial ingredients during the malolactic fermentation of its wines.

“Making wines with organic ingredients and being minimally interventionist with the planet is a great idea,” Morgan said. Covenant sources its grapes from a biodynamic vineyard to make its wines under the Covenant Israel label.

Using High-Tech Methods of Wine Distribution

The “start-up nation” moniker that has made Israel famous worldwide for its start-up friendly culture, like a Silicon Valley in the Middle East, is exciting to see in many sectors.

But winemaking has not been as quick to adopt modern methods, said Jacob Ner-David of Jezreel Valley Winery, who himself works in the tech world. He has integrated his love for technology trends into winemaking.

“Some of the things we’re doing are things that have been done in the past, but we’re doing them in a more modern way,” Ner-David shared, referring to Jezreel Valley’s “cask futures” program, where enthusiasts can invest in a barrel of wine that has yet to be bottled. Multiple people can go in together on the investment in what’s known as “cask sharing,” the process is very involved from start to finish.

Because of the hands-on nature of cask futures, as investors typically research and taste wines before committing to a barrel, Ner-David explained that it’s something that has not quite reached the wine market outside of Israel. “Shipping barrel samples is something we are prepared to do, as we did during COVID, but for now this program is for people in Israel. One day, I’d love to expand it abroad.”

What Jezreel Winery does offer the global wine community is something unheard of in Israel: the sale of wine non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. “NFTs are obviously a relatively new concept in general. We launched the first NFT series in September 2021 … essentially, the NFTs serve as ‘digital twins’ of bottles of wine. The power lies in these digital certificates of ownership, which eliminate the need to purchase physical bottles of wine, like a voucher of sorts.” NerDavid said that because NFTs are secured with blockchain technology, the wine ownership is nearly impossible to hack.

In its first run of wine NFTs, Jezreel Valley sold 600 in a matter of several days, each NFT representing six bottles of wine, for a total of 3,600 bottles purchased. “We had a chat room associated with it, and I could see that the enthusiasm for it has remained,” Ner-David said, adding that Jezreel Valley plans to do another run of NFTs soon.

Though Jezreel Valley is the only Israeli winery thus far to embrace the use of NFTs, Ner-David expressed hope that others will follow suit. “I think it will catch on pretty quickly. It’s like the modern version of a wine club.”

Mediterranean Grape Varieties

Ner-David recalled that this is not the first time Jezreel Valley Winery has done something that the rest of the Israeli winemaking industry has considered outlandish. When the winery first began production in 2011, it announced that it would be sticking to Mediterranean grape varieties, such as syrah and grenache. “People thought we were crazy,” he said. “But now, sticking with local varietals is what everyone is talking about.”

Eli Shiran, who runs Shiran Winery, expressed a similar sentiment when discussing his wine production choices. The small Israeli winemaker has always gravitated towards

Mediterranean grape varietals since it began bottling wines in 2013, and avoids using European varieties like cabernet or merlot.

“We choose grape varietals that are native to this climate, and use them in our blends for a lighter, more elegant style of wine. I think this is where Israeli wines are headed,” Shiran shared.

The Rise of the Israeli “Micro Winery”

There’s a reason why Shiran Winery has the freedom to be so creative: Eli Shiran only answers to himself. The winery produces less than 10,000 bottles of wine a year, which is miniscule compared to the major Israeli winemakers, that typically produce 10 million bottles annually.

“We are not bound to a standard set of rules in our production,” Shiran explained. “Larger wineries are committed to producing the same wines year after year, because that’s what people expect. When we make our few thousand bottles, we have the freedom to act on our whim. And we also don’t have to worry about selling large quantities of wine if they are ‘experimental’ in some way … we get to be creative and change it up every year.”

This uniqueness and creativity in production is exactly what attracted KosherWine.com to Shiran Winery for its micro winery distribution initiative. Along with several other boutique wineries, including Gito, Nevo and Herzberg, Shiran made an exclusive deal with the online wine purveyor to distribute in the U.S. market.

According to president of KosherWine.com Dovid Riven, the initiative began back in 2017 with a trip to Israel to meet with more than 40 winemakers. In the end, Riven and CEO David Perelman selected five of these tiny wineries to structure their exclusive distribution program, which helps the wineries get their product out beyond limited brick-and-mortar locations at a fair price.

Riven described these micro wineries as winemakers who typically produce 5,000-10,000 bottles of wine, most of which “have a really good story,” thanks to a personal touch from the “good people” who run them.

According to Riven, micro wineries are a growing trend within the Israeli winemaking industry—and wine enthusiasts can expect to see more of their unique blends in years to come.

Israel’s Raziel Winery experiments with native grape varieties.

Building Variety and Depth at Kosher Wine’s High End

Andrew Breskin

There was a time when it was difficult to get even one great kosher wine from a historic wine region. Andrew Breskin’s mission is to give the kosher consumer a choice among great wines.

By Elizabeth Kratz

In large and mid-sized American Jewish communities, 2022 means one can get a kosher version of virtually anything. While this is certainly sufficient for many consumers, a growing community of aficionados of gourmet food and beverage, particularly wine, sometimes laments the lack of opportunities to help kosher wine drinkers fully understand the taste or terroir of a particular region. Terroir accounts for both minor and major changes in characteristic taste and flavor imparted to wine by the environment in which the grapes are grown.

Andrew Breskin, a boutique kosher wine importer based in San Diego, has a passion to deepen and strengthen the variety available in today’s kosher wine marketplace, especially in the world’s most historic wine regions. Kosher wine, generally, is dominated by a single importer, the privately held Herzog family-owned Royal Wines/ Kedem, which imports, in broad strokes, about 85-90% of the world’s kosher-certified wines, from $10 bulkproduced California and Australian wines to high-end French wines that retail for $150 and more. The rest of the industry is dominated by smaller niche importers who focus on specific regions or producers. None other than Breskin, however, operates a club that specializes entirely in high-end, limited-availability kosher wines.

“It’s true you can get ‘a kosher anything’ but you can’t get 10 ‘kosher anythings.’ The difference is not in availability, it’s in diversity,” explained Breskin in a recent interview. “If you want cabernet franc from the Loire Valley, you can find one, but you can’t taste 50. You can get 200 cabernets from Israel, yes; and if you want to get a Priorat [a Spanish wine from Catalonia], no problem. But if you want to ‘taste’ Priorat, no can do.

“If you want to learn about wine and taste a region you have to go deeper, not wider,” Breskin continued. “You are

looking to taste and get the purest sense of place. I don’t necessarily want to talk about kosher; I want to talk about wine.”

Many kosher-keepers do want to talk to Breskin, and each other, about wine. Generally, kosher wine education in America is formalizing as individuals seek to become more knowledgeable. In fact, in spring 2021, when KosherWine.com partnered with an Israeli wine school to run the first Wine Spirits & Education Trust (WSET) Level 2 Award in Wines ever offered publicly in America using entirely kosher wines, 30 Americans signed up. Courses like these, a mainstay for wine lovers and industry professionals in the non-kosher world, can help wine enthusiasts turn a hobby into a profession, or amp up one’s academic knowledge measurably.

The interest in learning more about wine can grow from a hobby into a lifelong passion that evolves only with investment, time, travel and memories. Precious few, if any, kosher-keeping American Jews have yet to successfully complete the WSET’s PhD-equivalent program, the Master of Wine, or joined the Guild of Sommeliers. Many Jews who enjoy wine actively seek out opportunities to try a variety of wines like the ones Breskin imports.

The real education, Breskin says, is in the tasting. “Being able to taste a pinot noir grown in Burgundy from 20 meters apart and 20 miles apart, it’s an experience you can’t really explain,” he said.

“In Burgundy, for example, the wine in the bottle over time, as it matures and develops, will change the most dramatically, in a good way and a complicated way. It’s the definition of why people age wines. Burgundy provides the most action in this regard; it has to do with terroir and acidity and tannin. It’s very sensitive to soil types and climate.”

Breskin’s company and wine club, Liquid Kosher, specializes in importing high-quality kosher wines from France and Israel. He also buys private wine collections, sells “instant wine collections,” and helps clients find the specific types of wine they like most. No bottle on his website tends to be priced under approximately $50, and prices can run as high as $500 or more for individual or extremely limited-inventoried bottles. His label also distributes hard-to-find California wines, including some from the vaunted Timbre and Mayacamas Vineyards.

Experience in the Non-Kosher Wine World

Breskin’s passion, however, is not specifically for expensive wine; it is driven by his experiences as a young adult working in the non-kosher world as a certified sommelier, with a particular interest in and affinity for the well regarded wines of Pomerol, a small winemaking commune in the larger Bordeaux region in southwestern France.

Breskin is 38 years old, and his foray into importing—and exclusively tasting—kosher wines is already in its bar mitzvah year. For the past 13 years, in fact after his first year of law school, when he became more religiously observant, Breskin sold off his valuable non-kosher wine collection. “That was a doozy because I had a lot of niche Rhône wines, some interesting rieslings and some California wines that were irreplaceable,” he said.

Breskin had worked his way up and learned about digital sales and wine auctions from expert wine collectors and dealers, and made a living working in wine before and during college. He worked a number of “odd jobs” on sales floors in a wine store, and made long-distance deliveries. He also learned from an expert in terms of building, managing and selling wine collections for clients. His depth of experience brought him to France and elsewhere, and tasting about 250 wines a month, his palate became highly attuned to quality. He took and passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Certified Sommelier exam in 2006.

Also in San Diego, tasting, studying and working alongside Breskin at that time was Dan Pilkey, now a well known Chicago-based sommelier who builds and maintains wine lists in multiple Michelinstarred restaurants. Pilkey passed the Master Sommelier exam in 2018 and is a current Master of Wine candidate. In an interview, Pilkey said that Breskin’s attuned palate is an essential guide to quality.

“Having that Rolodex of information and experience behind tasting those benchmark wines, he has amassed a serious palate, so he can taste through a series of kosher wines to find those on par or perhaps even above those from what you might consider a ‘regular’ winery,” said Pilkey.

In fact, Pilkey explained, though he primarily works in non-kosher dining, he has placed Breskin’s wines on various lists he’s worked on for restaurants. The Concours, a private club in Miami that has kosher-keeping members who use its personal chef services, has Breskin’s imports of Domaine Roses Camille, Timbre and one of his red

Burgundies on their wine list. “From a business standpoint, for me to be able to shop France, Israel and California, it’s important for me to have access to a variety of wines that are both very high-end and kosher,” he said.

Transitioning to Kosher

Before he went to Israel for the first time, close to 15 years ago, Breskin made a decision to drink only kosher wine.

“I’m not growing out my payos or anything, but I don’t taste nonkosher wine today for business reasons or otherwise. That was it for me,” Breskin said, explaining that his experience tasting non-kosher wine earlier in his career led him to understand and seek out high quality, and he uses these memories to bring the same flavor profiles to his clients.

“That’s my edge; because I feel like if I’m going back and forth [between kosher and non-kosher] then I might not value the full picture. It’s got to be good enough for me, and my clients.

“I am all in and my clients are all in.”

‘Let’s Talk About France’

France is Breskin’s main focus, and in addition to enjoying its wines, he holds a lifelong familial connection to the region. “Some of the best wines I have ever tasted come from France. I have always found it an interesting place. My dad was born there. His parents were refugees from Austria; my grandmother had been on Kindertransport, and went to France after the war to find her father. My grandmother still lives in London, so it’s easy for me to do business there.”

Breskin’s paternal grandfather was from Poland, and he met his wife, Breskin’s grandmother, when she was in France. But there’s a wine connection even as far back as Poland.

“My great-grandfather on my grandfather’s side was a wine broker in Poland. My grandfather used to tell me that as a child, before the war, he would sneak into his father’s warehouse. He knew which was the sweet wine because they were Tokaji barrels. They would find him there because he had fallen asleep in the cellar.”

Today, Breskin’s import focus is on

only a few well chosen winemaking regions and producers. “We’re in Pomerol and Bordeaux and a little bit in Burgundy, and we are in Israel in the north, in the Western Galilee with Lahat, and central Israel, with Yaacov Oryah.”

‘Discovering’ Domaine Roses Camille

“What makes our wine special is that these are all family-owned wineries with direct relationships with growers. Pomerol’s Domaine Roses Camille is the crown jewel of our portfolio. It’s being tended to by the third generation to run it, and it’s now a 100% kosher production,” Breskin said.

Breskin explained that the winery launched in 2005, and made just 75 cases. That’s three barrels. All of it was kosher. “Somehow, Wine Spectator got ahold of it and this wine made it to the top 100 2005 Bordeaux wines. It was not a kosher or non-kosher list. This was the top 100 Bordeaux overall.”

Christophe Bardeau is Domaine Roses Camille’s winemaker. He explained that five years of work goes into producing a single bottle of his estate’s wine. “The philosophy is to listen to the terroir. We are located in the most prestigious appellation on the planet, and the most qualitative,” he said. Bardeau added he has already been using an organic biological approach for making wines, and the winery is now officially converting to organic.

“I heard about the wine from the Rogov forum [an early wine email list/message board that ran in the early days of the internet where many wine enthusiasts met and networked, moderated by Israeli American wine critic Daniel Rogov, z”l], so I reached out to them. They sent me a couple of bottles. At that point I was keeping kosher, but with this wine I was taken back to the late nights in the wine shop tasting through Bordeaux. It was hitting every note. From there I made a small purchase of the 2005 and 2006, and we were charging $300 a bottle. It was the most expensive wine you could buy in kosher at that time,” he recalled.

Why does Bardeau entrust his few and precious bottles to Breskin for distribution? Instead of sharing facts and numbers, “we learned how to grow up together, to talk, to listen to each other, and also to taste and enjoy,” said Bardeau.

Meet Yaacov Oryah

Acclaimed for his artistic genius in Israeli winemaking, Yaacov Oryah is a commercial winemaker, notably for Psagot, previously, and currently for other commercial wineries such as Pinto in the Negev, but he also makes small batch wines under his own name. He said he uses his personal brand to “explore winemaking ideas,” and enjoys doing that alongside making conventional

Christoph Bardeau of Domaine Roses Camille

“The philosophy is to listen to the terroir. We are located in the most prestigious appellation on the planet, and the most qualitative.”

–CHRISTOPH BARDEAU

SECRET RESERVE 90 Cabernet Sauvignon 2016

92

Petit Verdot 2017

FEATURES

LEGEND Fiddler 2016 94

Ultimate WIne Challenge LEGEND Fiddler 2016 94 Ultimate Wine Challenge

APRIL 2022 / NISSAN 5782 JEWISH LINK WINE GUIDE 23

91 WINE ENTHUSIAST SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 91

WINE ENTHUSIAST

SECRET RESERVE Merlot 2017 91 DECANTER

SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 90

Exclusive Edition 2013 MOSAIC ROBERT PARKER SECRET RESERVEMerlot 2016 92WINE ENTHUSIAST MOSAIC 2014 91 ROBERT PARKER MOSAIC 2016 90 ROBERT PARKER MOSAIC Exclusive Edition 2016 94

SOMM Privilage 2018 91 SOMM SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 90Robert Parker SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 95 DECANTER ROBERT PARKER DECANTER 91 MOSAIC 2017 WINE ENTHUSIAST Merlot 2019 92 SECRET RESERVE

MOSAIC Exclusive Edition 2017 95

DECANTER

Mosaic

Exclusive edition 2019 92

WINE ENTHUSIAST

91 DECANTER SECRET RESERVE

LEGEND Honi 2017 90 DECANTER SECRET RESERVE Petit Verdot 2017 92 DECANTER SECRET RESERVE Petite Syrah 201791 Secret Reserve Cabernet Franc 2017 92

SECRET RESERVE Petite Syrah 2017 91 WINE ENTHUSIAST 90 ROBERT PARKER SECRET RESERVE Petite Syrah 2017 91 WINE ENTHUSIAST

LEGEND Fiddler 2013 91 ROBERT PARKER

90

WINE ENTHUSIAST MOSAIC Exclusive Edition 2016 92 WINE ENTHUSIAST

SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Franc 2017 92 DECANTER DECANTER Cabernet Franc 201792 SECRET RESERVE

WINE ENTHUSIAST LEGEND Fiddler 2017 90 ROBERT PARKER Cabernet Sauvignon 201291 SECRET RESERVE SECRET RESERVE Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 95

DECANTER

SHOR Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 90

WINE ENTHUSIAST

LEGEND Honi 2017 90 WINE ENTHUSIAST WINE ENTHUSIAST 92

LEGEND Fiddler 2019 94 ULTIMATE WINECHALLENGE

OUR SECRET is CONSIST ENCY

Yaacov Oryah

wines with conventional methods in a commercial environment. Oryah has attained relative cult status for his avant-garde methods of making skin-macerated unoaked whites, often known as “orange wines,” with which he has been experimenting for about 10 years. He also works on lowering the alcohol level of red wine and reducing the influence of oak even when wines are aged in oak. He believes he is exploring ideas unique to the wine world itself, not just for kosher wines.

“It’s finding the consumers that are looking for these special wines and not just for regular, oaky, ripe cab, or something like that. There is a nice correlation between what the wine does and what people expect of the brand, and overall that works,” he said.

“Within my brand I have wines that are more conventional, red wines, but the white wines are not really conventional. They are unoaked, harvested early, meant for aging and develop beautifully over time, sometimes at the price of not being so friendly in their youth,” Oryah told the Jewish Link Wine Guide. “I have a whole program of skin-macerated wines. Today that’s a big trend, having orange wines, but when I started, I knew nothing about the trend and it was just starting in Europe, in 2007. I just wanted to know what happens when you don’t throw out the skins at the beginning of the process, as most wineries do, and allow them to be— and see what they add to the wines.”

These wines often have a more floral or earthy bouquet, because the skins, said Oryah, impart more of the surrounding terroir to the wines, and he is able to coax from them an array of more subtle complexities.

Oryah wines are exclusive, hard-tofind and many of them have offbeat, unexpected names, like “Queen of Hearts,” “Eye of the Storm” and “The Human Touch.” Breskin started importing Oryah wines to the States in 2018. “Oryah wines are refreshing and they are sort of like people, like individuals,” he said.

“They will change over the course of the day. They are predictable but they can also surprise you. That keeps it interesting. You want a wine to be reliable, and to taste consistently the same, like you want a chardonnay to taste like chardonnay, not a sauvignon blanc; but with Oryah wines there are little gems, little sparks, that you get based on when you taste it, or what you pair it with. It provides a good and welcome wine experience and a good moment.”

Oryah explained that he does not necessarily want his wines to be available in stores, which is one of the selling points of working with Breskin. “That’s something I am very concerned about. I don’t want my skin-macerated chardonnay on a shelf and have someone reach out and buy it because it’s a chardonnay, because if they don’t know anything about skinmacerated wines they will be very disappointed.

“I like when there is someone who can intermediate what is in the bottle to the client, and with most other alternatives for exporting to the United States I would be mainly in stores; I can’t be in restaurants because my wines are not mevushal,” he added.

Breskin, according to Oryah, “has a clientele and he intermediates the wines to them in a professional way.”

“Also, a lot of my wines are small scale, with very good fruit, and made with expensive materials. You end up with a not-cheap product. I wish I was able to sell my wines much cheaper and still be profitable, but lowering my prices would not make it worth it to continue producing. Andrew has the ability to sell these wines despite the fact that they are not cheap. He knows how to direct the product to the clientele who are looking for high-quality, cutting-edge wines. It works for him and it works for me,” said Oryah.

In Depth on Israel’s Terroir With Itay Lahat

Itay Lahat, an experienced winemaker in Australia and France before becoming the winemaker at Barkan, also consulted for many wineries in Israel over the past two decades and teaches at several universities in Israel. When he felt it was finally time to channel his passion for Rhône varietals into a winery under his own name, he started producing small-batch wine in the Western Galilee under his own label, Lahat. His wines went fully kosher in 2018. While still small, the winery has worked its way up to 10,000 bottles annually.

Said Breskin: “I thought it would

Itay Lahat

Welcome to Kosher Burgundy

The old world wines of Burgundy, France are finally getting their share of sunlight in the kosher marketplace.

By Joshua E. London

The wines of Burgundy— classic, “old world,” elegant, and some of the most expensive available—are widely considered benchmarks for winemakers around the globe. Unfortunately, the availability of kosher Burgundy has been, at best, fitful—especially in the United States. Thankfully, there are several recent, active efforts underway to improve this situation.

The Herzog family’s Royal Wine Corp., America’s largest producer, importer and distributor of kosher wines, will soon be releasing three high-end red wines from Burgundy—a Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny and a Premier Cru Beaune, all 2020 vintage wines from Domaine du Château Philippe le Hardi (formerly known as Château de Santenay).

These are an addition to Royal’s current lineup of the excellent white Burgundy wine Château de Santenay, Les Bois de Lalier, Mercurey Blanc (to be rebranded with the Philippe le Hardi label in future vintage releases), their solid Chablis—also a Burgundy white—from Pascal Bouchard and Domaine Les Maronniers, and their enjoyable if simple entry-level Burgundies from Domaine Ternynck.

At KosherWine.com, the leading kosher wine internet retailer in the United States, the team recently launched their own high-end red Burgundy: the delightful René Lacarière, Gevrey-Chambertin, 2019. This is in addition to their delicious, unpretentious, entry-level red Burgundies: Grume d’Or Pinot Noir, Louis Blanc Duc de Serteil Coteaux Bourguignons and the Louis Blanc Morcantel Bourgogne.

Liquid Kosher, Andrew Breskin’s boutique and hyper-curated wine club, has rolled out a stellar lineup of high-end Burgundys from Domaine Jean-Philippe Marchand, made by arrangement with Le Groupe Moïse Taïeb, one of Europe’s top kosher wine négociants. While G.M. Taïeb has been working with Marchand for the last eight years servicing the European market, Breskin has revitalized the program, more fully partnering with Taïeb and Marchand with the 2021 vintage, in an exciting effort to really push kosher Burgundy in the American market.

These Marchand wines stand alongside Breskin’s fast-dwindling stock of kosher red Burgundies from Domaine Chantal Lescure, which has not produced a new kosher vintage since 2017, and from Domaine d’Ardhuy, which sadly abandoned its kosher program altogether after the 2015 vintage. (Both Lescure and d’Ardhuy were also Taïeb productions, for the European and British markets, which began in 2010; Breskin began importing the kosher d’Ardhuy in 2016, and the Lescure in 2017). Also in the Liquid Kosher lineup are some lovely Chablis from Dampt Frères and La Chablisienne.

There are also several lovely Burgundies from Maison Jean-Luc & Paul Aegerter starting with the 2018 vintage, made by arrangement with the high-end focused kosher négociant Les Vins IDS, imported by the Brooklyn-based M&M Importers. Also currently available are several reasonably priced—i.e., not much more money than their regular non-kosher versions—kosher Chablis, which are lovely, and an entry-level pinot noir from Vignoble Dampt, under their Dampt Frères label, made by arrangement with winemaker and négociant Vignobles David and imported by the New York-based Bradley Allan Imports. These are available through KosherWine.com, Liquid Kosher, and with limited instore distribution, too.

What Is Burgundy?

Burgundy, or Bourgogne in French, is a province in eastern France famous for both red and white wines; it is also the name of the region, its wines, and the most basic, generic category of appellation. There is also a small but steadily growing amount of sparkling, and a tiny amount of pink wine produced there.

According to recent data from the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB, known

in English as the “Bourgogne Wine Board”), Burgundy has 30,052 hectares, or 74,260.04 acres, under vine. In terms of production, there are currently 3,577 domaines viticoles (growers) producing wine (of whom 863 sell more than 10,000 bottles), 266 maisons de négoce (merchant houses), and 16 caves coopératives (cooperatives)

The heart of Burgundy wine is the Côte d’Or, or “Slope of Gold,” a roughly 30-mile-long escarpment—a fillet of angled land at the edge of the plain, with outstanding soil composition, recognized for producing exceptional wines as early as a millennium ago—starting just south of Dijon, stretching in the direction of Lyon. The name is often said to refer to the golden color of the vineyard leaves in autumn, though invariably folks joke that the name alludes to the prices the wines fetch at market. A more compelling tradition has it that the name is simply a contraction of Côte d’Orient, “eastern-facing slope”—referencing that the slope of the land has the vineyards facing east, maximizing sun exposure.

Burgundy wine is grown across five primary viticultural areas. From north to south, these are: Chablis, Côte de Nuits (the northern half of the Côte d’Or); Côte de Beaune (the southern half of the Côte d’Or), Côte Chalonnaise; and Mâconnais.

The sheer weight of all this detail— and this is but a brief thumbnail sketch—hints at why Burgundy is considered so complex a wine region. On the plus side, Burgundy has one of the world’s least complicated range of grape varieties permitted in its vineyards, and the best wines of Burgundy are exclusively made from only two different grapes: pinot noir for reds and chardonnay for whites. As is typical of French wines, however, the bottles rarely specify the grape variety, showcasing instead the geographic location where the wine came from.

Burgundy Is All About Terroir

This geography focus is due to the somewhat romantic but thoroughly French belief that the natural character and taste of a wine is derived largely from where the grapes are cultivated (and the wine is made, broadly in accord with traditional methods). At the core of this doctrine is the much-debated notion of what the French call terroir, which very loosely translates as “a sense of place.”

More than any other wine-growing region in France, Burgundy has enthroned the primacy of place.

Burgundy is where every minute geographic nuance matters, where the whole theory of terroir is explored with the utmost intricacy and devotion.

“Burgundy,” as the wine writer

Matt Kramer succinctly put it,

“is all about the sanctity of the land, not the brand.” The term terroir conceptually refers to a holistic combination of such natural localized interactive factors as soil composition, topography (mostly in terms of exposure to sun and water drainage) and climate (from macroclimate down to microclimate). The big idea is that all these factors combined confer each individual parcel of vinegrowing land its own unique terroir, which is reflected in its

Where is Beaujolais?

In terms of government administration, the province of Burgundy technically includes part of Beaujolais, located immediately to the south of Mâconnais—and so there are some who naturally consider the Beaujolais wine region as yet another part of greater Burgundy. It is not. Beaujolais has its own history, soil types, topography, climate, grape varieties, winemaking styles and personalities. The difference between the wines sold as Burgundy and those as Beaujolais are as great as chalk and cheese. Further, Beaujolais is mostly in the Rhône département, and so Burgundians consider Beaujolais wines as les vins du Rhône. The general convention, followed here, is to consider Beaujolais—which I adore!—as its own thing entirely.

wines from vintage to vintage. Simply put, terroir is said to be the reason why pinot noir from Burgundy tastes different than pinot noir from, say, Oregon, California or Israel.

While Burgundy’s vineyards were not officially classified until the 20th century, the Christian monks of medieval France began painstakingly cultivating and identifying Burgundy’s vineyards based on the distinctive qualities each parcel transmitted to the resulting wines. Their religious devotion to cultivating the vine, it is said, laid the foundation of modern Burgundy wine.

This fixation on terroir is largely the conceptual basis upon which France’s regional classifications of vineyards have been established. This system of classification is known as the appellation d’origine contrôlée or AOC, meaning “controlled designation of origin,” and is governed by the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO), a branch of the French Ministry of Agriculture.

Burgundy’s vineyards have been ranked according to four levels of quality. From top to bottom, these are: Grand Cru (“great growth,” these are the very best), Premier Cru or 1er Cru (literally “first growth,” just one notch down), Village (another notch down), and Regional (the bottom tier).

In a sense, this is just a fussy way of describing an especially prized real estate market: The most exclusive addresses are thought the best, and so cost the most. So, the wines from the best vineyard sites are thought to have the best quality potential and are the most in demand, and so also the most expensive. The relationship is a simple inversion: As potential quality goes up, quantity goes down; and as availability goes down, prices go up.

Unfortunately, the Burgundy wine region map in all its minute detail is one of the most complicated in the world. Each of Burgundy’s 33 Grand Cru—32 of which are in the Côte d’Or—has its own distinct appellation. There are 684 vineyards with Premier Cru ranking. There are 43 Village appellations—theoretically a statement on each commune’s terroir, such that, for example, a consumer should be able to taste the wine and say, with conviction, this is a MoreySt-Denis and that is a ChambolleMusigny; this is Chassagne and that is Puligny, and so on. The Regional appellations have, mercifully, been simplified from 22 to just eight.

All this complexity has its place, of course, and the wine geeks among us relish such details. But all one really needs to appreciate Burgundy, as with all wines, is curiosity, an open mind, a capacity for personal discernment of taste, an insatiable thirst and— specifically for Burgundy, alas—deep, deep pockets.

“The First Duty of Wine Is to Be Red, the Second Is to Be a Burgundy”—Harry Waugh

“We wanted to bring high-quality red Burgundy back to the kosher market in America,” KosherWine. com’s Dovid Riven told me. “So, we started to call our contacts in France and explore the possibilities.” At the time they first began the project “there wasn’t any kosher red Burgundy widely available in the U.S.,” so they perceived a real need. After all, he added, “quality red Burgundy is truly something that should be widely available to the kosher consumer—when red Bordeaux is great, it’s really great, but when red Burgundy is great—it is sublime.” It has often been said among wine aficionados that on the journey to wine understanding, all roads eventually lead to Burgundy (though, arguably, the same might be said of Barolo and Barbarescoin Italy). Burgundy is the birthplace of both pinot noir and chardonnay, the two grapes from which all high-end Burgundy wine is produced, and so draws the attention and affection of wine lovers the world over.

For Andrew Breskin of Liquid Kosher, the appeal of Burgundy has more of the familiar twinkle-inthe-eye romance of a smitten wine aficionado. “I think that Burgundy is the highest expression of red wine for time and place,” he explained.

“As you drink other red wines and get a sense of how vintage and vineyard affect the taste of the wine,” said Breskin, “you go to a place like Burgundy and the differences are so dramatic and so exaggerated between different vineyards that are only separated by a very short distance … that it just causes you to want to learn more, and want to experience more, and taste more, to really understand the region and what about it causes such maddening and exciting distinctions in the wine and in the most delicious way possible.”

For better or worse, however, “Burgundy has become very complicated [on the production side],” Menahem Israelievitch, Royal Wine Europe’s chief winemaker, observed, “even in the non-kosher market.”

“The quantities being produced [there],” Israelievitch explained, “are really, really very small, and have remained smaller than expected every year for the past five years.”

“Demand has outstripped supply by ever-larger amounts,” Riven noted, “and the already limited supply has been further squeezed by lowyielding growing seasons.”

“Increasingly,” lamented Israelievitch, “[Burgundy] producers are having to allocate even their basic Bourgogne appellation wines, not just their higher-end wine. There simply

Terroir and the Côte d’Or

The French devotion to the individual vineyards, or climat, of the Côte d’Or is seemingly boundless. The term climat refers to “a vine plot, with its own microclimate and specific geological conditions, which has been carefully marked out and named over the centuries,” and the climats of the Côte d’Or are, since 2015, part of the UNESCO World Heritage list. These are essentially the vineyard names in Burgundy that have emerged out of the mix of 2,000 years of history, hard viticultural work and wine tasting appreciation. At any rate, there are a whopping 1,247 of these climat registered with UNESCO, stretching out in a thin ribbon from Dijon down to Santenay, south of Beaune.

isn’t enough wine being produced to go around.” As Jean-Philippe Marchand, representing the seventh generation of his family in Burgundy wine, put it to me, “Production has been going down, especially with the terrible frost of last April, and world demand is going up, and so the price is going up too … it is the first time in my life to see a situation like this—we have no wine available, and the price is quite expensive.”

Dovid Riven said their project was years in the making: “For us, it finally all came together for the harvest of 2019, so we jumped on it.” “As it happens,” he laughed, “we weren’t the only ones then who decided to bring kosher quality red Burgundy to the American market—but this is a good thing overall for the kosher consumer here; the more the merrier! “Instead of our project being one of a kind, it became one of several, but probably the most widely available of what’s out there.” Riven is perfectly fine with that. “Our focus is providing for our customers, first and foremost,” he said. “If, or as, others build out the kosher Burgundy space in the market, we’ll adapt our activities accordingly. The kosher market has plenty of room for growth.”

For Israelievitch, returning to Burgundy appealed on several levels. For one, it was a return to his earliest fully professional days with wine. Although he grew up in Paris and spent years in yeshiva in Israel, invariably he returned to France at grape harvest time each year to work as a mashgiach overseeing kosher wine production. After completing his yeshiva education in 1999, Israelievitch was hired by Royal to manage the vinification at three wineries in the Loire and four in Burgundy. Israelievitch clearly has all the telltale signs of a French winemaker with an itch that only Bourgogne can fully scratch. Israelievitch elaborated: “There is a certain lovely simplicity to producing wine in Burgundy because you work with the grapes from the small vineyard, trying to simply allow them to speak, and showcase what they have to offer of themselves. The volume is less, so the work is faster—but it is generally more expensive because of the small quantities, too. Really elegant, refined, wonderful wines.” “Once I thought the market was ready again for Burgundy,” he said, “I began urging the Herzogs … I drove them crazy, and it really wasn’t easy, and took a lot of time to convince them to try Burgundy again.” Thankfully, he persisted and eventually prevailed.

Having been given the green light, he said, “I looked for a Domaine in Burgundy with whom we could really work; I did not want to work through a négociant; I wanted to have something of high quality that we would control … and I didn’t want to have to deal with any potential compromises.

“The current plan,” Israelievitch said, “is to expand this every year, to not just keep production going on the wines that are working out well, but also to include additional appellations on a small scale. Last year we launched the Mercurey, and now we will launch these reds.

“The idea is to build a real and sustained Burgundy portfolio,” he said excitedly, “but to do so in concert with what the market will bear. I want to do this right and build it out properly, and to avoid the mistakes of the past.”

Burgundy and Climate Change

One of the biggest conversations around Burgundy at the moment is the impact of climate change. Burgundy is, after all, one of the preeminent and classic cool-climate production areas.

According to the BIVB, the average temperature in Burgundy has increased one degree Celsius since 1987. Widely understood as the effects of climate change, this was considered relatively beneficial until the last few years. Over that period, bud flowering and grape harvesting have been on average two weeks earlier. While an earlier growing season increases the vulnerability of tender buds to potential spring frosts, the red grapes have enjoyed more reliable maturation and better quality overall.

As Hugh Johnson observed in his “Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book,” 2021, “all farmers will be affected, but … winegrowers are the most sensitive ... The great wines of the world are the result of fine equations of land, weather and vines chosen to ripen grapes at the right speed and the right moment. Because the equation is precise it is inevitably marginal, and marginal means fragile.”

For now, at least, there is no clear widespread programmatic response, so the obsession and its furrowed-brow hand-wringing continues apace.

FEATURES

Old Vines, New Wines

Viña Memorias Winery Reinvigorates Bobal Varietal

Annie Molco and her family established Viña Memorias in 2016 to make wines from Spain’s Utiel-Requena region’s historic but rapidly disappearing varietal, the Old Vine Bobal. Imported by Red Garden, these are among the first kosher bobal wines available in the United States from this Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) near Valencia.

Bobal grapes make deliciouslyrich darkly colored wines similar to tempranillo, the grape that makes Rioja wines. Bobal old vine bush grapes, which generally only grow in this inland PDO, have been revived by a small group of producers because these grapes thrive in the region’s harsh winters and hot, dry summers, and are harvested very late, generally in mid-October. Bobal also did well

in the 1930s because it was found to be resistant to phylloxera. As of 2015, it was Spain’s third most planted grape after airen and tempranillo. The Molco family also has committed to pesticide-free sustainable farming, strictly rain-fed viticulture and traditional craftsmanship.

“A great wine is the reflection of the land that nurtured it,” said Armando Caracena-Molco, Viña Memorias’ head of global business development. “We are devoted to respecting the characteristics of our environment.”

Located in a region with a rich 2,500 year old winemaking tradition and tending productive old vines

that date back to the 1930s, Viña Memorias’ Bobal vineyards have played an important role in Spanish winemaking. Because Annie Molco noticed that neighboring vineyards were uprooting their historic Bobal vines in order to plant more popular strains, Molco and her family decided to take on the challenge of producing high-quality, terroir-driven wines, making them kosher from the first 2016 vintage.

I tasted two of the wines: The

Memorias del Rambam Crianza

Bobal Old Vine 2016, which is aged 12 months in American oak. It is a vanilla scented deep red wine, with lovely acidity, essence of dark fruits, a nice balance with rich yet soft tannins and lovely finish. Its gentle tannins make it accessible and enjoyable to both the novice and experienced wine taster.

Yunikko Tinaja Bobal 2018, which is aged for 18 months in a historicto-the-region red clay jar known as

the Tinaja, rather than oak barrels or steel vats. The jar imparts a clean yet earthy mineral essence, delivering a wine with notes of blueberry, red and black fruit and chocolate, with no influence of oak. The fruit and mineral-rich terroir are central to this wine.

Red Garden Inc. is the exclusive United States importer of Viña Memorias. “It is an honor to represent Viña Memorias in the United States and help them build their brand recognition in this new market,” said Mendel Ungar, president of Red Garden. “Their unique old-vine, single varietal wines have a cult following in Europe and Israel, and we are excited to offer them to our customers.”

By Elizabeth Kratz